After a long life of Arab nationalism, Mr. Abdul Rahman Al-Basir passed away in New York City
last week, who was one of the flags of the struggle and struggle against the French colonialist and one of
the founders of the Arab Socialist Baath Party in Syria and one of the activists to defend the rights of
workers in the Jazira region and the city of Raqqa in which he was born from offsprings of Assaf those
who belong to their grandfather, the great companion Uday bin Hatim al-Taie, who led the Tay tribe after
his father, Hatim al-Ta’i, where the Tay tribe is spread with its prestige and heritage in Syria and Iraq,
where Arab history immortalized the tribe’s name through its noble son Hatem for his generosity. Hatim,
and Islamic history immortalized his son Uday bin Hatim al-Taie, who converted to Islam in the seventh
year of the Hijra after his sister Safana bint Hatim, who fell captive, and the Prophet loosened her after
learning that she was the daughter of Hatim al-Ta’i, and Mr. Abdul Rahman al-Basir, may God have
mercy on him, was proud of his grandmother Safana and the position of the Prophet towards her, and he
was proud of his grandfather Uday and his tribe, Tiy, which is the title of generosity, whatever theirfinancial circumstances.
As he, may God have mercy on him, was known for his integrity and clean hand, so he did not leave
the world with money, land or property except for the apartment that he established as part of a building
in the city of Qamishli, as he was a high-ranking Baath party official in the Al-Jazira region in Syria, yet
he did not use his influence to benefit himself, his family or his clan At the expense of the people, and he
only had his salary and pension, as he lived in the city of Qamishli, in which he established the branch of
the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, on the authority of the party,
He was among those who assisted and supervised securing the escape of Saddam Hussein from Iraq to
Egypt via Qamishli when he fled Iraq. After the failed attempt to assassinate the President of Iraq, Abdul
Karim Qasim, in 1959. And what Mr. Abdul Rahman Al-Basir knew was that when one of his brothers
died in the city of Raqqa, and the people of the city of Qamishli went to mourning with a large bus, and
the condolence was in the city of Raqqa, he ordered the slaughter of all the sheep in order to provide food
to those coming for consolation from long distances, where the workers union was headed and it is natural
to travel more than 260 kilometers to pay their respects, to the point where one of his distressed relatives
commented that Abd al-Rahman Al-Basir would destroy your homes with his generosity !!! Really, he is
the son of Hatem, Indeed, he is Ibn Hatim as he liked to be called, as he leads the councils by virtue of
being one of the deans and sheikhs of the Tayy tribe.
And from his courage in a party meeting with the former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, that he
addressed him, conveying to him the suffering of the people in front of the assembled Baath Party
members, where he told Al-Assad: In fact, I applaud you (courtesy) because people are in fact suffering
and dissatisfied. Hafez al-Assad did not get angry at his sincere, expressive and sincere advice, and by
this he shows the authentic metal to the sons of the great companion Uday bin Hatim, who was the one
who saved the men of Imam Ali and his Shiites, where he mobilized for the Imam Ali every tribe to fight
with him against his opponents and attended with Imam Ali, as a leader in his army in his battle. The
camel, Seffeen and the Nahrawan, Uday’s eye was vomited until he became known as the one-eyed, and
his son Tarif was killed with Imam Ali.
Mr. Abdul Rahman Al-Basir was maintaining his health and active, so he became one of the
centenarians, so that he did not eat dinner except for a plate of salad in a special, stressful way for the lady
Umm Faris, who was heading the women’s party branch in Qamishli, where he was scrutinizing the
authority plate very much, and perhaps God’s patience was gone. She came back from the kitchen several
times to adjust the salad to his taste !!!
And he liked to watch his workers and the grain mill that he had headed for many years and went to
inspect during non-working hours and ask his driver not to come and prefer to go on foot to work in order
to preserve his health as he used to take himself seriously with regard to his health as he stopped smoking
in his fifties despite that He was a heavy smoker, but the reading that he could not leave, destroyed his
second eye, as he had lost one of his eyes in a car accident on the road to Damascus, and he lost the other
because of reading and the Golokoma which destroyed him psychologically after he lost all the light, so
he decided to withdraw until he met him his Lord, as if he was like his grandfather Uday, who also lost
his eyes, but on the battlefield with Imam Ali and the other, the second went later with a glimmer of light,
so that Uday was known as the eye, Glory be to my Lord. Uday was 120 years old, and his son Mr. Abd
al-Rahman died in the ninetieth, and this is how most of Uday’s family were from the old.
Mr. Abd al-Rahman Abu Faris, may God have mercy on him, was Arabic for his skin and strap which
reaches a point that often amounts to Bedouin cruelty with his family and children, As he was in an
educational course in Algeria and his eldest son Fares got sick and told by phone that his son is sick, and
he is about to die, so he did not interrupt the course and said if he died, bury him !!! And he has incited
school teachers of his children to treat them severely and without courtesy, so that they would not be
exploiting the influence of their father.
And he was in his Arabism strict to the point of not accepting that he would lead or sniff with his head
a Persian or a Kurd over the Arabs, considering the Arabs as the Messenger of God among them and
through their character, reverence and generosity, they had priority over other races. and there were
debates between me and him about this. Where he used to repeat the poetic verses of Amr bin Kulthum in
his long poetry : no one should be ignorant with us, so we ignore above the ignorance of the ignorant
And we drink if we return the water with pure water, and others drink as mud
and if the weaning reaches us, a boy comes to him, the mighty men will prostrate to us.
Among his Arabism is the rare adherence to the Authentics at this time except from the Authentics
Arabs, that he was categorically refusing to marry his daughters to some of the Kurds even if they were of
the upper class, and many of them, he refused to marry his two daughters, an agricultural engineer, Nada
Al-Basir and the dentist, Hoda Al-Basir, and he refused to be married except From the bellies of the Tayy
Authentics tribe and not without the offsprings of Assaf, the princes of Tay, which caused family
problems later, as some winds came in something that the ships did not desire !.
and he was careful and firm in public morals and protocol to the extent that a significant man from a
large family sermonized his older daughter, but he sat in front of him the young man Unintentionally
putting ahead of the other causing the engagement to be canceled the same night.
And Mr. Abdul Rahman Al-Baseer, may God have mercy on him, used to say on the authority of
Imam Ali bin Abi Talib (Ali is our Ali) so that no one would bargain with him for his love for Ali and his
position with him, despite his love and staunch defense of Omar bin Al-Khattab as the leader of the Arab
Renaissance and the Greater Arab State to the point that he tried to stop me personally once while I was
giving the Friday sermon at the Oulel Al-Bab Mosque in Brooklyn, New York, when he heard some
criticism of Omar bin Al-Khattab’s positions, and his bass voice continued to interrupt me, calling me
heard in a recording of one of the sermons on YouTube, but his great son, Engineer Faris Al-Basir,
Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Oulel Al-Bab Mosque and Almahdyyeen Foundation, he
succeeded in containing the situation and went out for a few minutes outside the mosque, and they
returned, may God have mercy on him, and finished listening to the Friday sermon and prayed Friday
prayers behind me, and this shows his courage and strength.
Of course, He is the son of Uday ibn Hatim, the brave , who faced Muawiya, as he was the head of
Imam Ali’s negotiation delegation with Mu’awiyah to try to avoid a clash in Siffin, whose location is the
city of Raqqa in which the grave of Ammar bin Yasser was killed by the aggressor Mu’awiyah and those
with him on the day of Siffin, but negotiations failed with Mu’awiyah. And when one day Muawiyah,
after the killing of Imam Ali, wanted to misrepresent the talk about Imam Ali in the presence of the
grandfather of Mr. Abd al-Rahman al-Basir Uday bin Hatim al-Ta’i, he told him, according to al-Masoudi,
that Mu’awiyah said one day to Uday, “Ali did not do justice to you, your children were killed, and his
children remained.” So Uday said : “I did not do justice to Ali, since he was killed and I stayed after him.”
Then Uday warned him not to offend Ali (PBUH), saying: By God, our hearts with which we hated you
are in our hearts, and that our swords with which we fought you are on our shoulders. And if you have
come to us from treachery a little, let us condemn you from evil an inch, and if the sore throat and the
rattle of the sizzle it is easier for us than hearing the abuse in Ali.)
One of the miracles of fate in the funeral of Mr. Abu Faris is that the burial office that took over the
transfer of his body is a Sunni Salafi for Pakistanis and was washed and the first funeral prayer for him
along with the evening prayer in the largest Shiite mosque, Imam Al-Khoei Mosque in New York, where
there was a large gathering of Shiites due to Imam Hussein’s forty days, then it was completed Praying
him again in a cemetery in New Jersey, where I performed an imamate to pray over him, representing the
Sunnis, the followers of the Ahl al-Bayt, so that those who could not afford the time prayed for the first
prayer, by this, may God have mercy on him, he has attained the blessings and supplications of Ahl
al-Sunnah radicals, Shi’ites radicals, and the middle-group, followers and lovers of the Ahl al-Bayt.
May God give mercy to Mr. Abdul Rahman Al-Basir and treat him with his kindness as much as he
was honest, clean hand and pocket and may forgive his shortcomings and his sins.
And I pray to Allah to inspire his wife, Mrs. Umm Faris, and his two sons, engineer, Faris Al-Basir,Mr. Hazem, his two daughters, and Al-Basir family, Assaf and the Tayy tribe, all of patience and solace.
Sheikh Tariq Youssef
Islamic preacher in the United States of America