Category: Political, from Wikidata’s class “coup d'état”
March 1949 Syrian coup d'état
Part of: Cold War Wikidata
Wikidata classes on our event-class list: coup d'état (all its classes: Wikidata item)
The March 1949 Syrian coup d'état was a bloodless coup d'état that took place on 30 March. It was the first military coup in modern Syrian history and overthrew the country's democratically elected government, after Syria gained independence in 1943. It was led by the Syrian Army chief of staff, Husni al-Za'im, who became president of Syria on 11 April 1949. Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli, who was overthrown as a result of the coup, was accused of poor leadership and purchasing inferior arms for the Syrian Army. He was briefly imprisoned, but then released into exile in Egypt.
Many of the internal motivations behind the coup subsequently stemmed from dissatisfaction among the Syrian people and military because of al-Quwatli's leadership during the 1948 Arab-Israeli Conflict. Transnational corporate agendas in lieu of the commission of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, such as that of ARAMCO and Saudi King Ibn Saud are speculated to have informed alleged US involvement in the coup. Among the officers who assisted al-Za'im's takeover were Sami al-Hinnawi and Adib al-Shishakli, both of whom in sequence would later also become military leaders of the country. Syria's legislature, then called the House of Representatives, was dissolved, and al-Za'im imprisoned many political leaders on the basis of various accusations.
Text retrieved 2026-09-26 from Wikipedia.
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The link is the Wikipedia revision of October 15, 2026 (revision 1380346757), whose lead is exactly the text shown here.
APA 7
March 1949 Syrian coup d'état. (2026, October 15). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=March_1949_Syrian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat&oldid=1380346757
MLA 9
“March 1949 Syrian coup d'état.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Oct. 2026, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=March_1949_Syrian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat&oldid=1380346757.
Chicago (note)
Wikipedia, “March 1949 Syrian coup d'état,” last modified October 15, 2026, 04:34 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=March_1949_Syrian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat&oldid=1380346757.
Chicago (shortened note)
Wikipedia, “March 1949 Syrian coup d'état.”
Chicago cites well-known reference works such as Wikipedia in notes only, not in the bibliography.
This event on Middle East, 1900–present: https://middleeast.events/event/march-1949-syrian-coup-d-etat
If you use the map’s borders: CShapes 2.0 - historical country borders. Schvitz, G., et al. (2022). CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://icr.ethz.ch/data/cshapes/ (modified by middleeast.events); West Bank Areas A/B/C: UN OCHA / HDX "Oslo Agreement" Areas A/B/C (West Bank). Distributed under the legacy HumanitarianResponse.info terms: non-commercial use with credit to UN OCHA. https://data.humdata.org/dataset/state-of-palestine-other-0-0-0-0-0; some corrected border points: GeoNames - CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://www.geonames.org/
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Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wikipedia contributors, from the article March 1949 Syrian coup d'état. Classes are Wikidata’s labels (CC0). “Part of” is Wikidata’s statement, in its labels (CC0).