Naziq al-Abid

Nazik Al Abid (; 1887–1959) known as the "Joan of Arc of the Arabs" was a Syrian women's rights activist, nationalist, and critic of Ottoman and French colonialism in Syria. She was the first woman to earn rank in the Syrian Army for her role in forming the Red Star Society, a precursor to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, during the battle of Maysalun. She was a revolutionary for national independence and women's right to work and vote in Syria.

Activism

Against Ottoman Empire Abid was an activist for women's suffrage and resistance to the Ottoman occupation of Syria, often writing under a male pseudonym for Damascus newspapers during the 1919 Syrian women's movement. In 1919, Abid founded Nur al-Fayha''' (Light of Damascus) society and magazine, and later, in 1922, a school of the same name which offered English and sewing courses for young girl orphans of the war dead. —the French authorities threatened to arrest her, and she fled Syria for Lebanon.

In 1933 she founded Niqâbat al-Mar'a al-'Amila'' (The Working Women's Society), which worked on labor issues on behalf of women in Syria, advocating economic liberation as a means to political liberation for women. Her father, Mustafa al-Abid, was an aristocrat charged with administrative affairs in Kirk and later as an envoy to Mosul under Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II; she was the niece of Ahmad Izza al-Abid, a judge and advisor to the sultan. While living in Turkey, she was educated in several languages in Turkish, American and French schools. She graduated with a BA in agriculture from the Women's College in Istanbul. Her family was exiled to Egypt for ten years after the CUP 1908 revolution.

In 1922, after her exile to Lebanon, she met and married Lebanese intellectual and politician, Muhammad Jamil Bayhum.