Lady Evelyn Cobbold | |
|---|---|
| Born | Lady Evelyn Murray 17 July 1867 Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Died | 25 January 1963(1963-01-25) (aged 95)[1] Inverness, Scotland |
| Known for | First Muslim woman born in Britain to perform theHajj pilgrimage |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Charles Murray, 7th Earl of Dunmore Lady Gertrude Coke |
Lady Evelyn Cobbold (néeMurray; 17 July 1867[2] – 25 January 1963), also known asZainab Cobbold, was a Scottish diarist, traveller and noblewoman who was known for herconversion toIslam in 1915.[3]
Born in Edinburgh in 1867,[4][5] she was the eldest daughter ofCharles Adolphus Murray,[6] 7thEarl of Dunmore and Lady Gertrude Coke, daughter of theSecond Earl of Leicester.[7] She marriedJohn Dupuis Cobbold inAll Saints' ChurchCairo,Egypt on 23 April 1891.[8] Following a party in May 1891, at the Cobbold family homeHolywells,Ipswich, they settled there. Here the couple had three children between 1893 and 1900: Winifred Evelyn (1892–1965),[9] Ivan Cobbold (1897–1944),[10] and Pamela Cobbold (1900–1932).[11] However, in 1922[12] she separated from her husband. Subsequently she lived inLondon and on theGlencarron Estate.[13]
Cobbold spent much of her childhood inAlgiers andCairo in the company ofMuslim nannies.[5] She considered herself a Muslim from a young age despite not officially professing her faith until she met thePope.[5] She became a Mayfair socialite. She spent her childhood winters inNorth Africa where her fascination with Islam developed.
Lady Evelyn embarked on a journey through theLibyan Desert in 1911 with her American friend, Frances Gordon Alexander, in 1911. They published a joint account of the journeyWayfarers in the Libyan Desert in 1912. This led her to develop a greater interest in Islam.[14]She confirmed her conversion to Islam by 1915, taking the Arabic nameZainab. She remarked that she considered Islam the religion "most calculated to solve the world's many perplexing problems, and to bring to humanity peace and happiness".[15]
Following the death of her former husband in 1929, Lady Evelyn started to plan her pilgrimage, orHajj, toMecca. She contactedHafiz Wahba, ambassador for theKingdom of Hejaz and Nejd to the United Kingdom, who in turn sent a letter to King‘Abd al-‘Aziz.
Evelyn achieved celebrity status in 1933 at the age of 65, when she became the first Muslim woman born in the United Kingdom to perform thepilgrimage toMecca.[7][16][5] In 1934, a personal account of her trip was published with the titlePilgrimage to Mecca.[5][17] There is an excerpt from her work inMichael Wolfe's bookOne Thousand Roads to Mecca.
She visitedItaly with a friend and went to see thePope who asked her if she wasCatholic. Although she had never thought about Islam for years she replied by saying she was Muslim. After that she decided to read up more about Islam and eventually converted.[17]: xiv [5]
In 1933, she travelled to perform the Hajj for the first time, and because there were Europeans who visitedSaudi Arabia before her and who were not Muslim penetrated into Mecca and when returning to Europe, they wrote about their daring adventure of performing the Hajj as a non-Muslim. Because of this there were restrictions in place for Europeans, but Lady Evelyn, who adopted the name Zainab, was granted permission to perform the Hajj.
This is her description in her diary of the first time she saw theKabah andtawaf:
Her bookPilgrimage to Mecca in 1934 is the first Hajj account by a Scottish Woman and her diary also is the oldest record of a trip during the Hajj, when she went by car fromMina toArafat. She travelled widely all her life and also wrote another book,Kenya: Land of Illusion.
She spoke and wroteArabic fluently.[18]
"Islam," Evelyn later wrote, "is the religion of common sense." Lady Evelyn's story about her life, her conversion and her pilgrimage to Mecca are all recorded in her diaries which have recently been republished.[when?]
"She was a very lively, eccentric Anglo-Scot Moslem, who loved doing things and loved people as well," Major Philip Hope-Cobbold, her great-grandson said about her.
Lady Evelyn died in 1963 inInverness and was buried, as she stipulated, on a remote hillside on her Glencarron estate inWester Ross. There was no Muslim in Scotland to perform herjanazah so they contactedShah Jahan Mosque, Woking and the Imam drove up in the snow to perform herjanazah. She had stipulated she wanted to be buried on a hill on her estate facingMecca with the following words on her gravestone:Allahu nur-us-samawati wal ard ("Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth").[5]
In 2022 her grave was visited by a party of pilgrims from the Convert Islam Foundation, a British organisation for converts to Islam,[19] who walked the 20-kilometre (12 mi) round trip up Gleann Fhiodhaig fromGlen Carron.[20] The 2019 novelBird Summons byLeila Aboulela (W&N,ISBN 978-1474600125) describes a pilgrimage by three Muslim women in search of Cobbold's grave.[21]
Book prepared jointly by Lady Evelyn Cobbold and Frances Gordon Alexander. The American edition is issued under Mrs. Alexander's name, the English under Lady Evely Cobbold's, the text differing slightlyLink is to full text of US version.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) Republished 2009She knows by heart many passages of the Koran and speaks fluent Arabic, which she can both read and write
