1964 Hama riot

Part of the Arab Cold War

Date	April 1964
Location	Hama, Syria
Result	Insurrection suppressed

Belligerents

Syrian Government

Ba'ath Party (Military Committee)

Muslim Brotherhood

Commanders and leaders

Amin al-Hafiz
President of Syria
Prime Minister of Syria

Hamad Ubayd
Commander of National Guard

Issam al-Attar
Supreme Guide of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
Mahmud al-Hamid
Imam of Sultan Mosque

Casualties and losses

N/A

70-100 dead
Several wounded and imprisoned.

The 1964 Hama riot was the first significant clash between the newly installed Ba'ath Party leadership of Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood. It occurred in April 1964, after the 1963 Ba'athist coup d'état. The insurrection was suppressed with heavy military force, resulting in 70-100 mortal casualties and partial destruction of the old Hama city neighborhoods. Hama continued to be a center of Islamists and a focal point of the 1976-1982 Islamist uprising in Syria.

The first clash between the Ba'ath Party and the Muslim Brotherhood occurred shortly after the 1963 coup, in which the Ba'ath party gained power in Syria. The Islamist political groups, of which the Brotherhood was the most prominent, presented the most significant challenge to the Ba'athists, who had suppressed their Nasserist and Marxist rivals by mid-1963. The outlawing of Brotherhood in 1964 strongly contributed to the movement's radicalization. In 1964 and 1965, strikes and mass demonstrations spread throughout Syria's major cities, especially in Hama, and were crushed by the military.

The town of Hama in particular was a "stronghold of landed conservatism and of the Muslim Brothers," and "had long been a redoubtable opponent of the Ba'athist state," according to Syria expert Patrick Seale. The governments of Egypt and Iraq financially supported opposition to the Ba'athists although countrywide discontent was high nonetheless from the stagnation of the economy, merchants resenting the increasing regulations, incompetent governance, and resentment of the Ba'athist government's secretive decision-making.

In April 1964 major disturbances occurred in several Syrian cities, with Hama forming the epicenter of the anti-government insurrection. Islamist insurgents in the city set up "roadblocks, stockpiled food and weapons, ransacked wine shops." The rebels were encouraged to revolt against the Ba'athists by the imam of the Sultan Mosque, Shaykh Mahmud al-Habib, and were financed by some of the city's traditional merchant families. After Munzir al-Shimali, an Ismaili Ba'athist militiaman, was killed and mutilated by rioters, riots intensified and rebels attacked "every vestige" of the Ba'ath Party in Hama.

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Wikipedia