A historic photograph taken in 1911
In the center appears Labiba Hashim, holding her magazine "Fatat al-Sharq." On her left, Jirji Baz, holding his magazine "al-Hasna" (The Belle), and on her right, Mary Ajami, holding her magazine "al-'Arus" (The Bride).
Labiba Madi Hashim, a famous writer. Her magazine "Fatat al-Sharq" appeared in Egypt — twenty-nine volumes, 1906–1935. Its pages number more than ten thousand. And she founded the newspaper "al-Sharq wa-l-Gharb" in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, in the years '23 and 1924. She also has several published works.
She was Beiruti by birth and upbringing. A pupil of the French, English, and American schools. Wife of Abdo Hashim, of Ain al-Qabu, at the foot of Sannin. Her father was the teacher Nassif Madi, of Kfarshima, and her mother Rahil Karkabi of Beirut.
Our Labiba's genius began very early, with her personal letters, at nine years of age. She would picture her family far away from her and write to them things unbelievable from a girl her age. And she would correspond, on behalf of her schoolmates, with their relatives wherever they were, showing artistry in her styles and subjects — until her brother Najib named her the little "Madame de Staël." He took to correcting her spelling and forming her in letters. He held a bachelor of sciences from the American University of Beirut and was director of the Three Moons Institute.
At the age of twelve she set about translating her first novel, "The English Maiden," as a school exercise — it was her first reading outside her schoolbooks. When she was asked to print it, she shrank back out of modesty. But she
revised it
"The champion of woman," Mr. Jirji Niqula Baz, had the good fortune of discovering, accompanying, and encouraging the first generation of our women of letters, and he still gives this patronage a great deal of attention — may God prolong his life!
The truth commonly told of our champion, the venerable elder, is the extraordinary power of his memory, such that not a single item of the old news escapes him, coming or going...