Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and later the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.
Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party student cell, Cairo, in the period 1959–1963
Saddam, back in Iraq, and other Ba'athists posing on top of a tank after the successful Ba'athist coup in February 1963
President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, in military uniform
Arab nationalism is a political ideology asserting that Arabs constitute a single nation. As a traditional nationalist ideology, it promotes Arab culture and civilization, celebrates Arab history, glorifies the Arabic language as well as Arabic literature, and calls for the rejuvenation of Arab society through total unification. It bases itself on the premise that the people of the Arab world — from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea — constitute one nation bound together by a common identity: ethnicity, language, culture, history, geography, and politics.
The Aqaba Flagpole in Aqaba, Jordan bearing the flag of the Arab Revolt. The Aqaba Flagpole is the sixth tallest free standing flagpole in the world.
Ibrahim al-Yaziji (1847–1906)
Members of the Arab Higher Committee, 1936; clockwise, Jamal al-Husayni, Hussein Khalidi, Yaqub al-Ghusayn, Fuad Saba, Alfred Roke, Abdul Latif Es-Salah, Ahmed Hilmi, Amin al-Husayni, and Raghib al-Nashashibi.
Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser returns to cheering crowds in Cairo after announcing the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, August 1956.