Antoun Saadeh

Antun Sa'adah (March 1, 1904-July 8, 1949) was a noted Syrian nationalist thinker. He rejected Arab nationalism and Pan-Islamism and instead argued for the creation of Greater Syria including what is toady Lebanon. He argued that Syria was historically, culturally, and geographically from the rest of the Arab world. He traced Syrian history as a distinct entity back to the Phoenicians and argued that Syrianism transcended religious distinctions.

A Lebanese Christian he wrote during the French colonial period between the two world wars. He spent much of the period in exile in Brazil.

In 1932 he returned to Beirut and began to teach at the American University of Beirut. That year he founded Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Beirut to oppose the French division of the region and push for unity. He spent most of the mandate period incarcerated by the French authorities.

On July 4, 1949, after the French had created an independent Lebanon, the party launched an attempted coup in Lebanon to try to merge with Syria and achieve Sa'adah's vision. The revolt failed, however, and Sa'adath was executed along with a number of other SSNP members.