Rosemarie Said Zahlan (Arabic: روزماري سعيد زحلان, romanized: Rawzimārī Saʿīd Zaḥlān) (August 20, 1937 – May 10, 2006) was a Palestinian-American historian and writer on the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. 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.

Biography

Rosemarie was born in Cairo, Egypt, 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 to a Christian family of Palestinian descent.^[1] She attended the women's college, Bryn Mawr, United States.^{[citation needed]}

Rosemarie then taught 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 (about the Red Sea route to India and its 18th-century history pioneer, George Baldwin) at the School of Oriental and African Studies.^{[citation needed]}

Rosemarie married Tony Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist and academic from Haifa. Together they championed the Gaza Library Project for supplying books to Palestine. Rosemarie was also a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain.^{[citation needed]}