Faisal I was an Arab nationalist and political leader during and following World War I. He led Arab troops in the revolt against Turkish rule and became king of newly created Iraq.

On May 20, 1883, Faisal was born in Taif near the Islamic holy city of Mecca in western Arabia, the third son of Husein ibn Ali and a member of one of Mecca's leading families, which claimed descent from the prophet Mohammed. In 1891 Faisal moved to Constantinople (Istanbul) with his father and brothers because the suspicious Sultan wished to keep Husein under political surveillance. Faisal was raised and educated in the imperial capital. A year after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, Husein was appointed by the new Ottoman government sharif of Mecca, or protector of the holy places, a position his family had often held before. Faisal returned to Mecca and became a member of the Ottoman Parliament for western Arabia in 1913.

Faisal began working toward an accommodation with the Turks for Arab home rule. While his father was negotiating with the British in Egypt in 1915-1916 through the Husein-McMahon correspondence, Faisal had unsuccessfully sought to reach an agreement in Istanbul. En route back to Arabia in 1915, he met with Arab nationalist leaders in Syria, joined their organization, and participated in drafting the secret Damascus Protocol. This supported his father's negotiations for an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire in return for British aid for a postwar independent Arab state for Arabia and the Fertile Crescent.

After Husein's proclamation of the Arab Revolt in Mecca in June 1916, Faisal and his older brother Abdullah led Arab troops against the Ottomans, assisted the British invasion of Palestine from Egypt, harassed Ottoman supply lines, and occupied the Syrian interior, reaching Damascus in October 1918.

Following the war the British, who had promised territorial and political gains to the French, the Zionists, and the Arabs, found themselves unable to harmonize their conflicting wartime agreements