Rosemarie Said Zahlan

Rosemarie Said Zahlan ( Arabic روزماري سعيد زحلان; born August 20, 1937 in Cairo ; died May 10, 2006 in London ) was a Palestinian-American historian and non-fiction author who specialized in relations between the Gulf States and Palestine . In addition to her books, she has also written for the Financial Times , the Middle East Journal , the International Journal of Middle East Studies and the Encyclopaedia of Islam .

Live and act

Rosemarie Said Zahlan (left) and Edward Said 1940

Rosemarie Said Zahlan, née Said, was born in Cairo in 1937 as the eldest of four sisters to a son. Her father, Wadie Said, was a wealthy Palestinian businessman of Christian faith and a US citizen, her mother Hilda was a Palestinian woman from Nazereth with Christian-Lebanese roots. She experienced a privileged childhood in a wealthy, western family. Her parents fostered her musical talent and encouraged her to study musicology, which she graduated from Bryn Mawr Women's College in Pennsylvania (USA). She has had to give up playing the piano since a car accident that broke several vertebrae. After studying in the USA, Said returned to the Middle East , initially living in Cairo, then in Beirut , where she taught cultural history and music at the American University of Beirut and at the Beirut Women's College. From Beirut she moved to London to do a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies . In 1968 she published her dissertation on the history pioneer George Baldwin and British interests in Egypt from 1775 to 1798.

Said Zahlan's Palestinian identity was a central part of her life. She was confronted from an early age by the experience of cousins, aunts, and friends who were on the run in 1948 and later became one of the leading historians in the Gulf States. She was the author of the first report of the reform movement in Dubai in 1938, and in addition to books on Qatar and the origins of the United Arab Emirates , she did extensive research and writing on the connection between the Gulf States and Palestine .

Rosemarie Said Zahlan was married to Tony Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist and scientist from Haifa . Together they founded and worked for the Gaza Library Project to deliver books to Palestine. Said Zahlan was also the patron of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign in Britain and, according to the Times , her "lifelong concern has been about Palestine and the suffering of the Palestinian people."

She was the sister of the literary critic Edward Said , who founded the Palestinian-Israeli symphony orchestra West-Eastern Divan in 1999 together with Daniel Barenboim and Bernd Kauffmann .

Said Zahlan died in May 2006 at the age of 68.

Publications

• George Baldwin and British interests in Egypt 1775 to 1798 . Dissertation, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 1968.
• The creation of Qatar . Barnes and Noble, London / New York 1969, ISBN 0-06-497965-2
• The origins of the United Arab Emirates. A political and social history of the Trucial States . Macmillan, London 1978, ISBN 0-333-24109-6
• Making of the Modern Gulf States. Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emerates, Oman . Garnet, 1998, ISBN 0-86372-229-6
• Palestine and the Gulf States. The presence at the table . Routledge, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-415-80496-7
• AB Zahlan, Rosemarie Said Zahlan: Technology transfer and change in the Arab world . The proceedings of a seminar of the United Nations Economic Commission for Western Asia. Pergamon Press, Oxford / New York 1978, ISBN 0-08-022435-0

Web links

Commons : Rosemarie Said Zahlan  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Victoria Brittain: Obituary: Rosemarie Said Zahlan . In: The Guardian . May 15, 2006, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed February 23, 2019]).
2. ^ Rosemarie J. Said: George Baldwin and British interests in Egypt 1775 to 1798 . 1968 ( soas.ac.uk - dissertation, SOAS University of London).