Munir al-Rayyes, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetMunir al-Rayyes
Syrian newspaper editor and writer
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Damascus, Damascus Governorate, Syria
About Munir al-Rayyes
- Munir al-Rayyis (1901โ1992) was a prominent Syrian newspaper editor and writer. Munir was born in Damascus.
- He studied literature at Damascus University and in 1919 began to work for the Ministry of Education.
- In the same year, be began writing for the newspapers al-Ayyam (Damascus) and al-Hayat (Beirut).
- Munir opposed the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon imposed in 1920 and in 1925 left his job to join the revolt of Sultan al-Atrash.
- At the end of the revolt, in 1927, Rayyes returned to Damascus, where he was a regular writer for al-Hayyat.
- In August 1933 Rayyes became a founder member of the League of Nationalist Action, whose goal was to remove foreign political influence in the region.
- With the fading of the League in 1935, Rayyes moved to Palestine from 1936-38 to join Haj Amin al-Husseini in the 1936โ39 Arab revolt in Palestine.
- In 1938 he became the director of political affairs at the Damascus police department. In 1945, Munir founded a newspaper, Barada, working as its editor-in-chief, and another in support of Husni al-Za'im's 1949 coup, called al-Inkilab (The Coup d'Etat).
- His journalism included campaigning for women's emancipation (including giving his wife, Thuraya Al-Hafez, a platform; he also encouraged her to stand for election in 1953).
- On August 25, 1952, Barada merged with the Damascus daily paper al-Manar al-Jadid on the orders of Adib Shishakli, becoming al-Liwaa.
- The owner of al-Manar al-Jadid, Bashir al-Ouff, became editor-in-chief of the new paper, and Rayyes the director, until in 1954 the papers were split again.
- 1954 also saw a short-lived experiment with running a shareholding company to print Syria's four main papers, al-Qabas, al-Ayyam, Alif Ba', and al-Sham.
- Rayyes supported Arab nationalist movements in the 1950s and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt both during and after the United Arab Republic.
- Rayyes supported the 1963 Syrian coup d'รฉtat but once their power was established, the Baath party closed Barada. Rayyes is also noted for his book Al-Kitab al-Dhahabi li'l-Thawrat al-Wa?aniyya fi al-Mashriq al-?Arabi: al-Thawra al-Suriyya al-Kubra (The Golden Book of Nationalist Revolutions in the Arab East).
Read more at Wikipedia