Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar

Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar (1879–1940) was a Syrian physician, politician and leading nationalist figure during the French Mandate of Syria. He founded the People's Party in 1925 and served as spokesman of the provisional government of the Great Syrian Revolt; he was assassinated in Damascus on 6 July 1940. ^{1 2}

Shahbandar was born in Damascus on 6 November 1879; the structured Wikidata item gives a variant birth date of 1880. The Arabic article says he studied medicine at the American University in Beirut and graduated in 1906. He was among the first supporters of detaching from the Ottoman Empire, contributed to the growth of nationalist consciousness through articles in the newspapers, translated the works of Arab nationalist thinkers into Arabic, and wrote about philosophy, history and religion, expressing his belief that Arab values and moral philosophy would contribute to the rise of a sovereign, unified nation. ^{1 2 3}

In 1919 he secretly founded the Iron Hand Society in Damascus to work against Western colonial expansion and for national unity; after the fall of the Arab Kingdom of Syria he re-founded it as a secret organisation blamed in 1920–1921 for the assassination of two French agents. He was arrested, sentenced to twenty years in prison, served one and a half years, was released and exiled, and during his exile made extensive American contacts, founded the Syrian-Palestine Congress in Cairo and sat on its executive committee, promoting the independence cause in Europe and America. He returned to Syria in 1924 and was elected head of the Damascus Iron Committee, which organised support demonstrations. ^{1 2}

He founded the People's Party in 1925, building support for the election of a constituent assembly and opposing French rule and its arbitrary policies in his speeches. When the Great Syrian Revolt broke out in August 1925, he and Sultan al-Atrash helped spread it, established a provisional government in the Jabal Druze region with himself as spokesman, and sent its delegate to the Imperial Islamic Nations Conference. After the revolt failed, he fled in 1927 to Transjordan and then to Egypt, spending ten years in exile as an outspoken opponent of the French occupation. ^{1 2}

He returned to Syria in 1937 and strongly opposed the 1936 treaty, accusing the National Bloc of missing the chance to improve Syria's position. On 6 July 1940 he was assassinated in Damascus by three gunmen at or outside his clinic; Damascus blamed three volunteers from the National Youth, while the French also charged three prominent National Bloc figures with designing his assassination. He is buried at the Bab al-Saghir Cemetery in Damascus. ^{1 2}

No article text names a religion for Shahbandar: the English article's text is silent, the Urdu article is a two-line stub, and Wikidata carries no religion value for him. What exists is the Arabic article's infobox alone, which gives his religion as Islam and his doctrine as Ahl al-Sunna wa-l-Jama'a. A single infobox value cannot settle an affiliation under the museum's rule, which requires two independent sources naming the affiliation for the person personally, so his record stands as unknown, with the infobox's values recorded for what they are. ^{2 1 4 3}