Mai Ziadah

Mai Ziadah (1886-1941), a Palestinian-Lebanese writer and novelist born in Nazareth in 1886. Mai mastered nine languages including Arabic, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and Syriac. She was the only daughter of a Lebanese father and a Palestinian Orthodox mother. She received her primary education in Nazareth and her secondary education in Ain Tura, Lebanon. In 1907, she moved with her family to Cairo, where she studied literature and became proficient in French, English, Italian, and German. In Cairo, she taught French and English and continued her studies of German, Spanish, and Italian while mastering the Arabic language. Later, she pursued studies in Arabic literature, Islamic history, and philosophy at the University of Cairo. She published literary, critical, and social articles. She hosted a literary salon every Tuesday, and her visitors included prominent figures of that era, such as Aqad, Salama Moussa, and others. After the death of her father in 1929 and her mother in 1932, she suffered greatly and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. She died at the age of 55 at the Maadi Hospital in Cairo.