after him, and his hometown of Irbid holds an annual literary festival in his name. The house where he used to live in Irbid was turned into a museum that welcomes hundreds of visitors annually. He was married four times, two of which ended in divorce. He had ten children. His eldest son Wasfi Tal was Jordan's Prime Minister for several tenures during the late 1960s and early 1970s until his assassination in 1971. Biography Early life Mustafa Wahbi Tal was born in Irbid, Syria Vilayet, Ottoman Empire on 25 May 1899 to an illiterate father and a mother that was "blasphemously stubborn" according to his friend and biographer Ya'qoub Al-Oudat. He was named Mustafa as namesake of his grandfather and Wahbi was added to his birth name per Ottoman tradition. From a young age, Tal suffered from Rhotacism, a speech impediment characterized in the inability to pronounce 'r' sounds. His family were Sunni Muslims, descended from the Bani Zaydan tribe which migrated from Najd in Arabia to the Levant around the 18th century; his family was called Tal because a member of the tribe, Yousef Abbas, had settled in Amman, next the city's Citadel, which was built on a hill or 'tal' in Arabic. Three decades later they relocated to Irbid and remained there. Tal finished his elementary school education in Irbid in 1911. In 1912, Tal headed to the Anbur School in Damascus. After two or three years of studying there, he participated with his fellow classmates in a strike protesting against the Ottomans' policies in the region. During the strike, the Ottoman governor of Damascus Ismail Fazıl Pasha, the Turkish Education Principal, and State Inspector General Sheikh Abdul Jalil Al-Durrah visited the school. After the Sheikh finished his speech, Tal made his way between the students, stood in the middle of the campus and shouted while pointing at the Sheikh: "This man is a charlatan liar!" According to Al-Oudat, it was this incident and the ones that followed them that made Tal known to the Ottoman authorities of being a student fond of "messing around and creating chaos during lessons, so much that the Turkish teachers called him a field mouse." Adulthood Tal returned for a summer vacation in his hometown of Irbid in 1916. The stubbornness he inherited from his mother was beginning to impact his relationship with his father who refused to let him return