Zaynab Fawwaz

Zaynab Fawwāz (1860?–1914)[1] was a pioneering Lebanese Shiite novelist, playwright, poet and historian of famous women.[2] Her novel Ḥusn al-'Awāqib aw Ghādah al-Zāhirah (The Happy Ending, 1899) is considered the first novel in Arabic written by a woman. Her play, al-Hawā wa-al-Wafā (Love and Faithfulness, 1893), is the first play written in Arabic by a woman.[3]

Zaynab Fawwaz
Born1860
Died1914
NationalityLebanon
Occupationnovelist, poet

Early life

Little is known of Zaynab's early life and accounts are divergent.[4] 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.[5]

On the other hand, Mirna Lattouf has her born into a prominent Shiite family in Tabnīn, in southern Lebanon.[6] During her stay with al-Asʿad, Zaynab married one of the domestic workers. However, they would later divorce for reasons that remain unclear.[7]

Literary career

Zaynab later moved to Alexandria, Egypt, 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).[8][9][10]

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."[8] 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.[11]

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.[12]

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.[3]

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), pp. 66–67.
  4. Joseph T. Zeidan, Arab Women Novelists: the Formative Years and Beyond (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 289.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. Ashour et al., 2008, 392
  9. Zeidan, 1995, p. 83
  10. 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.
  11. Zeidan, 1995, p. 82
  12. 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).
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