Mustafa al-Shihabi

Prince Mustafa Shahabi (Arabic: الأمير مصطفى الشهابي‎‎) was a Syrian agronomist, politician, writer and the third elected director of Arab Academy of Damascus (1959–1968).

"Prince" title was only of a social background, with no real principality under his control.

Al-Shihabi was born in 1893 in Hasbaya in Ottoman Syria, in what is today Lebanon. After getting his degree in agriculture from Paris, France in 1915, he initially resided in Istanbul while working for the Ministry of Agriculture of the Ottoman Government. During World War I, al-Shihabi joined the Arab Revolt in an attempt to free the Levant region from Ottoman Turkish control. In 1928, while serving as the director of the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, al-Shihabi joined the National Bloc in opposition to the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. He later served as the head of the Syrian Ministry of Education under Prime Minister of Syria Ata al-Ayyubi as well. In 1936, President of Syria Hashim al-Atassi appointed al-Shihabi as the governor of Aleppo, a post al-Shihabi was to hold until 1939.

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