Maha al-Khalil Chalabi

Maha al-Khalil Chalabi (born 2 April 1938 in Tyre/Sour, Lebanon) – Arabic: مهى الخليل الشلبي, also transliterated Shalabi – is Secretary-General of the International Association to Save Tyre (Association Internationale pour la Sauvegarde de Tyr – AIST) and has been a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador as "a strong advocate for heritage".

Life

Family background

Maha al-Khalil Chalabi regularly invokes her father Kazem al-Khalil (1901-1989) as the main source of inspiration for her cultural activities. He was the scion of a Shiite clan of land barons in Jabal Amel, modern-day Southern Lebanon: When the 1858 Ottoman Land reforms led to the accumulated ownership of large tracts of real estate by a few families upon the expense of the peasants, the al-Khalil family of grain merchants rose from the urban class of the mercantilist notables ("Wujaha''' ") to the rank of Zu'ama (feudal landlords) in Tyre.

Maha al-Khalil's paternal grandfather Ismail Yahia al-Khalil was the first head of the Tyre municipality, when the French colonial rulers proclaimed the new State of Greater Lebanon under the guardianship of the League of Nations represented by France on the first of September 1920. In the following years, the Mandatory regime gave ruling families like the al-Khalils"a free hand in enlarging their personal fortunes and reinforcing their clannish powers." Kazem al-Khalil was elected as deputy (member of the Lebanese parliament) for the first time in 1937 and remained in that office for more than two decades. As a close ally of President Camille Chamoun, he served as a minister in various cabinets between 1953 and 1958 Heavy fighting went on for more than two weeks until the Asaad camp and its Baathist allies - led by Sayed Jafar Sharafeddin, the son of Imam Sayed Abdul Hussein Sharafeddin – gained the upper hand in May. The crisis dissolved in September, when Chamoun stepped down. Al-Khalil returned still in 1958, but was attacked several times by gunmen.

Maha al-Khalil's mother Muzain was a daughter of Ibrahim Haydar, the Shi'te Za'im (singular of Zu'ama, see above) from the Beqaa Valley and father-in-law of fellow feudal lord Adel Osseiran, a leader of the Lebanese independence movement. Maha al-Khalil's paternal aunt Nashura was married to another member of the Osseiran clan, Kamil Osseiran.

In 1960, Maha al-Khalil married the Iraqi businessman Talal Chalabi, The Chalabis were the scions of a Shia dynasty of rich merchants and bankers in Baghdad. Ahmad married Leila Osseiran, daughter of Kazem al-Khalil's in-law Adel Osseiran, in 1971. Maha al-Khalil Chalabi and Talal Chalabi have one son, Bashar, and two daughters: Rim and Périhane. first as Minister of Labor and Social Affairs and then from 1973 to 1974 as Minister of Justice.

Still in 1972, Maha al-Khalil Chalabi started organising the commercial Tyre International Festival, which was to include the re-staging of Roman-style chariot races in the Tyre Hippodrome. and declared the founding of the "People's republic of Tyre". One of the residences of Kazem al-Khalil "was dynamited" and parts of his estate were confiscated. recruiting mainly young Shiites from a poor background. However, the aging warlord's collaboration not only "discredited" and "delegitimised him in the eyes of the Shi'a, but also earned him the anger of the Syrians. This simple miscalculation was an act from which he was never able to fully recover politically".

At the end of the 1980s, the al-Khalil suffered further setbacks: when Ahmad Chalabi's Amman-based Petra Bank collapsed in August 1989, Maha al-Khalil's husband Talal Chalabi was accused by Jordanian witnesses of benefiting financially from a US$200 miilion bank fraud committed by his brother. Ahmad Chalabi would later go on to provide the US and UK governments with false information that eventually led to their invasion of Iraq in 2003.

On 22 April 1990, the family patriarch Kazem died of a heart attack in Paris. "He had been in excellent health and on Saturday presided over a meeting of Lebanese deputies living in Paris, the family said. He was found dead by one of his daughters about 4 a.m." The proceeds totaled US$5.26 million. The painting was won by a 25-year-old fire-safety official from Pennsylvania.

In June 2015, al-Khalil Chalabi initiated a conference at the US Library of Congress about ancient Tyre. In February 2016, al-Khalil Chalabi was designated UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador – a celebrity advocate of UNESCO, not diplomatic ambassador – in recognition of her commitment to the "League of Canaanite, Phoenician and Punic Cities", which she founded in 2009. It includes the AIST and al-Khalil Chalabi's Fondation Tyr'', which is based in the prestigious Avenue Foch in Paris, one of the most expensive addresses in the world.

In September 2017, al-Khalil opened "Les Ateliers" near Tyre in the middle of an orange orchard of 7,300 square meters.

Awards In 1986, al-Khalil Chalabi was named Knight of the National Order of Merit and Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic. In 1988 the Lebanese President Amine Gemayel named her an officer of the Natural Order of the Cedar.

Works 1998: "Rapports Occident-Orient analysés à travers les récits de voyageurs à Tyr du XVIe au XIXe siècle", Publications de l'Université libanaise, Beyrouth 2008: "Art phénicien: expressions néo-phéniciennes", editions Georges Naef, Geneva.