Maha al-Khalil Chalabi
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".
[1] 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".
[3][4][5][6] 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,[7] the al-Khalil family of grain merchants[8] rose from the urban class of the mercantilist notables ("Wujaha' ") to the rank of Zu'ama (feudal landlords) in Tyre.
[10] 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.
As a close ally of President Camille Chamoun, he served as a minister in various cabinets between 1953 and 1958[10] and earned himself a reputation as a particularly "tough" power-player:[9] 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.
[17][18] Maha al-Khalil's mother Muzain[19] 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.
[8] Hence he moved into a "sprawling villa" in the Hazmieh neighbourhood of Christian-dominated east Beirut,[25] while Maha al-Khalil Chalabi settled in Paris for exile.
[6] Following the 1978 South Lebanon conflict with Israel, which also affected Tyre's archaeological sites,[27] al-Khalil Chalabi started lobbying to international institutions for the protection of the ancient relics.
When his attempts to reconcile with the Amal Movement failed, he formed his own militia with Israeli support,[29] recruiting mainly young Shiites from a poor background.
[5] However, al-Khalil Chalabi deplored that her subsequent campaigns for the preservation of Tyrian sites were blocked by the Amal Movement, which took over power in the Tyre area after the 1985 withdrawal of the Israeli forces – particularly by its leader Nabih Berri and his wife Randa,[3] who founded her own rival "National Association for the Protection of the Heritage of South Lebanon".
[6] In 2013, al-Khalil Chalabi made international headlines as founder and president of the AIST: it launched an online raffle in association with Sotheby's to fund the Artisans’ village "Les Ateliers de Tyr" at the outskirts of the city.
It includes the AIST[1] and al-Khalil Chalabi's Fondation Tyr, which is based in the prestigious Avenue Foch in Paris, one of the most expensive addresses in the world.
