Background
Zaynab was not from an elite, city family. Rather, she was born to a poor, obscure, and illiterate Shiite family in the village of Tabnīn in southern Lebanon.
Zaynab was not from an elite, city family. Rather, she was born to a poor, obscure, and illiterate Shiite family in the village of Tabnīn in southern Lebanon.
Little is known of Zaynab"s early life and accounts are divergent. In Joseph Zeidan"s account:
Zaynab Fawwāz.. represents a unique phenomenon among the pioneering women writers. Most sources agree that when she was young, Fawwaāz served as a maid at the palace of ʿAlī Bey al-Asʿad al-Ṣaghīr.
Fāṭimah al-Khalīl recognized Zaynab Fawwāz"s intellectual potential and began to tutor her.
During her stay with al-Asʿad, Zaynab married one of the domestic workers. However, they would later divorce for reasons that remain unclear.
Zaynab later moved to Alexandria, where she became the student of the poet and owner of First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Nil Magazine, Hasan Husni Pasha First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Tuwayrani. Under his guidance, she began to write articles on social issues affecting women, under the pseudonym of Durrat al-Sharq (Pearl of the East).
Zaynab also wrote two novels and a play, putting her at the forefront of the emergence of the novel in Arabic.
Her first novel was Ḥusn al-"Awāqib aw Ghādah al-Zāhirah (The Happy Ending, 1899). Her play, al-Hawā wa-al-Wafā (Love and Faithfulness, 1893), was the first play written in Arabic by a woman.