Faisal I

King of Iraq from 1921. During his reign, which included the achievement of full independence in 1932, he sought to foster pan-Arabism and astutely maintained a balance between Iraqi nationalists and British interests. He was succeded by his only son, Ghazi I, who was killed in a car accident in 1939.

Born in Ta'if, Hejaz, the third son of Hussein ibn Ali, the king of Hejaz and founder of the Hashemite dynasty, he was brought up and educated in Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey, where his father lived in exile, until 1908. During World War I, he joined his father and brothers in Hejaz to take an important role in an 1916–18 Arab nationalist revolt, which liberated the Middle East from Ottoman control. He commanded a ‘Northern army’, which harassed Turkish forces in guerrilla operations and took Damascus in October 1918. In March 1920 he was declared king of Syria by a nationalist congress, but was deposed by French military force in July 1920. Under the prompting of the British archaeologist Gertrude Bell, the British mandate government in Iraq held a plebiscite in August 1921, which resulted in Faisal being overwhelmingly elected king. In 1923 he was made a constitutional monarch by the national assembly.