Rosemarie Said Zahlan
Rosemarie Said Zahlan was a Palestinian-American Christian historian and writer on the Persian Gulf states. She was a sister of Edward Said. In addition to her books, she also wrote for the Financial Times, the Middle East Journal, the International Journal of Middle East Studies and the Encyclopedia of Islam.
Said Zahlan was born in Cairo in 1937, as the eldest of four sisters. Her father, Wadie Said, was a wealthy Anglican Palestinian businessman and a US citizen, while her mother was born in Nazareth of Christian Lebanese and Palestinian descent. She attended the women's college, Bryn Mawr, United States, where she took a degree in musicology. In a serious car accident her hands were injured and several vertebrae broken. This made a musical career playing the piano impossible.
After Bryn Mawr, Rosemarie taught for a while in Cairo. She then went to Beirut, where she lectured on cultural history and music at the American University of Beirut and the Beirut College for Women. After Beirut she went to London to get her PhD, at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Said Zahlan married Tony Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist and academic from Haifa. Together they championed the Gaza Library Project for supplying books to Palestine. Said Zahlan was also a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain, and, according to The Times, her "abiding concern throughout her life was for Palestine and the suffering of the Palestinian people."
