The friendship between Dona Sofia and Noor from Jordan dates back to the closeness of "brothers" between Don Juan Carlos and Hussein. For decades, the two queens have shared private encounters, vacations, and also family tragedies.
It may not have been a coincidence that both Princess Leonor and infant Sofia have chosen the Atlantic College of Wales to study their Baccalaureate. There is a figure closely related to Queen Sofia who carries out tasks of responsibility at the UWC, the Association of World Colleges, to which the center belongs: Queen Noor, who replaced King Carlos III as president of the UWC in 1995.
Last year, on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the association, Noor visited the center of Wales, in the castle of St Donat, a few kilometers from Cardiff. Noor, the widow of King Hussein of Jordan, father of the current monarch, Abdullah, married to Queen Rania, enrolled her youngest daughter, Princess Raiyah, in this center a few years ago.
The World Colleges movement was no stranger to the Spanish royal family: it was founded by the German Jewish educator Kurt Hanh, the same person who created the boarding school where Queen Sofía studied. For this reason, it is not difficult to imagine Doña Sofía asking Noor for her opinion on the important step that her granddaughter, the heir to the throne, was going to take, and that, later, she would transfer her opinion to Don Felipe and Doña Letizia.
This is how the friendship between Queen Sofia and Noor of Jordan was born
Queen Noor has been close friends with Queen Sofia since she came to the throne after marrying King Hussein in 1978. Lisa Halaby, who had studied architecture at Princeton, was a 25-year-old American executive who headed the Department of Planning and Design for the Arab Air Service airline and was working on the expansion of Amman International Airport. Syrian, English, Swedish, and Scottish blood ran through her veins.
Lisa and Hussein had met when the young woman accompanied her father, the executive director of Pan Am, to Jordan on a business trip in the summer of 1976. But they met again a year later. The idyll with the king was quick, the wedding too and Lisa found herself in charge of a court, in which two ex-wives of the king and eight children born from those marriages lived, in addition to the extended family of the monarch. She was the fourth wife and had to learn the palace rules quickly. The king named her Noor-al-Hussein, the light of Hussein.
Doña Sofía's connection with that young queen was immediate, despite the age difference – they were 15 years apart. King Juan Carlos and King Hussein maintained a strong friendship before Don Juan Carlos ascended the throne, as has happened with almost all Arab monarchies. Juan Carlos and Hussein were "brothers", the name reserved for close friends in the Arab world, to indicate their loyalty and complicity.
Queen Sofía saw in the young Queen Noor an intelligent and faithful interlocutor and their relationship intensified until they became close friends, as Sofía and Queen Farah of Iran are also. Hussein died of lymphatic cancer on February 7, 1999, and that same summer the king and queen invited Noor and her daughters to spend a few days in Marivent. Sofia and Noor went shopping and sailed. Noor returned to Mallorca several times to spend a few days with her friend Sofía de ella, both in summer and out of season. Noor speaks a little Spanish.
The family tragedies that have brought Sofia and Noor together
The two often meet for personal reasons. The vicissitudes that both have had to live, especially in the last two decades, have brought them even closer together. Noor has had to face the removal of her son, Prince Hamzah, from the court, after having been removed from the line of succession in favor of the eldest son of Abdalá and Rania, and having been accused of treason to the Crown.
Doña Sofía, always very discreet, will undoubtedly have had the support of her friend when she has had to face financial scandals and publicity from her husband's lovers in recent years. Queen Noor did not want to miss the concert at the Teatro Real organized for the celebration of Doña Sofía's 80th birthday, in 2018, and she attended the family lunch. It was one of her last public appearances.
Noor and Sofia also share philanthropic interests, especially on issues related to the environment. "Queen Sofía has been a true sister and friend during all these years. I love her very much, in an endearing way », Noor explained in an interview she gave to the English edition of the magazine.
Noor also maintains a great friendship with the Greek royal family. At King Constantine's funeral, she could be seen in the company of her youngest daughter, Princess Raiyah, married since July 2020 to the British journalist Ned Donovan, grandson of the famous writer Roald Dahl. Both were dressed in rigorous black and with a white veil, a sign of mourning in the Arab world.
