honored with by the parliament following her death. Early life, background and political career Nusrat Ispahani was born on 23 March 1929 in Isfahan, Persia (now Iran). Her father was a wealthy businessman who came from the wealthy Hariri family of merchants in Isfahan and was of partial Kurdish descent via his mother who came from Kurdistan Province. Shortly after her birth, the family later moved to British India, where they initially lived in Bombay and then moved to Karachi before the independence of Pakistan and the Partition of India in 1947. She grew up with Iranian traditions at her home but adapted to Indian Muslim culture outside. Before emigrating to Pakistan, Nusrat attended and was educated at the University of Karachi where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Humanities in 1950. As first lady from 1973 to 1977, Nusrat Bhutto functioned as a political worker and accompanied her husband on a number of overseas visits. In 1979, after the trial and execution of her husband, she succeeded her husband as leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party as chairman for life. She led the PPP's campaign against General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's regime. Alongside her daughter Benazir Bhutto, she was arrested numerous times and placed under house arrest and in prison in Sihala. Nusrat Bhutto was attacked by police with batons while attending a cricket match at Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, when the crowd began to raise pro Bhutto slogans. In 1982, ill with cancer, she was given permission to leave the country by the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq for medical treatment in London at which point her daughter, Benazir Bhutto, became acting leader of the party, and, by 1984, the party chairman. After returning to Pakistan in the late 1980s, she served two terms as a Member of Parliament to the National Assembly from the family constituency of Larkana, Sindh. During the administrations of her daughter Benazir, she became a cabinet minister and Deputy Prime Minister. In the 1990s, she and Benazir became estranged when Nusrat took the side of her son Murtaza during a family dispute but were later reconciled after Murtaza's murder. She lived the last few years of her life with her daughter's family in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and later suffered from the combined effects of a stroke and Alzheimer's disease. Personal life, illness and death Nusrat met Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Karachi where