Zainab Cobbold, born Lady Evelyn Cobbold, was born in Edinburgh in 1867 to two wealthy, noble parents. Although born in the UK, she spent much of her childhood in Algeria and Egypt, where she was raised by local Muslim nannies. Here, her fascination with Islam begun and she considered herself to be Muslim from a very young age. She did not share her religion with others until her meeting with the Pope, when she was asked if she was Catholic and she replied that she was Muslim. In 1891 she married her husband John Cobbold in Egypt, although the couple eventually settled in Ipswich, England. They had three children together before they separated in 1922 and she eventually moved to London. Zainab took her new name upon her conversion to Islam in 1915, a religion which she believed was “most calculated to solve the world's many perplexing problems, and to bring to humanity peace and happiness”. In 1929, after the death of her ex husband, she contacted the Ambassador for the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd to the UK, in regards to making the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Restrictions had previously been put in place for Europeans visiting Mecca because of Non-Muslim Europeans who had infiltrated Mecca and later wrote about the experience of Hajj despite them being non Muslims. Zainab though, was granted permission by King Abd al-Aziz. In 1933, and at the age of 65 years, Zainab became the first Muslim woman born in the UK to make Hajj. She later published an account of her pilgrimage in the memoir Pilgrimage to Mecca. She died in 1963 in Scotland and because there was no imam to perform the Janazah, an imam from Woking drove up in the snow to perform her Janazah. She was buried on a hill on her estate facing Mecca with the following words written on her gravestone: Allahu nur-us-samawati wal ard" (Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth).