Image Source:
Bassel al-Atasi Archive
Hikmat al-Hiraki (1886-1969) was one of the original authors of the Syrian Constitution of 1920. Educated in Istanbul, he was voted into Syria's first Parliament, the Syrian National Congress, in 1919. One year later, he helped draft Syria's first royalist Constitution. In 1942, he became Syria's first Minister of Public Works in the cabinet of Prime Minister Hasan al-Hakim. He was one of the co-founders of the National Bloc, the leading anti-French movement in Syria during in the 1930s and 1940s.