Quick Facts
Biography
Begum Shafiq Zia (née Shafiq Jahan; 21 September 1931 – 5 January 1996) was a Ugandan-born Pakistani public figure who served as the First Lady of Pakistan from 1977 until her husband's death in a plane crash on 17 August 1988.
Background and family
Begum Zia was born in Uganda to a family of Indian origin; she moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India, and married General Zia-ul-Haq in 1950. After the 1977 coup and her husband's assumption of the presidency in 1978, Zia became first lady. Over the next decade, she accompanied her husband on dozens of overseas trips, including a state visit to the United States in 1982. In 1985, she represented Pakistan at Nancy Reagan's First Ladies Conference on Drug Abuse among seventeen other first ladies.
Later life and death
Following Zia-ul-Haq's death in 1988, Begum Zia founded the Zia-ul-Haq Foundation. In 1989, her pension and privileges as the wife of a former president were revoked by the Benazir Bhutto government. She died on 5 January 1996 at the Cromwell Hospital in London. Scholarships for students in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Aga Khan University were endowed in her name by Aga Khan IV in 1985.
