In 1931, this Lebanese woman marched into a stage in Pennsylvania with the first Arab medical school diploma from America, and the audience erupted with applause, while for Saniya Habboub, applause echoed across streets in Beirut, where tout de suite doors had been shut for women such as her for centuries. Entering this profession at the time meant standing against family expectations, socio-political pressure, and even one’s health. But she found a way forward. What could possibly have inspired such courage? Her mother’s whispered promise on a train; her father’s quiet encouragement; and a fire found deep in her soul that refused to be quenched.
This article follows her footsteps from the streets of Beirut to Lebanon’s frontlines of healthcare, showing how one gritting doctor changed pathways for many women after her-and continues to do so.
Roots in a Changing Beirut
For Saniya Habboub, life actually began in 1901 in this lively Ain Mreisse, where the smell of leather tanneries converged with the sound of the call to prayer in Beirut. Mustapha Habboub, her self-made father, was a merchant who built his business and grew it with scraps. He entertained poets and intellectuals at their home. It was during these evenings that Saniya and her siblings-to-be encountered the kind of discussions that sparked their curiosity about literature and reform. Her mother was Adla al-Jazairy, a Turkish woman who was illiterate, showing just how much the lack of education gave motivation. On the train ride from Istanbul to Beirut, she had seen a European lady reading a newspaper and promised her husband, “if I have a daughter, she will do that too”. Saniya, the second of five children, was the fulfillment of that promise.
Not all of Saniya’s experiences were path-opening. When she was 14, typhoid fever hit like a brick wall. Saniya spent a month in and out of consciousness, and then came back to find her younger sister, Afifeh, lying dead in the other bed. It left behind phlebitis that marked one leg-the drag foot for her life. Yet these early blows seemed to harden her will rather than cause retreat. After receiving Quran lessons at home, Saniya finally got a spot at the only American School for girls, one of the few centers available to someone like her to fly up.
Saniya by 16 had her pull back into tradition. She married to a neighbor, a doctor, not especially an arranged marriage for he first had to seek permission from her parents to marry her. Though built up in her marriage with her mother, they only made it two years together before separating, though they still remained on good terms. After her divorce, Saniya enrolled back into an academic place, which clearly shows the detours did not define her journey.
First Steps Toward the Stethoscope.
A new hum of energy following the War filled Beirut in the 1920s. French mandate rule brought new schools and new ideas, but medicine remained a male domain in places such as the American University of Beirut. In 1924, Saniya joined the freshman class in the American Junior College for Women, graduating two years later with honors that turned heads. She had wished to enter AUB’s medical program, to heal a community that raised her.
It was not meant to be. Women attempting such ambitions were scandalous, and a voice from her own circle advised her to slow down. But Saniya had her family with her, especially her father, who saw in her the scholar he had previously entertained at this table. When AUB closed its doors to females, she turned drearily west. No woman from Lebanon had crossed the Atlantic for the degree-then, such became the fragrance of the challenge. In 1929, she climbed the boat for America, a first for somebody like herself to pursue such a horizon.
Landing in the U.S. meant much more than sitting through lectures; it was transformation 101. A study in bobbed hair and gutsy talk was the atmosphere in which she invited American newspaper commentary on her “occidental ways.” Daily homesickness and the anxiety of her leg weighed in. Yet she forged on, focused with a laser beam on the white coat 4 years out.
Diploma Across the Ocean
The medical doors opened in America at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, which has been a glorious home to outré since 1850. However, Saniya was to formally commence training at Western College in Cincinnati, Ohio, and received her MD in 1931 among a bunch of tough-minded women from all over the globe. She was different most importantly among the ones who challenged dissent, the only Arab in that class, along with the quiet, rebellious spirit that made each late night study session painful with longing for Beirut.
The real hard work began next: two years of specialized training in obstetrics and gynecology at a Philadelphia hospital. To her classmates, her determination was almost admirable, particularly as she limped through what most of them had felt was a long enough marathon just to walk. By 1932, with a diploma in hand, she gazed back and felt grateful and later set up a scholarship fund in her medical college to help other women like herself. She graduated on June 10, 1932, a date later recognized by Google in a Doodle in 2022, giving her wider acclaim for her pioneering role as a doctor serving that dwindling Lebanese community. Apart from the personal, this moment represented busting through ceilings.
That moment certainly was not only her triumph; it shattered ceilings. Back home, families began whispering her name to daughters eyeing books over veils. Saniya returned in 1933, suitcase packed with knowledge and a resolve to return what she had been taught.
Clinic Doors Swing Open in Beirut
Beirut was welcomed with skepticism. In Bab Idriss, she opened for obstetrics and general practice, with the city pulse just outside her window. Patients trickled in at first, mistaking her for a midwife rather than a fully trained physician. News traveled fast about a doctor who was making house calls, treating the poor for free, and listening without judgment.
For 50 years, her clinic became a lifeline for women inhibited by poverty or tradition. Expectant mothers from the hills arrived by cart, and orphans received checkups alongside the privileged. The leg was somewhat of a hindrance for Saniya; however, it never stopped her from climbing stairs or crossing town. She retired in 1965, but her hands remained active in mending for more than the flesh. In 1937 life added layers. She married Muhammad al-Naqqash, a journalist 12 years her junior, after he profiled her work. Their home is filled with the sound of two daughters, where stethoscopes share airspace with story deadlines. Through all of Lebanon’s many turbulent decades: wars, mandates, and independence, Saniya has thus managed to balance her family and a calling that takes all.
Red Cross Out Of Hand; Heart Into Community
Medicine, in Saniya’s view, embodied a service to the public and was interwoven into the very fabric of a nation. She was a cornerstone in the founding of the Lebanese Red Cross, an enterprise she saw built from the ground up and was reputed for organizing aid to the country during crises that battered the spirit of Beirut when floods and earthquakes collided with the scars of war. There she sat, organizing clinics, training volunteers.
Upkeep of the Muslim Orphans’ Home was, to Saniya, a metaphor of care that must be exhibited, mending children battered by hardship. In the Young Women’s Muslim Association, she inspired ambition amongst girls, as well as caring for their health. Returning, she institutionally solidified her role in the American School for Girls as a resident doctor who would see other lives in the hallways as if they were attending a seminar.
These were some far-and-away evenings; truly, however, they were ways of multiplying her efforts as a physician into a movement. On her birthday, she placed the Health Medal of Merit upon her chest, which the Lebanese national government awarded in recognition of her half-century-long selfless work. At 81, with those same steadfast eyes as the ones in her graduation photograph taken long ago, she received it not for self-glorification but as a ticket for motivating a better tomorrow.
Facing Shadows with Steady Grace
No story of accomplishments lives without the shadow. Saniya was always aware of the ache in her leg left by the childhood fever. When the turmoil, civil wars, and recession of Lebanon dealt the final blow to her clinic, she measured out hope just as she had measured out supplies during the toughest times in Lebanon. Pancreatic cancer would visit her in her old age. Again, along with the clarity she exemplified to every patient, she self-diagnosed.
She died in September 1983, at 82 years of age, with Beirut already changed. Today, a street in Ramlet al-Baida carries her name; it is a petite tribute to a woman who walked untrodden paths so others could run straight.
Echoes in Time Unending
Dr. Saniya Habboub was more than a physician; she was a prescriber of possibility. Her options around one route or another, providing scholarships abroad for women she never met or kicking into action networks of aid for women in her own community, opened out to embrace and elevate her sisters, daughters, and fellow dreamers. And in an area where seldom do women get to make themselves heard-louder are the winds of suppression-she spoke: through her acts of doing free work for the forsaken; through all those innumerable doors that she swung wide-open for the next set of women coming after her.
Through every Lebanese woman who now picks up a scalpel, or a textbook, her legacy is alive; in Red Cross tents that now stand proudly; etched in our minds, with Google’s Doodle illuminating her work and importance; her legacy, however, is embedded in the stones of a city, interwoven with the narratives of its people. Saniya Habboub helped pave the path of demonstrating how one determined step, however dragging, can cross oceans and change worlds.
