Syrian merchants at a conference of Arab Chambers of Commerce held in Cairo in the 1950s. Third from left is Amin Shehadeh, Adel al-Khuja, Shafiq Sukkar (without a fez), Sadiq Ghrawi, and Bashir Ramadan, the future president of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce. All of them were collectively nationalized and destroyed by the socialist measures of President Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt in 1958-191. They were the creators of Syrian industry and commerce in the 20th century.