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". Oscillating between the high-societies of Beirut and Paris, the heiress of a feudal dynasty in Southern Lebanon has been hailed by the yellow press as the "Princess of Tyre".
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. The uneducated population of Jabal Amal lived in "a 'dark age' of ignorance and feudalism; it was a time when the masses, al ama, were terrified of their masters and landlords, of the Ottoman Officialdom, a time when the flock [..] took life as 'slavery and obedience. The Khalils, with their age-old ways, [..] were known for being particularly rough and hard."
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 and earned himself a reputation as a particularly "tough" power-player:
During the 1958 Lebanon crisis Kazem al-Khalil's power-struggle with Ahmed al-Asaad and his son Kamil al-Asaad of a rival Shiite dynasty escalated into an armed conflict that left at least seven anti-Khalil protestors in Tyre dead during March and April. 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. In 1960 he also lost his parliamentary seat to Sharafeddin.
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. Kazem al-Khalil and his wife had three sons and two daughters.
In 1960, Maha al-Khalil married the Iraqi businessman Talal Chalabi, a brother of the banker and politician Ahmad 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. The latter is a French TV host, commonly known as Péri Cochin.
Education
Maha al-Khalil received her secondary education at a school in Beirut run by the Franciscan order. She subsequently graduated in Social sciences at the French Faculty of Medicine in Beirut, followed by studies in art and philosophy at the Beirut University College (BUC) and a degree in Political sciences from the faculty of law at Saint Joseph University in Beirut.
She later attended the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE) at the Sorbonne in Paris, from where she obtained a doctorate in history. Her PhD thesis about the descriptions of Tyre by travellers between the 16th and 19th centuries was published in 1984.