IRAK: Death of Feisal

Only his silk-vested and sombreroed courtiers realized how sick a man was King Feisal of Irak last month when, after his soldiers and some fierce border Kurds had massacred 600 Assyrians, he awaited, “in spite of my broken health,” the arrival of a British investigator (TIME, Aug. 28). His impatience to leave for a “vacation” in Switzerland sounded, especially in view of his holiday in England only a few weeks prior, like an effort to gloss over the massacre. Last week came proof it was no such thing. The Assyrian trouble was quieted, but not a disturbance in lean, seamy-faced Feisal’s heart. One afternoon in Berne, having consulted with his Foreign Minister General Nuri Pasha and his brother Prince Ali on the prospect of the League of Nations investigating the Assyrian deaths, Feisal became seriously ill with a heart attack. The 50-year-old monarch, 37th direct descendant of Mohammed, refrained from eating any dinner, retired early, felt worse. At midnight Death, searching among the cool Alps for a desert chief, found King Feisal in his hotel bedroom.

It was “Electricity Week” in Berne and the town was brilliantly illuminated. At Feisal’s hotel most of the lights were respectfully and suddenly extinguished. That, accompanied by the cries of Feisal’s nurse and his entourage, created such a disturbance that one of the hotel’s elderly directors, a M. Eggimann, collapsed and died from shock.

A prudent Oriental, Feisal habitually employed a Court Taster except when in England, lest an enemy poison him. The royal corpse was not cold before some of the more excitable members of his staff demanded an autopsy to determine whether or not their sovereign’s sudden death was due to foul play. Promptly surgeons at the University of Berne set their minds at rest. They found that King Feisal, “The Sword Flashing Down at the Stroke,” had succumbed to an advanced stage of arteriosclerosis of the aorta and coronary arteries. The King’s cardiac condition had not been improved by his insistence on smoking 100 cigarets a day.

Feisal al Husein was seven days old when he was sent to the country seat of family friends. His father was a Moslem Prince, later became Grand Sherif of Mecca under the Turks, was for a time after the War King of the Hejaz. According to custom, Feisal spent the first seven years of his life among the Bedouins. His next 16 years were spent in semi-captivity at Constantinople, where he learned languages, history, diplomacy and the other things that a Moslem gentleman should know. He assisted in the Young Turks’ revolution against Abdul-Hamid and by 1914, trained to Turkish military tactics, was commanding his father’s forces in Asir. A passionate, exquisitely graceful, slender young man, he saw that the hopes of Arab nationalism depended upon a British victory in the Middle East. In 1916 a little Oxford archeologist named Thomas Edward Lawrence met Feisal al Husein for the first time. Feisal’s tribesmen had just rebelled against the Turks and had very nearly lost Mecca by so doing. Lawrence wrote later: “His personal charm, his imprudence, the pathetic hint of frailty as the sole reserve of this proud character made him the idol of his followers. One never asked if he were scrupulous, but later he showed that he could return trust for trust, suspicion for suspicion. . . . His men told me how, after a long spell of fighting in which he had to guard himself, and lead the charges, and control and encourage them, he had collapsed physically and was carried away from his victory, unconscious, with the foam flecking his lips.” Feisal and Lawrence led the “Revolt in the Desert” which kept the Suez Canal open and the British Empire united to the East. Feisal helped General Allenby capture Damascus and Jerusalem. At the Peace Conference, Feisal, in return, expected to be given the control of a united Arab kingdom, the land he and his followers had conquered. Instead he was made King of Syria, a French mandate. In disgust, Lawrence became Aircraftsman Shaw, refused British decorations. Curbing his indignation, swart Feisal went to Syria. When he took his job seriously, famed General Gouraud, an old hand at handling “natives,” marched on Damascus, ousted Feisal. In 1921 the British redeemed their honor by holding a plebiscite in the Mesopotamian Valley. Feisal was elected and named King of Irak subject to Britain’s mandate from the League of Nations over that area. His realm was not the united Arab kingdom which the youthful Feisal had dreamed of; it did not even include his native country. But Feisal under the British made a good job of his reign. In twelve years he put 50,000 children in school, organized an air force, increased by 50% the land under cultivation. He achieved his country’s independence and entry to the League of Nations as its youngest member. Whatever his thoughts of Western diplomacy were, he kept them to himself, merelyremarking once: “European statesmen are like impressionist paintings. The effect at a distance is excellent.” Feisal was sufficiently Westernized to recognize the merits of bolt-action military rifles and the game of poker, but when he sent his only son Prince Ghazi off to a British school he made sure that two sheep were duly slaughtered on the palace doorstep. Ghazi, now 21, last week at Bagdad presented himself to the cabinet as King. A slender, slick-haired youth. Ghazi I was once permitted to be King for a day when he was 16. He thereupon bought every gramophone record in Bagdad and ordered five cartloads of fresh clover for his pony. He will be at the mercy of pro-British and anti-British advisers with whom his tactful father neatly balanced his Court. Prince Ali at once proposed himself as Ghazi’s chief adviser, declaring: “I shall be as a father to the new King, whose name is Ghazi ibn Feisal, which means Victorious Son of Feisal.” Certainly as an uncle to Ghazi will be British Ambassador Sir Francis Humphrys. As Feisal’s body was sped home by sea on a British destroyer,* his old War Comrade Lord Allenby pronounced his obituary for the Empire: “He was a good soldier, an able politician and—what many politicians are not—honest with it. His sense of duty was great, and I presume he sacrificed himself to his country. A King has to do that sort of thing.”

*Swiss officials made the extraordinary blunder of placinga huge silver cross in Mohammedan Feisal’s funeral railroad car.