Ibrahim Makhūs or Ibrahim Makhous or Brahim Makhous and ar , إبراهيم ماخوس (1925-2013) was a Syrian Syrian Baathist politician who sat on the Regional Command from 1966 to 1970. He served as

foreign minister A foreign affairs minister or minister of foreign affairs (less commonly minister for foreign affairs) is generally a cabinet minister in charge of a state's foreign policy and relations. The formal title of the top official varies between cou ...

during Salah Jadid's rule. After Hafiz al-Asad's seizure of power, Makhous established the

Democratic Socialist Arab Ba'ath Party The Arab Democratic Socialist Ba'ath Party ( ar, حزب البعث الديمقراطي العربي الاشتراكي ''Ḥizb al-Ba‘th al-Dīmuqrāṭī al-‘Arabī al-Ishtirākī''; French: ''Parti Baath arabe socialiste démocratique'') ...

. Makhūs died in 2013, at the age of 88.

Early life

Ibrahim Makhūs was born to a religious and rural

Alawite The Alawis, Alawites ( ar, علوية ''Alawīyah''), or pejoratively Nusayris ( ar, نصيرية ''Nuṣayrīyah'') are an ethnoreligious group that lives primarily in Levant and follows Alawism, a sect of Islam that originated from Shia Isl ...

family from the village of Makhūs—the family's namesake—between

Latakia , coordinates = , elevation_footnotes = , elevation_m = 11 , elevation_ft = , postal_code_type = , postal_code = , area_code = Country code: 963 City code: 41 , geocode ...

and

Antioch Antioch on the Orontes (; grc-gre, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου, ''Antiókheia hē epì Oróntou'', Learned ; also Syrian Antioch) grc-koi, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου; or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπ� ...

.Batatu, p. 163. His father was a religious ''

shaykh Sheikh (pronounced or ; ar, شيخ ' , mostly pronounced , plural ' )—also transliteration of Arabic, transliterated sheekh, sheyikh, shaykh, shayk, shekh, shaik and Shaikh, shak—is an honorific title in the Arabic language. It commonl ...

'' who also worked as a landless cultivator, although he eventually came to own 100

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...

s of agricultural land. He served as the arbiter of local disputes and founded a large charitable organization in the Syrian coastal region called "al-Jam'iyyah al-Khayriyyah". It grew to set up a presence in some seventy villages and established one of the first co-ed secondary school in the area.Batatu, p. 169. From a young age, Makhūs worked with his father's association, frequently traveling throughout Latakia's hinterland where he became intimately aware of the peasantry's hardships. While a student, he fought in the

1948 Arab-Israeli War Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...

as a volunteer for the Arab forces. During the Algerian War of Independence, which began in 1954, he served as a volunteer physician.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Makhūs, Ibrahim 1925 births 2013 deaths People from Damascus Syrian Arab nationalists Members of the Regional Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region Foreign ministers of Syria Syrian Alawites Syrian socialists Muslim socialists