At age forty-six, Jane travelled to the Middle East, and fell in love with Sheik Abdul Medjuel el Mezrab (also known as Sheikh Abdul Mijwal Al Mezrab in accounts by contemporary Western travellers in Syria). Abdul Medjuel was a sheik of the Mezrab section of the Sba'a, a well-known sub-tribe of the great 'Anizzah tribe of Syria'. However Abdul Medjuel or Abdul Mijwal (Slave of Medjul dates) is a nonsensical name. Arabic sources give the Shaikh's name as Mijwal al-Musrab. It has also been written that Jane Digby was referred to as Shaikhah Umm al-Laban (literally Shaikhah Mother of Milk i.e. Milky lady) due to the color of her skin.
He was twenty years her junior, and the two were married under Muslim law and she took the name Jane Elizabeth Digby el Mezrab. Their marriage was a happy one and lasted until her death 28 years later.
Jane adopted Arab dress and learned Arabic in addition to the other eight languages in which she was fluent. Half of each year was spent in the nomadic style, living in goat-hair tents in the desert, while the rest was enjoyed in a palatial villa that she had built in Damascus.
She spent the rest of her life in that city, where she befriended Richard and Isabel Burton while he was the British consul, and Abd al-Kader al-Jazairi, a prominent exiled leader of the Algerian revolution.
She died of fever and dysentery in Damascus on 11 August 1881, and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery there, where her grave may still be seen today. She was buried with her horse in attendance at the funeral.[8] Upon her footstone – a block of pink limestone from Palmyra – is her name, written in Arabic by Medjuel in charcoal and carved into the stone by a local mason.
After her death her house was rented and the family of the young H. R. P. Dickson rented it. A small part of the house still survives today, still in the ownership of the same family who purchased it from Abdul Medjuel's son in the 1930s.