Sigrid Ida Matilda Kahle (née Nyberg; 18 September 1928 – 31 December 2013) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

journalist and writer. She was born in Paris in 1928, to the orientalist

H.S. Nyberg Henrik Samuel (H.S.) Nyberg (28 December 1889 – 9 February 1974) was a Swedish scholar of broad interest and a well known expert of Iranology and Arab studies. Life Nyberg was born in Söderbärke in Southern Dalecarlia (Sweden) on 28 December ...

and his wife Fanny, née Hasselberg. She grew up in

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...

where her father was professor of

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...

. In her youth, she was interested in the theatre and after graduating she applied to a drama school, but was not accepted. Instead, she enrolled at Uppsala university where she studied the history of literary drama. She travelled to London together with her father in 1946, and stayed with him in the home of the German orientalist

Paul E. Kahle Paul Ernst Kahle (January 21, 1875 in Hohenstein, Prussia – September 24, 1964 in Düsseldorf) was a German orientalist and scholar. Biography Kahle studied orientalism and theology in Marburg and Halle. He attained his doctorate in 1898. ...

who had escaped from Germany with his family in 1938, after they had become targets of Nazi persecution for helping Jewish friends and neighbours. One of the sons in the family, John Kahle, fell in love with Sigrid Nyberg and the couple corresponded for some time after she had returned to Sweden. When John Kahle had moved to

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

and trained as a diplomat, the two got married, and Sigrid Kahle moved first to Germany and then to

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former cap ...

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

, and

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

, where John Kahle had diplomatic posts. On May 30, 1997 Kahle received an

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

from the Faculty of Humanities at

Uppsala University Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in opera ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

Sigrid Kahle died following a brief illness on 31 December 2013, aged 85, in

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