BEIRUT, 30 July 2006 — Renowned Palestinian-Lebanese historian, Naqula Ziyada died on Friday at the age of 99 due to natural causes, the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported yesterday.
He was buried close to the American University where he was a professor emeritus since his retirement from the school’s Department of History in 1971.
Ziyada, who had enjoyed good health until the end, wrote 40 books on history, including six in English, besides hundreds of articles published in various magazines.
His writings were marked with an extraordinary skill in perceiving events in their historical context.
Ziyada was born to a Palestinian family of Nasreth in Damascus in 1907. His father died while he was still a boy and his mother had to work to support the family.
He worked while studying and graduated from his primary school in Jerusalem in 1924 and then continued his secondary education at Akka.
He obtained his doctorate in Islamic history from the Institute of Oriental and African Studies in London in 1947 after a bachelor’s degree in ancient history from London University in 1939.
The scholar joined Lebanon’s American University faculty of history in 1949.
