Habib Kahaleh was born in Damascus in 1898 and studied at the American University of Beirut (AUB). In 1918, shortly after collapse of the Ottoman Empire, he founded his first newspaper, “Souriya al-Jadida.” Nine years later, Kahaleh founded a satirical political periodical named, “Al-Mudhik al-Mubki.” It championed independence from the French Mandate and was suspended several times by French authorities and by pro-French Syrian leaders like President Taj al-Din al-Hasani in the mid-1930s and early 1940s. Shortly after the French evacuated in 1946 Kahaleh founded another political daily called “Dimashq” and was elected MP for Damascus in the first post-French Syrian Parliament. Habib Kahaleh died in Damascus at the age of 67 in 1965.