Zaynab Fawwaz

Zaynab Fawwaz
Born 1860
Died 1914
Nationality Lebanon
Occupation novelist, poet

Zaynab Fawwāz (Zaynab bint ʻAlī ibn Ḥusayn ibn ʻUbayd ʼAllāh ibn Ḥasan ibn ʼIbrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf Fawwāz ʼal-ʻĀmilī, ?1860–1914)[1] was a pioneering poet, novelist and historian of famous women.[2]

Early life

Little is known of Zaynab's early life and accounts are divergent.[3] In Joseph Zeidan's account:

Zaynab Fawwāz represents a unique phenomenon among the pioneering women writers. Zaynab was not from an elite, city family; rather, she was born to a poor, obscure, and illiterate Shiite family in the village of Tabnīn in southern Lebanon. Most sources agree that when she was young, Fawwaāz served as a maid at the palace of ʿAlī Bey al-Asʿad al-Ṣaghīr. Her work at the palace proved to be of great benefit to her; it gave her the chance to associate with Fāṭimah al-Khalīl, the prince's wife, who was a poet. Fāṭimah al-Khalīl recognized Zaynab Fawwāz's intellectual potential and began to tutor her.[4]

On the other hand, Mirna Lattouf has her born into a prominent Shiite family in Tabnīn.[5] During her stay with al-Asʿad, Zaynab married one of the domestic workers. However, they would later divorce for reasons that remain unclear.[6]

Literary career

Zaynab later moved to Alexandria, where she became the student of the poet and owner of Al-Nil Magazine, Hasan Husni Pasha Al-Tuwayrani. Under his guidance, she began to write articles on social issues affecting women, under the pseudonym of Durrat al-Sharq (Pearl of the East).[7][8][9] According to the Critical Reference Guide of Arab Women Writers, Fawwaz was "the first woman's voice calling for the women's awakening and defending their rights, humanity, and equality with men."[7] It was during her stay in Damascus with her second husband, the writer Adib Nazmi al-Dimashqi, that Zaynab Fawwaz founded a literary salon. As she wore the niqab and could not sit with the male participants; she would sit in another room of the house conducting the discussion, with her husband acting as the messenger for her and her guests.[10]

Besides her journalism, Zaynab is particularly noted for her Kitāb al-Durr al-Manthūr fī Ṭabaqāt Rabbāt al-Khuduūr (The Book of Scattered Pearls Regarding Categories of Women, 1894–95), a large-folio, 552-page biographical dictionary of some 456 women and their achievements.[11]

Zaynab also wrote two novels and a play, putting her at the forefront of the emergence of the novel in Arabic. Her first novel was Ḥusn al-'Awāqib aw Ghādah al-Zāhirah (The Happy Ending, 1899). Her play, al-Hawā wa-al-Wafā (Love and Faithfulness, 1893), was the first play written in Arabic by a woman.[12]

References

  1. ↑ Zaynab's year of birth is given by different authorities variously at 1846, 1850, 1859, and 1860, but according to Joseph T. Zeidan, Arab Women Novelists: the Formative Years and Beyond (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 289 fn. 54, 1860 is the general consensus.
  2. ↑ Ashour, Radwa (2008). Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, 1873–1999. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. ISBN 978-977-416-146-9. p. 391.
  3. ↑ Joseph T. Zeidan, Arab Women Novelists: the Formative Years and Beyond (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 289.
  4. ↑ Joseph T. Zeidan, Arab Women Novelists: the Formative Years and Beyond (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 64; cf. Ashour, Radwa (2008). Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, 1873–1999. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. ISBN 978-977-416-146-9, p. 14.
  5. ↑ Lattouf, Mirna (2004). Women, Education, And Socialization In Modern Lebanon: 19th And 20th Centuries Social History. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. ISBN 0-7618-3017-0, p. 73.
  6. ↑ Ashour, Radwa (2008). Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide, 1873–1999. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. ISBN 978-977-416-146-9, p. 391; Zeidan, 1995, p. 84; Scott Meisami, Julia & Starkey, Paul (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (Vol. 1) Routledge, 2003 p. 226.
  7. 1 2 Ashour et al., 2008, 392
  8. ↑ Zeidan, 1995, p. 83
  9. ↑ Bahbuh, Zaynab Nubuwah (2000). زينب فواز : رائدة من أعلام النهضة العربية الحديثة، ٦٤٨١-٤١٩١. Damascus: Ministry of Culture of the Syrian Arab Republic. p. 10. OCLC 45641746.
  10. ↑ Zeidan, 1995, p. 82
  11. ↑ Published by ʼal-Maṭbaʻah ʼal-Kubrá ʼal-ʼAmīrīyah, Būlāq, Egypt, 1312 [1894]: http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk/?itemid=%7Ccambrdgedb%7C1833217. Mervat Fayez Hatem, Literature, gender, and nation-building in nineteenth-century Egypt: the life and works of ʻAʼisha Taymur, Literatures and cultures of the Islamic world (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 2; Joseph T. Zeidan, Arab Women Novelists: the Formative Years and Beyond (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 66. The work is the subject of the following monograph study: Marilyn Booth, Classes of Ladies of Cloistered Spaces: Writing Feminist History through Biography in Fin-de-Siècle Egypt (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015).
  12. ↑ Joseph T. Zeidan, Arab Women Novelists: the Formative Years and Beyond (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. 66–67.
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