Salima Pasha


Salima Mourad or Salima Murad was a well-known Iraqi Jewish singer and was well known and highly respected in the Arab world. She was given the nickname "Pasha" by the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said.
Salima was dubbed as the most famous woman singer, since the early 1930s. She was also wife of very successful Iraqi singer and actor Nazem Al-Ghazali. Even after the bulk of Iraqi Jews left Iraq, Salima continued to live there until her death in 1974.
Despite the popularity of her music in the Arab world, her music only ever had a small following in Israel, as state-run Israeli radio did not typically play music in the Arabic style due to a preference by the political leadership for Western music.