From Deportation to Integration: Armenian Survivors and State Formation in Faisal ibn Hussein’s Syria (1918-1920)

Abstract

This article examines the policies of Emir Faisal ibn Hussein toward Armenian Genocide survivors in post-Ottoman Syria between 1918 and 1920, focusing on the intersection of humanitarian assistance, minority protection, and state formation. Following the collapse of Ottoman rule, Syria became a principal refuge for tens of thousands of Armenian deportees who had survived the Armenian Genocide and remained in conditions of acute vulnerability due to famine, disease, displacement, and legal uncertainty. Against this backdrop, Faisal’s administration adopted a series of political, administrative, and humanitarian measures aimed at alleviating the suffering of Armenian survivors and incorporating them into the emerging socio-political framework of postwar Syria.
Drawing on archival sources, memoirs, contemporary press accounts, and official correspondence, the article analyzes Faisal’s personal engagement with Armenian communal leaders, institutional relief measures, decrees concerning food distribution, debt relief, and the protection and recovery of Armenian women and children subjected to forced assimilation. It further explores the tensions and limitations of these efforts, including the February 1919 anti-Armenian violence in Aleppo, local social frictions, and the broader geopolitical constraints imposed by British and French imperial competition.
The study argues that Faisal’s policies represented an important early attempt to transform humanitarian relief into a more structured framework of minority protection and civic inclusion, while simultaneously serving the political project of Arab state-building. Although ultimately constrained by regional instability and the collapse of Faisal’s Syrian rule, these initiatives contributed significantly to the stabilization, integration, and long-term institutional development of the Armenian community in Syria, laying part of the foundation for one of the most significant Armenian diaspora centers in the Middle East.