Salah al-Din al-Bitar

Salah ad-Din al-Bitar صلاح الدين البيطار
Prime Minister of Syria
In office 1 January 1966 – 23 February 1966
President	Amin al-Hafiz
Preceded by	Yusuf Zuayyin
Succeeded by	Yusuf Zuayyin
In office 13 May 1964 – 3 October 1964
President	Amin al-Hafiz
Preceded by	Amin al-Hafiz
Succeeded by	Amin al-Hafiz
In office 9 March 1963 – 11 November 1963
President	Lu'ay al-Atassi Amin al-Hafiz
Preceded by	Khalid al-Azm
Succeeded by	Amin al-Hafiz
Member of the National Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
In office 6 April 1947 – 1 September 1959
Personal details
Born	1912 Damascus, Ottoman Empire
Died	21 July 1980 (aged 68) Paris, France
Political party	Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
Religion	Sunni Islam

Salah ad-Din al-Bitar (Arabic: صلاح الدين البيطار‎‎) (1912 – 21 July 1980) was a Syrian politician who co-founded the Arab Ba'ath Party with Michel Aflaq in the early 1940s. As students in Paris in the early 1930s, the two formulated a doctrine that combined aspects of nationalism and socialism. Bitar later served as prime minister in several early Ba'athist governments in Syria but became alienated from the party as it grew more radical. In 1966 he fled the country, lived mostly in Europe and remained politically active until he was assassinated in 1980.

According to historian Hanna Batatu, Bitar was born in the Midan area of Damascus in 1912; he was the son of a reasonably well-off Sunni Muslim grain merchant. His family were religious and many of his recent ancestors had been ulama and preachers in the district's mosques. Bitar grew up in a conservative family atmosphere and attended a Muslim elementary school before receiving his secondary education in Maktab Anbar. He was exposed to the political vicissitudes of the time, as Midan played a leading role in the Great Syrian Revolution of 1925 against France—then the mandatory power in Syria. The district was heavily bombarded with considerable loss of life and physical damage.

Bitar traveled to France in 1929 to study in the Sorbonne. There he became acquainted with Michel Aflaq, also the son of a Midan grain merchant who was from a Christian Orthodox family. They were both interested in the political and intellectual movements of the time, and began applying nationalist and Marxist ideas to the situation of their homeland. Bitar returned to Syria in 1934, and took a job teaching physics and mathematics at the Tajhiz al-Ula, where Aflaq was already a teacher.

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