Assad family

Uncommon card · No. 76800

The Assad family ruled Syria from 1970 to 2024, spanning the rule of Hafez al-Assad and his son, Bashar al-Assad. From 1963 until the collapse of Ba'athist rule in 2024, Syria was governed by the Ba'ath Party, and under the Assad family from 1971 onward, it became a totalitarian hereditary dictatorship. The Assad family was referred to as the Assad dynasty. The Assad family originated from Qardaha, in the Latakia Sanjak of the Ottoman Empire. They belonged to the Alawite Kalbiyya tribe. In 1927, Ali Sulayman al-Wahsh, Hafez al-Assad's father, who was born in 1875 and lived in the village of Qardaha in the Syrian coastal mountains, changed his surname from al-Wahsh, Arabic for "the savage", to al-Assad, meaning "the lion". This change was possibly connected to his social standing as a local mediator and his political activities. All members of the extended Assad family descended from Ali Sulayman and his second wife, Naissa, who came from a village in the Syrian Coastal Mountains. The Assad...

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