Badia Masabni was an entertainer and businesswoman best known for establishing a series of influential clubs in Cairo in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. She is considered to be the mother of modern belly dance and is credited with launching the careers of many Egyptian artists, particularly belly dancers Samia Gamal and Taheyya Kariokka.
Arfa Abdul Karim Randhawa was a Pakistani student and computer prodigy who became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) in 2004 at age 10.
Sophia Al Maria is a Qatari-American artist, writer, and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited at the Gwangju Biennale, the New Museum in New York, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. She coined the term Gulf Futurism to explain a phenomenon she has observed in architecture, urban planning, art, aesthetics and popular culture in the post-oil Persian Gulf. “The Arabian Gulf is a region that has been hyper-driven into a present made up of interior wastelands, municipal master plans and environmental collapse, thus making it a projection of a global future.” Her interest in these areas arises from her youth growing up in the Persian Gulf area during the 1980s and 1990s, which she describes in her 2012 memoir The Girl Who Fell To Earth. The themes and ideas of Gulf Futurism include the isolation of individuals via technology, wealth and reactionary Islam, the corrosive elements of consumerism on the soul and industry on the earth, the replacement of history with glorified heritage fantasy in the collective memory and in many cases, the erasure of existing physical surroundings. Gulf Futurism utilises imagery from Islamic eschatology, corporate ideology, posthumanism and the global mythos of Science Fiction.
After her studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, Al Maria returned to the Gulf, where she worked towards opening the contemporary and modern art museum, Mathaf, alongside curators Wassan Al-Khudhairi and Deena Chalabi. The museum opened in Doha in 2010. Al Maria calls the experience a formative one, where she was ‘tasked with meeting and interviewing artists like Hassan Sharif or Zineb Sedira—that was my real art education. Having that proximity was, in a weird way, how I got into artmaking.’
Dr Alanoud Alsharekh is a Kuwaiti women’s rights activist and founding director of Abolish 153 (short for Abolish Article 153), a campaign calling to end honour killings in Kuwait.
Anissa Rawda Najjar was a Lebanese feminist and women’s rights activist, who co-founded the Village Welfare Society (Jam`iyat In`ash Al-Qarya) with Evelyne Bustros in 1953, to advance literacy and economic opportunities for rural women in Lebanon.
Shammuramat was a wife of King Shamshi-Adad V who ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire as its regent for five years after his death in 811 BC until her son Adad-nirari III came of age. She is believed to be the basis for the mythical figure of Semiramis.
Alka Sadat is an Afghan documentarian and feature film producer, director and camerawoman.
Visonary architect Zaha Hadid challenged notions of what could be achieved in building. Described by The Guardian as the “Queen of the Curve,” her inventive designs freed architecture from its traditional focus on concrete and steel, introducing radical new ways to create spaces in harmony with their surroundings. With a foundation in painting and the utilizing progressive digital technologies, Hadid’s innovative approach helped shift the geometry of buildings toward a new aesthetic. As a woman and a Muslim, she also helped break barriers in the male-dominated world of high-profile architecture.
Before her designs were realised in actual buildings, Hadid’s architectural drawings and paintings were gaining international acclaim as she challenged the idea that a building was merely a solid mass. Her company would later coin the term Parametricism to define this signature look and feel.
Hadid’s major works include the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics, the Broad Art Museum, Rome’s MAXXI Museum, and the Guangzhou Opera House.
Hadid was the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004, and she received the Stirling Prize, the UK’s most prestigious architectural award, in 2010 and 2011. In 2012, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to architecture, and in February 2016, she became the first woman to individually receive the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects (Ray Eames and Sheila O’Donnell had previously won jointly with Charles Eames and John Tuomey respectively).
Tumadir bint Amru al-Harith bint al-Sharid, better known as al-Khansāʾ, was one of the most influential poets of Arabia’s pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods in the 7th century. Born into a powerful family near Mecca and Medina, much of her work was inspired by her brothers Ṣakhr and Muʿāwiyah, who died in tribal battles. At the time, the role of female poets was to write elegies for the dead and perform them for the tribe in public oral competitions. Al-Khansāʾ won acclaim in these competitions with her work, and is widely considered as the finest author of Arabic elegies and one of the greatest and best known female Arab poets of all time. In 629, she went to Medina with a group from her clan and, after meeting the Prophet Muhammad, embraced the new religion of Islam. Some sources say she was the favourite poet of Muhammad, who wept when he heard her elegies for her brothers.
Addagoppe of Harran was an Assyrian priestess of the moon god Sîn in the northern Assyrian city of Harran, and the mother of King Nabonidus (ruled 556–39 BC) of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.