not start from scratch, since "most of the participants were regular visitors to her family's home, where they used to meet with her father and two brothers." The members of Maryana's salon included prominent Aleppine intellectuals of both sexes, in addition to politicians and members of the foreign diplomatic corps. Marrash was fully engaged in the intellectual discourse and would also entertain her guests by playing the qanun and singing. Antun Sha'arawi has described typical evenings spent at Marrash's salon: Wearing either all black or all white dresses ordered from Paris, Marrash hosted the mixed evening get-togethers in which literary topics as varied as the Mu`allaqat—a cycle of seven pre-Islamic poems—or the work of Rabelais were discussed. Chess and card games were played, and complicated poetry competitions took place; wine and 'araq flowed freely; participants sang, danced, and listened to records played on a phonograph. However, Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh has presumed Sha'arawi's description to be partly apocryphal. Works Bint fikr (A Daughter of Thought), 1893. [Tārīkh] [Sūriyā] al-ḥadīth (The History of Modern Syria). Writings published in periodicals: Notes References Sources External links Bint fikr (HathiTrust Digital Library) 1848 births 1919 deaths Nahda People from Aleppo Syrian poets Syrian women writers Syrian Melkite Greek Catholics 20th-century Syrian writers 20th-century Syrian women writers Syrian salon-holders Syrian women poets 19th-century Syrian women writers Arabic-language women poets Arabic-language poets