Ahmad Izzat al-Abid was born in
Damascus. His father was
Hawlu Pasha al-Abid. Ahmad Izzat was educated in
Beirut. He spoke
Arabic,
French and
Turkish. He moved to
Istanbul where he served the Ottoman sultan,
Abdulhamid II as an adviser. He left the Ottoman Empire following the
Young Turk Revolution in 1908 and moved to
London for some time before living in
France and
Switzerland. He then left for
Egypt, where he died in 1924. in the 1870s Abid accumulated great wealth during his life. He was also a businessman and owned numerous enterprises or buildings including the largest tourist hotel in Syria at the time, the Victoria Hotel in Damascus. He was the father of
Muhammad Ali Bay al-Abid, who served as the first president of the
mandatory Syrian Republic. ==Notes==