Janan Harb
Born1947 (age 76–77)
Ramallah, Palestine
Known forFormer wife of King Fahd

Janan George Harb (Arabic: جنان حرب; born 1947) is a former wife of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.[1][2]

Biography

Janan Harb was born in Ramallah, Palestine, in 1947 to a Christian Arab family.[3] She met Prince Fahd at a party in Jeddah in December 1967.[3] They married in a secret ceremony in Jeddah in March 1968, and she had been converted into Islam just before the marriage.[3][4] They lived in Jeddah and London during their marriage.[3] She introduced some of her friends to Prince Fahd who was the interior minister during that period to enable them to get jobs or visas.[3][5]

She says that she was forced by senior royals including Prince Salman and Prince Turki, full brothers of Prince Fahd, to leave Saudi Arabia in 1970.[4] They thought that she was responsible for the addiction of Prince Fahd to methadone which he had begun to use following chronic stomach pains in 1969.[3] She rejects any role in the addiction of her ex-husband.[3] Harb left Saudi Arabia and first went to Beirut and to the US.[3] In 1974 she married a Lebanese lawyer with whom she has two daughters.[6]

To the embarrassment to the Saudi royal family she launched a £400m maintenance claim against King Fahd in 2004, a year before Fahd's death.[2] In 2016 she lost the case.[6]

Book

Janan Harb published a book entitled The Saudi King and I in which her relationship with King Fahd is detailed. The story has been sold for making a film which is provisionally titled The Sins of King Fahd, and a three-minute teaser of the film was posted to YouTube.[7]

References

  1. ↑ "The King and I". The Times. 8 August 2007. Retrieved 25 May 2012.
  2. 1 2 "Bankrupt Former wife of Saudi king seeks £12m from prince - London socialite alleges a secret royal marriage, hush money and dodgy defence contracts". The Independent. 27 September 2009. Retrieved 25 May 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Harb v HRH Prince Abdulaziz". Casemine. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
  4. 1 2 "Saudi prince's ex-wife stripped of $17m after losing appeal". Middle East Eye. 19 June 2016. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
  5. ↑ Steffen Hertog (April 2010). "The Sociology of the Gulf Rentier Systems: Societies of Intermediaries" (PDF). Comparative Studies in Society and History. 52 (2): 282–318. doi:10.1017/S0010417510000058. JSTOR 40603088. S2CID 146724730.
  6. 1 2 "Woman claiming to be late Saudi king's 'wife' loses legal battle". Business Standard. London. 16 June 2016. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
  7. ↑ MiddleeastEye: Trailer released for film about the ‘secret lives’ of Saudi royals
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