Iran
Sattar Khan
The "Commander of the Nation" — a Tabriz horse-dealer who became the military hero of Iran's Constitutional Revolution, holding the district of Amir Khiz against the royalist siege of 1908–09 with a volunteer force and forcing the constitutionalists' eventual victory.
1866–1914
Iran
Bagher Khan
The "Salar-e-Melli" (National Commander) — Sattar Khan's principal lieutenant in the Tabriz Constitutional resistance, co-commander of the city's defence during the 1908–09 siege and a hero of the Constitutional Revolution.
1870–1916
Iran
Mirza Kuchak Khan
Leader of the Jangal Movement — a guerrilla resistance based in the forests of Gilan province that fought both Russian occupation and the Qajar government, and briefly established the Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran in 1920 before its suppression.
1880–1921
Iran
Mohammad Mosaddegh
Elected Prime Minister who nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951, was overthrown by the CIA and MI6 Operation Ajax coup of 1953 at British instigation, tried for treason, and imprisoned — becoming the defining martyr of Iranian constitutional democracy.
1882–1967
Iran
Ahmad Kasravi
Historian, linguist, and reformist intellectual whose secular nationalist writings challenged both religious orthodoxy and foreign domination — assassinated in a Tehran courtroom in 1946 by members of the Fadayan-e-Islam.
1890–1946
Iran
Khalil Maleki
Socialist intellectual and Third Force theorist who broke with the Tudeh Party over its subservience to the Soviet Union, supported Mosaddegh's oil nationalisation, and articulated an independent democratic socialist politics for Iran.
1901–1969
Iran
Ali Shariati
Sociologist and revolutionary Islamic intellectual whose synthesis of Shia theology with Third World anti-colonialism became the ideological fuel of the 1979 Iranian Revolution — dead of a heart attack (or possibly SAVAK assassination) in 1977, two years before the revolution he inspired.
1933–1977
Syria
Yusuf al-Azmeh
Syria's Minister of War who led the hopelessly outgunned Syrian Arab Army against the French at the Battle of Maysalun on 24 July 1920, knowing he would lose — killed in the battle and remembered as the man who chose death over submission to the French mandate.
1884–1920
Syria
Sultan al-Atrash
Druze chieftain and commander who launched and led the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925–27 against the French mandate — the most serious challenge to French rule in the Levant — and died in exile and eventual amnesty at the age of ninety-three.
1891–1982
Syria
Ibrahim Hananu
Leader of the Aleppo-region resistance against the French mandate (1919–21), tried and acquitted after a celebrated defence, and subsequently a major figure in the Syrian nationalist movement through the 1930s.
1869–1935
Syria
Fakhri al-Barudi
Syrian nationalist poet, politician, and cultural figure who composed patriotic verse that became anthems of the anti-French resistance and served as a leading member of the National Bloc independence movement.
1887–1966
Syria
Khaled Bakdash
Secretary-General of the Syrian Communist Party who in 1954 became the first Communist to win election to an Arab parliament — a Kurdish Syrian who made Damascus a centre of Arab left politics for five decades.
1912–1995