Ali Sulayman al Assad

Personal life

Ali Sulayman al-Assad was the son of Sulayman al-Wahhish. The al-Assad family lived in Qardaha, an Alawite town in Latakia, in the northern Syrian mountains. They are members of the Kalbiyya tribe. For his accomplishments, Ali was called al-Assad ("the lion" in Arabic) by his fellow Alawites and made the nickname his surname in 1927.

Ali married twice and over three decades had eleven children. His first wife Sa'ada was from the district of Haffeh. They had three sons and two daughters. His second wife was Na'isa, twenty years younger than him. She was the daughter of Uthman Abbud from the village of Qutilba, about 12 kilometres further up the mountain. They had a daughter and five sons. Hafez was born on 6 October 1930 and was the fourth child.

Political influence

In 1936, al-Assad was one of 80 Alawite notables who signed a letter addressed to French Prime Minister Léon Blum, saying that:

"[the] Alawi people rejected attachment to Syria and wished to stay under French protection."

He was also one of the signatories of another letter to Blum, which implored the French not to abandon Syria, stating:

"The spirit of hatred and fanaticism embedded in the hearts of the Arab Muslims against everything that is non-Muslim has been perpetually nurtured by the Islamic religion. There is no hope that the situation will ever change. Therefore, the abolition of the mandate will expose the minorities in Syria to the dangers of death and annihilation, irrespective of the fact that such abolition will annihilate the freedom of thought and belief."

The French Prime Minister to whom these were addressed was Léon Blum, a Jew, so Sulayman included some positive references to Jews in his statement. However, this is unlikely to have been sincere, since Alawite religious texts condemn the Jews and Judaism like the Kitab al-Usus.