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. ==Legacy==