Queen Noor of Jordan

Queen Noor was born Lisa Najeeb Halaby[3] in Washington, D.C., USA. She is the daughter of Najeeb Halaby (1915–2003) and Doris Carlquist (1918–2015). Her paternal family are Syrian-Lebanese American; her maternal family are Swedish American.[4] Her father was raised a Christian Scientist.[5] Her father was a Navy experimental test pilot, an airline executive, and government official. He served as an aide to the United States Secretary of Defense in the Truman administration, before being appointed by John F. Kennedy to head the Federal Aviation Administration. Najeeb Halaby also had a private-sector career, serving as CEO of Pan American World Airways from 1969 to 1972. The Halabys had two children following Lisa; a son, Christian, and a younger daughter, Alexa. The children were raised nominally Episcopalian.[5] They divorced in 1977.[5] Her mother, Doris, was of Swedish descent and died on December 25, 2015, aged 97.[6]

Noor's paternal grandfather was Najeeb Elias Halaby, a Syrian-Lebanese businessman born in Zahle, and whose parents hailed from Aleppo.[7][8][9] He was a petroleum broker, according to 1920 Census records.[10] Merchant Stanley Marcus recalled that in the mid-1920s, Halaby opened Halaby Galleries, a rug boutique and interior-decorating shop, at Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas, and ran it with his Texas-born wife, Laura Wilkins (1889–1987, later Mrs. Urban B. Koen). Najeeb Halaby died shortly afterward, and his estate was unable to continue the new enterprise.[11]

According to research done in 2010 for the PBS series Faces of America by Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., of Harvard University, her great-grandfather, Elias Halaby, came to New York circa 1891, one of the earliest Syrian-Lebanese immigrants to the United States. He was a Christian as well as having been a provincial treasurer (magistrate)[12] as stated before by Najeeb Halaby in his autobiography Crosswinds: an Airman's Memoir.[7] He left Ottoman Syria with his two eldest sons. His wife, Almas Mallouk, and their remaining children joined him in the United States in 1894. He died three years later, leaving his teenage sons, Habib, and Najeeb (her paternal grandfather), to run his import business. Najeeb moved to Dallas around 1910 and fully assimilated into U.S. society.[13]

Halaby attended schools in New York and California before entering National Cathedral School from fourth to eighth grade. She attended the Chapin School in New York City for two years,[14] and then went on to graduate from Concord Academy. She entered Princeton University with its first coeducational freshman class and received an A.B. in architecture and urban planning in 1974 after completing a 32-page long senior thesis titled "96th Street and Second Avenue."[15][16] She was also a member of Princeton's first women's ice hockey team.[17]

After she graduated from Princeton, Halaby moved to Australia, where she worked for a firm that specialized in planning new towns, with a burgeoning interest in the Middle East. Because of Halaby's Syrian roots, this had special appeal for her. After a year, in 1975, she accepted a job offer from Llewelyn Davies, a British architectural and planning firm, which had been employed to design a model capital city center in Tehran, Iran. When increasing political instability forced the company to relocate to the UK, she traveled to the Arab world and decided to apply to Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism while taking a temporary aviation facility research job in Amman. Eventually, she left Arab Air and accepted a job with Alia Airlines to become Director of Facilities Planning and Design. Halaby and the king became friends while he was still mourning the death of his third wife. Their friendship evolved and the couple became engaged in 1978.[1]

Queen Noor in Hamburg, Germany, in 1978

Queen Noor and King Hussein with Richard von Weizsäcker, President of West Germany, and First Lady Marianne von Weizsäcker in Jordan in 1985

Halaby wed King Hussein on June 15, 1978, in Amman, becoming Queen of Jordan.[18]

Before her marriage, she accepted her husband's Sunni Islamic religion and upon the marriage, changed her name from Lisa Halaby to the royal name Noor Al-Hussein ("Light of Hussein"). The wedding was a traditional Muslim ceremony. Her conversion to Islam and wedding to the King of Jordan received extensive coverage in the Western press; many assumed that she would be regarded as a stranger to the country, since she was an American of mostly European descent who was raised in Christianity. However, because of her Syrian grandfather, she was considered by most of the population to be an Arab returning home rather than a foreigner. She soon gained influence by using her role as King Hussein's consort and her education in urban planning for charitable work and improvement to the country's economy, as well as the empowerment of women in Jordanian economic life.

Noor assumed management of the royal household and three stepchildren, Princess Haya bint Al Hussein, Prince Ali bin Al Hussein and Abir Muhaisen (her husband's children by Queen Alia).[1] Noor and Hussein had four children:

• Hamzah (born March 29, 1980, in Amman), Crown Prince from 1999 to 2004, who has four daughters and two sons.
• Prince Hashim (born June 10, 1981, in Amman), who has three daughters and two sons.
• Princess Iman (born April 24, 1983, in Amman), who has one son.
• Princess Raiyah (born February 9, 1986, in Amman).

Queen Noor in 2011

Queen Noor's arms as dame of the Order of Charles III

King Hussein died on February 7, 1999, from lymphatic cancer. After his death, his first-born son, Abdullah II, became king and Hamzah became crown prince. In 2004, Prince Hamzah was unexpectedly stripped of his status as heir designate.[22][23][24] On July 2, 2009, Abdullah named his eldest son as heir-apparent to the throne, thereby ending the previous five years' speculation over his successor.[23]

Noor divides her time among Jordan, the US (Washington, D.C.) and the United Kingdom (in London and at her country residence, Buckhurst Park, near Winkfield in Berkshire). She continues to work on behalf of numerous international organizations.[25] She speaks Arabic, English and French. The queen also enjoys skiing, water skiing, tennis, sailing, horseback riding, reading, gardening and photography.[26] She held amateur radio callsign JY1NH but the license has lapsed.[27]

• Hashemites

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Queen Noor of Jordan.

• King Hussein Foundation website
• Noor Al Hussein Foundation website
• Global Zero Campaign
• Transcript of a speech given at The Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts in 1996
• 2002 commencement speech – Mount Holyoke College
• Appearances on C-SPAN