Rosemarie Said Zahlan, 68, Gulf Authority
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Rosemarie Said Zahlan, who died May 10 in London, was a historian and an authority on the United Arab Emirates.
Like her brother, the literary critic Edward Said, who died in 2003, she was a patron of Palestinian causes, especially the Gaza Library Project.
Zahlan was brought up Anglican, and attended Bryn Mawr college, where she majored in music. She taught in Cairo and then at the American University of Beirut, before earning a Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where she researched the history of the 18th century Red Sea route to India.
In 1978, she published “The Origins of the United Arab Emirates – A Political and Social History of the Trucial States.” The UAR was formed in 1971.
The Economist wrote that the book was “a detailed and sometimes astonishing picture of how British power was exercised and of the personalities involved.”
In 1989, she published “The Making of the Modern Gulf States.” She also published a history of Qatar.
Zahlan was married to Antoine Benjamin Zahlan, a noted physicist and Middle East educator, born in Haifa.
