Queen Noor of Jordan
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Queen Noor (Arabic: الملكة نور) (born August 23, 1951 in Washington, D.C.) is the fourth wife and widow of the late King Hussein of Jordan.
She was born an American of Arab, Swedish, Scottish, and English descent. She is the current president of the United World Colleges movement.
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[edit] Family and early life
Queen Noor was born Elizabeth "Lisa" Najeeb Halaby. She is the daughter of Najeeb Halaby, a former CEO of Pan-American World Airways, one time head of the Federal Aviation Administration, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and his first wife, Doris Carlquist.
She has a younger brother, Christian Halaby, a composer and guitarist, and a younger sister, Alexa Halaby (a University of Pennsylvania squash champion who was a bridesmaid at the 1986 wedding of Maria Owings Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger).
Queen Noor's paternal grandfather, Najeeb Elias Halaby, a Syrian immigrant of Lebanese descent, was an oil broker, according to 1920 census records. Merchant Stanley Marcus, however, recalled that in the early 1920s, Halaby opened Halaby Galleries, a rug boutique and interior-decorating shop, at Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, Texas, and ran it with his Texas-born wife, Laura Wilkins (1889-1987, later Mrs. Urban B. Koen).
[edit] Education
Lisa Halaby was raised and educated in the United States; she attended National Cathedral School from Grade 4 through Grade 8, and then went on to Concord Academy in Massachusetts. She entered Princeton University with its first co-educational freshman class, and received a B.A. in Architecture and Urban Planning in 1974.
[edit] Marriage and children
An architect and urban planner, she met King Hussein while working in Jordan on the development of the Amman Intercontinental Airport. The couple married on June 15, 1978. In a New York Times article (May 19, 1978) about the couple's forthcoming wedding, a friend of the bride described her as "a darling, healthy, sunburned, tennis-playing, All-American girl, but she is very sophisticated. I can't see her marrying the average boy." Halaby converted to Islam, and before the marriage took place, her first name was changed from Lisa to Noor, an Arabic word meaning "light".
As King Abdullah II's stepmother, Queen Noor cannot be classified as the Queen Mother of Jordan, although no apparent titular distinction has been made between her and Abdullah's wife, Queen Rania. The present King's mother, however, is Princess Muna al-Hussein, an Englishwoman formerly known as Antoinette Avril Gardiner.
Queen Noor and King Hussein had four children:
- Prince Hamzah (born March 29, 1980), Crown Prince from 1999 to 2004
- Prince Hashim (born June 10, 1981)
- Princess Iman (born April 24, 1983)
- Princess Raiyah (born February 9, 1986)
[edit] Notable works
In 2003, Queen Noor published a memoir, Leap of Faith, which became a bestseller. It has come under criticism for its anti-Israel stance. [1]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
Queen Noor (2003) Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life, Miramax Books, ISBN 0-7868-6717-5
