Jamal Badran is one of the most celebrated Palestinian visual artists, calligraphers, sculptors, and art educators of the 20th century, especially known for his Islamic artworks, Arabic calligraphy, and restoration work on al-Aqsa Mosque. He was also an art educator who inspired students through art.
Early Life and Artistic Inspiration
Born in Haifa in 1909, Badran was exposed to the world of art from a young age. As Palestinian artist and art historian Salwa Mikdadi put it, Badran was born “into a family of pioneers who dedicated their talents to further art education and Arab Islamic decorative arts in Palestine and other Arab countries.”1 Badran’s childhood passion for art, and particularly Islamic art, was connected to the annual arrival of the mahmal to Haifa: the ceremonial palanquin, lifted by pilgrims, carried the kiswa, or cloth that covers the Kaaba, from Damascus to Mecca. On its journey, the mahmal passed through Haifa, and young Badran was “captivated by the brocade palanquin, embroidered with gold, silver, and silk,” sparking “a lifelong interest in Islamic traditions of ornamentation.”2
Badran’s brothers, Abdel Razzak and Kheiry, were also gifted artistically. Surrounded by talent from such a young age, Badran was encouraged to pursue his own artistic interests academically.
Following his father’s death, when Badran was 13, and given his love of Arab art inspired by the cover for the Kaaba, he was sent to Cairo to live with his paternal uncle, Abdel Rahman Badran, a calligrapher and scribe who had moved to Egypt to work in illuminating and transcribing Islamic manuscripts.3 There, he enrolled in Madrasat al-Funun wa-l-Zakharif, the Egyptian School of Art and Decoration, also known as the Hamzawi School, in 1922—the first Palestinian to do so..4 Regarding these early years, Badran said the following:
When I was still a young child, my eldest brother noticed my talent for paintings and handicrafts, and fortunately, when my teachers suggested that I should study art, I did not come up against any resistance on the part of my family, in spite of the fact that to pursue an education in art was a very strange concept at the time.5
While at the Hamzawi School, Badran learned the art of leatherwork, design and surface decoration on different media. “The emphasis was on practical drawing skills,” Badran recalled of his time studying in Cairo, “and the school would frequently send us to the Cairo museums to copy the decorations of old artifacts.”6 Part of these skills included an emphasis on decorating leather books, especially the Quran—often decorated in gold—as well as purses and bags. As Badran recalls, they learned so much about leatherwork, even the tools used to engrave and draw were made of leather.7
His brothers also studied in Egypt, with Abdel Razzak specializing in glass decoration and Kheiry in weaving, painting, and printing. It was young Jamal, however, who soared in the Islamic arts. During his time in Cairo, he worked as an embosser in an Egyptian printing press, and in 1927, upon graduating from the Hamzawi School, and following an earthquake that struck Palestine that same year, the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem commissioned Badran, 18, to restore the Kufic designs and writings of the al-Aqsa Mosque,8 a great honor. Thus, he returned to Jerusalem and began working on the first major restoration of the mosque in the 20th century, which took about a year. As part of this very meticulous work, Badran reconstructed drawings of missing designs adjacent to the mosque’s mihrab. During that time, he also joined a Turkish delegation in restoring the Ma’man Allah (Mamilla) Hotel in Jerusalem.9
A Vibrant Career as an Artist and Teacher
In 1933, Badran took part in the Palestine Pavilion at the First Arab Exhibition, hosted by the Supreme Muslim Council at the new Palace Hotel (also built by the council) just outside the Jaffa Gate.10 He exhibited “ornately painted decorative panels, wooden bas-reliefs emblazoned with Quranic verses, and a wide range of embossed leatherwork, all of which visitors received with enthusiasm.”11 The opportunity to present his work at the exhibition was career-defining, especially since the event attracted considerable attention from dignitaries, politicians, and renowned local and international artists. Art historian Alessandra Amin explains the significance of the exhibition:
From the turn of the century through the end of the British Mandate in 1947, Western charity organizations and religious missions, including Terra Sancta Christian College, the American Colony Industrial School, the Pro-Jerusalem Society, and the American Red Cross, made an effort to revitalize traditional Palestinian handicrafts through workshops and training centers. As anti-colonial sentiment grew, Palestinian nationalists began to prize traditional embroidery, mother-of-pearl inlay, and other local art practices as symbols of independent Palestinian culture. At the same time, however, cheap, mass-produced goods imported from overseas threatened to overtake the tourist market, which was a lifeline to these visual traditions. The Palestinian bourgeoisie combatted this issue by collecting artisanal wares, developing a new appreciation for their cultural inheritance. Badran, dedicated to the renewal of Islamic arts, was a dynamic participant in this particular historical moment.12
Badran thus contributed to defining art in Palestine during this period. While at the time, much of Palestinian art was valued for its religious significance or mastery, largely in the style of Byzantine iconography, portraiture, and glass decoration,13 Badran’s expertise and style were unorthodox and arguably revolutionary. As Mikdadi puts it, Badran “practiced his art free from such hierarchies. He was adept in paintings and drawing on all surfaces whether on canvas or on glass; it was all art.”14 And that his art, thoroughly modern and political while also perfectly traditional and Islamic, was selected to be featured in the First Arab Exhibition thus signified Badran’s entry into Palestinian national politics as a guardian of Palestinian artistic culture—a role he held for the remainder of his life.
Following this success, Badran was awarded a scholarship by Colonial British Mandate authorities in Jerusalem to study applied arts at the Central Schools of Arts and Crafts (later, the Central School of Art and Design) in London. During his three years in London, Badran studied a range of applied techniques, including bookbinding and leatherwork, textile and freehand painting, pottery, sculpture, design, marbling, and block printing. Kheiry, upon completing his education in Cairo, joined Badran in London where he continued his own studies in textiles and lithography.15
While in London, the brothers were influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, which flourished in Europe and North America around the turn of the 20th century and sought to counter the perceived impoverishment of the decorative arts. With their brother Abdel Razzak, the Badran brothers “sought to translate the ideals of the movement for a Palestinian context”16 and opened a studio in Jerusalem upon their return to Palestine in the late 1930s dedicated to the development of local talents in traditional arts and crafts. Through Studio Badran for the Arts, located on Mamilla Road, meters away from Jaffa Gate in what would become West Jerusalem in 1948, the Badran brothers sought to “establish a national art that combined recent advances in technology with authentic Islamic artistic traditions.”17
Badran returned to Jerusalem in 1937 and, in addition to opening the studio with his brothers, became an influential pioneer in Palestinian art education. Badran created an arts curriculum for Palestinian schools that centered around student creativity; he taught this curriculum in Jerusalem’s Rashidiyya School and the Arab College. A gifted teacher who was dedicated to the renewal of Islamic arts, Badran taught his students a range of artistic styles and disciplines, including Islamic ornamentation and Arabic calligraphy as well as watercolor, perspective, and live figure drawing. He would even take his students to the al-Aqsa Mosque to copy calligraphic lettering and scripts.18 As Mikdadi describes: “He inspired his students to appreciate art, encouraged them to draw freely from nature, and nurtured in them a keen understanding of Arab-Islamic abstraction.”19
Badran was evidently also a favorite teacher to many students, including the renowned Palestinian Iraqi artist, writer, and intellectual Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, who studied under Badran at Rashidiyya. Jabra had the following to say about Badran in a letter to artist Ismail Shammout:
Professor Jamal Badran taught me drawing in 1932, when I was in the fifth grade at the Rashidiyya School. He was a great inspiration, and we admired his talent and lovable personality. I will not forget that he was the one who taught me perspective and shading and encouraged me even though I was only 12 . . . His first love was zakhrafa. He used to send us to the Haram al-Sharif to examine the architectural zakhrafa. He used to ask us to bring back freehand drawings of the zakhrafa on the walls adorning the Dome of the Rock.20
Zakhrafa is a form of Arabic art that consists of geometric, calligraphic designs that are embellished by more organic motifs such as vines, a style referred to as “arabesque” in English.
In the early 1940s, Badran met Fatima ‘Ala al-Din, a teacher, while running a workshop for teachers. Fatima specialized in education and the Arabic language, having published critical pieces about the educational system in several newspapers.21
The two fell in love, married, and had a son, Rasem, who was born in Jerusalem in 1945. Fatima (Um Rasem) reportedly often quoted Badran as saying, “Nothing is more beautiful than Arabic zakhrafa.”22
Artistic Perseverance in Exile
The 1948 War forced the Badran brothers to shut down Studio Badran for the Arts, and Badran and his family fled Jerusalem for Damascus, where he continued to teach the art of Islamic decoration until 1952.23 In 1952, UNESCO hired Badran as an “expert of ornamental arts and crafts” to teach art at teachers’ training colleges in Libya.24
For 10 years in Libya, Badran worked prolifically. He described his time there as follows:
I worked as a supervisor for art education in Libyan schools in the cities of Tripoli, Fezzan and Benghazi, where I supervised the development of art education curricula to train art education teachers. I also supervised an annual exhibition of the teachers’ art productions. We held summer courses every year for a full month for students in the cities of Fezzan and Benghazi. I also supervised a special market for artistic crafts in Tripoli.25
In 1954, Badran and Fatima had a daughter, Samira, in Tripoli.
In 1962, Badran returned to Palestine with his family and opened his own studio in Ramallah for arts, decorations, and applied crafts, as well as two exhibition spaces in Ramallah and Jerusalem.26 Thereafter, Badran was commissioned to work on several major projects, including the second restoration of the al-Aqsa Mosque mosaic. This project included producing 23 drawings of the original Quranic Surat al-Isra’ “in the old Kufic script embellished with vegetal decorations”; the drawings were over 20 meters long.27 During this time, Badran was also asked to participate in the artistic committee tasked with designing the decoration of the King Abdullah I Mosque in Amman, Jordan. He was also commissioned to design and decorate the mosque of the newly built Jordan University (1962) in Amman, which took two years.28
Al-Aqsa Restoration
Badran’s crowning achievement was the subsequent restoration work he completed on the Salah al-Din minbar(pulpit) in the al-Aqsa Mosque, which was burned down in 1969 by extremist Denis Michael Rohan, an Australian national bent on destroying the mosque to make room for the Third Temple. Badran was commissioned by the al-Aqsa Restoration Committee to renovate the 12th-century pulpit. The project, which required him to sift through charred remains of the structure and to dig through photographic records of the mosque in British archives, took Badran over four years and 2,250 hours to complete. As Amin succinctly put it: “He revived, re-created and renovated all the original decorations, calligraphy and patterns of the burnt minbar, producing thirty-one drawing panels in 1:1 scale for immediate implementation.”29
Badran pointed out a complication that emerged during the restoration work. He noticed that “certain pieces of the destroyed pulpit were clearly not part of the original design,” which led him to conclude that the structure had been restored prior to the arson attack, but not by specialists. “I replaced the offending pieces,” he said, “with ones of a more authentic nature,”30 a process that certainly took more time than would have been necessary for the restoration, but one that attests to his professionalism and devotion to his craft, Jerusalem’s holy places, and Islamic art.
In 1982, Badran was again commissioned to carry out reconstructive drawings and paintings in the al-Aqsa Mosque, this time for sections of the mosaic inscription beside the mihrab that were damaged or missing. Though he spent decades working on different projects related to restoring al-Aqsa, the minbar itself was not restored until 2007, eight years after his death.31 Despite the centrality of his drawings to the effort, today, the restoration is often credited to an international team of carpenters hired through a Jordanian university to recreate the minbar. But were it not for his expert drawings that were reproduced in digital form by an engineering firm in Jordan, the reconstruction certainly would not have resulted in such a precise rendering of the original.32
Awards and Recognition
Notwithstanding the recognition owed Badran for his work on al-Aqsa, the artist was honored for his expansive career and contributions to Islamic art, Jerusalem, and art education in Palestine and the Arab world.
Among many others, King Abdullah I of Jordan awarded Badran with the First-Class Renaissance Medal in 1947; UNESCO granted him two awards, one in 1962 for his achievements in the field of art education in Libya, and the other in 1994 for his glasswork; and finally, he earned two awards in the early 1990s for his contributions to the city of Jerusalem.33 In 2014, the International Palestine Foundation, in collaboration with the Al-Bireh Cultural Association, named an award in the field of fine arts after Badran, as part of an initiative to honor Palestinian cultural achievements.34
Death and Legacy
In an interview with Palestinian artist Rana Anani in 1998, Badran shared that apart from a collection of tools and machines, not much remained of his work in his studio in Ramallah, which was destroyed due to water leakage in the building. Badran told Anani: I have six huge electrical machines, all of which are in good condition, but which cannot be used due to the lack of electricity [following the leak]. My greatest wish is that before I die, I will have the opportunity to teach young students my skills, including how to operate these machines, so that they can carry on the work that I’ve begun—before it is too late.35
Badran died a year later in Ramallah. Though he was unable to further instruct students in his precious artistic skills, his legacy lives on in countless private collections and museums across the Arab world,36 in the masterfully designed homes of patrons who commissioned him over the years,37 in the timeless Islamic mosaics and relics of the al-Aqsa Mosque, and in his children and grandchildren.
Badran’s son, Rasem, is a renowned and award-winning artist and architect who resides in Amman. Rasem’s two children, Ola and Jamal, are also successful artists—an award-winning painter and an architect, respectively. With his son, Jamal, Rasem runs an architectural firm in Amman “dedicated to the central tenant of his father’s career: the marriage of cultural heritage and contemporary technology.”38
Samira, Badran’s daughter, is a celebrated multimedia visual artist based in Spain. She attributes her passion for the arts to her father, dedicating several of her pieces to his artistic legacy. On her website, she writes:
My father, the artist Jamal Badran . . . played a decisive role in my artistic formation, and in my introduction to the world of art. Definitely he was my first professor and critic and encouraged me to study painting in Egypt and Italy. Thanks to his knowledge, experience and dedication in the field of arts and crafts, I have had the privilege of learning and absorbing the academic basics in drawing and painting under his advice and mastery.39
In a 2011 installation titled Illuminated by the Sun, Samira hung cloth awnings above the onion market on Badran Street in the Old City of Nablus, where the Badrans trace their roots. Each awning is designed with Islamic decorations and Kufic calligraphy. Samira had the following to say about Nablus and the permanent installation:
My relationship with Nablus has a deep emotional connection with the figure of my late father Jamal Badran. He was the relater and transmitter of the imagery of the old city: its unique heritage, architecture and important history. When I visited Nablus, for the first time, I perceived the city through his eyes . . .
My installation is a homage to his art. With the metaphor of a huge lamp shade illuminated by the sun, and following his steps, I carved by hand an arabesque design and a geometric pattern inspired by his work using a Kufic calligraphy to inscribe a poem . . . In the past, public spaces were a splendid reflection of the artistic and handicraft culture of the place. Nowadays, due to the occupation and the economic situation, this aspect is nearly nonexistent. I want to recreate these aesthetics in the market, where the soul and the authentic essence of old Arab cities is strongly represented . . . This intervention will be integrated and will remain there to form part of the vocabulary of the urban elements that already exist. But it will also have a visual connection to the Islamic heritage of the city as well as a daily reminder of my father, the artist Jamal Badran.40
Whether in the ancient streets of Nablus or the pristine walls of al-Aqsa Mosque, Badran’s unique imprint on Palestine is indelible. Samia Halaby wrote of him that “Jamal Badran remains one of the best-known and loved artists of the twentieth century in Palestine.”41
Sources
Abweini, Walid H., Rizeq N. Hammad, Abdel-Elah M. Abdeen, and May M. Hourani. “Reconstructing Salah al-Din Minbar of al-Aqsa Mosque: Challenges and Results.” International Journal of Conservation Science 4, no. 3 (July–September 2013): 307–16.
Amin, Alessandra. “Jamal Badran, Palestine (1909-1999).” Dalloul Art Foundation. Accessed January 9, 2025.
Anani, Rana. “The Grand Master of Islamic Decoration.” Jerusalem Times, January 16, 1998.
As‘ad, Ali T. “Exhibiting Nation: A Brief History of Palestinian Exhibition Making in the Twentieth Century.” Journal of Palestine Studies 53, no. 1 (2024).
“Badran, Jamal (1909-1999).” PASSIA. Accessed January 9, 2025.
Badran, Samira. “Nablus, Illuminated by the Sun.” SamiraBadran.com. Accessed January 9, 2025.
Boullata, Kamal, “Art: Excerpts from the Encyclopedia of the Palestinians.” Palestinian American Research Center, 2000.
“The Calligrapher and Visual Artist Jamal Badran.” [In Arabic.] Amman Typography, June 17, 2014.
Halaby, Samia. “The Pictorial Arts of Jerusalem, 1900–1948.” In Jerusalem Interrupted: Modernity and Colonial Transformation 1917–Present, edited by Lena Jayyusi, 21–56. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2015.
“Jamal Badran.” All 4 Palestine. Accessed January 9, 2025.
“Jamal Badran.” Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts. Accessed January 9, 2025.
“Jamal Badran: A Prominent Palestinian Icon in the Field of Fine Arts in Palestine.” [In Arabic.] Al-Awda Palestinian Foundation, 2016.
“The Launch of the ‘Jamal Badran’ Prize: A Prioneer in Palestinian Fine Arts.” [In Arabic.] al-Dustur, July 3, 2014. Arabic.
Mikdadi, Salwa. “Badrans: A Century of Tradition and Innovation.” This Week in Palestine, October 2007.
al-Tal, Samia. “Samira Badran and the Memory of the Land Present in All Her Works.” [In Arabic.] Raseef22, February 28, 2021.
Notes
Salwa Mikdadi, “Badrans: A Century of Tradition and Innovation,” This Week in Palestine, October 2007.
Alessandra Amin, “Jamal Badran, Palestine (1909-1999),” Dalloul Art Foundation, accessed January 9, 2025.
Mikdadi, “Badrans.”
“Jamal Badran: A Prominent Palestinian Icon in the Field of Fine Arts in Palestine” [in Arabic], Al-Awda Palestinian Foundation, 2016; “Jamal Badran,” Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, accessed January 9, 2025.
Rana Anani, “The Grand Master of Islamic Decoration,” Jerusalem Times, January 16, 1998.
Anani, “The Grand Master.”
Anani, “The Grand Master.”
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
“Jamal Badran” (Al-Awda Palestinian Foundation).
Ali T. As‘ad, “Exhibiting Nation: A Brief History of Palestinian Exhibition Making in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Palestine Studies 53, no. 1 (2024).
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
Kamal Boullata, “Art: Excerpts from the Encyclopedia of the Palestinians,” Palestinian American Research Center, 2000.
Mikdadi, “Badrans.”
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
Mikdadi, “Badrans”; Samia Halaby, “The Pictorial Arts of Jerusalem, 1900–1948,” in Jerusalem Interrupted: Modernity and Colonial Transformation 1917–Present, ed. Lena Jayyusi (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2015), 41–42.
“The Calligrapher and Visual Artist Jamal Badran” [in Arabic], Amman Typography, June 17, 2014.
Mikdadi, “Badrans.”
Quoted in Halaby, “Pictorial Arts,” 41.
Samia al-Tal, “Samira Badran and the Memory of the Land Present in All Her Works” [in Arabic], Raseef22, February 28, 2021.
Halaby, “Pictorial Arts,” 43.
Mikdadi, “Badrans.”
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
“The Calligrapher.”
“The Calligrapher.”
Mikdadi, ”Badrans.”
“The Calligrapher.”
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
Anani, “The Grand Master.”
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
Walid H. Abweini, Rizeq N. Hammad, Abdel-Elah M. Abdeen, May M. Hourani, “Reconstructing Salah al-Din Minbar of al-Aqsa Mosque: Challenges and Results,” International Journal of Conservation Science 4, no. 3 (July–September 2013): 307–16.
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
“The Launch of the ‘Jamal Badran’ Prize: A Pioneer in Palestinian Fine Arts” [in Arabic], al-Dustur, July 3, 2014.
Anani, “The Great Master.”
“Jamal Badran,” All 4 Palestine, accessed January 9, 2025.
“Badran, Jamal (1909-1999),” PASSIA, accessed January 9, 2025.
Amin, “Jamal Badran.”
Samira Badran, “Nablus, Illuminated by the Sun,” SamiraBadran.com, accessed January 9, 2025.
Halaby, “Pictorial Arts,” 42.