Mahera Dajani

Mahera Dajani is a prominent Jerusalem figure known for her volunteerism and significant contributions to women’s education, scouts, and sports. She has had key leadership roles in numerous organizations, including Dar Al-Tifel, In‘ash al-Usra, and the Jordanian Girl Guides Association.

On official documents, Dajani’s birth date is November 21, 1931. But in fact the year might have been 1932, she acknowledges; her parents lost all documents, including birth certificates, during the various displacements they endured throughout her childhood and adolescence.1

Dajani’s father was the sheikh and custodian of the religious endowment [Mutawalli al-Waqf] for a few zawiyas in Jerusalem, including the zawiya of Mount Zion, which is where the family lived and where Dajani was born. The family consisted of six boys (Kamal, Khaled, ‘Ala’ al-Din, Samir, Hisham, and Nabil) and three girls (Samia, Mahera, and Basima).

Dajani completed her high school education at al-Ma’muniyya High School for Girls in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in 1948. At the time, Jerusalem was engulfed by violence in the wake of the UN Partition Plan for the country, which was announced in November 1947. She shares: “We were taking the metric exam in 1948, while the Deir Yassin massacre was happening. It had been impossible for us to reach the school, so the arrangement was for us to take the exam from a house in the Bab al-Zahra area.” Dajani recalls wondering how they were going to get out; she could hear shooting and see fire right outside the building.

Upon finishing her exam, she went home and found only her father there. He told her that the situation was so dangerous that the family went to Hebron to stay with her aunt, and that she was supposed to join them there immediately:

Dajani remembers attending the Jerusalem funeral of military leader Abdel Qader al-Husseini, who was killed in the Battle of al-Qastal on April 8, 1948, the day before the Deir Yassin massacre.

A month after the massacre, she would experience a more personal loss.

While the women and children in Dajani’s household had gone to Hebron for safety, the young men remained in Jerusalem to protect their properties. There was news of an upcoming attack on their neighborhood in Mount Zion, most probably by the Haganah, that would approach by way of the high slopes of the gate.3 To protect the area, ‘Ala’ al-Din and a few of his friends (including Suleiman Husni and Rashed ‘Izzat) used ropes to scale the Old City wall; he sat at the corner of the wall near Mount Zion Gate and monitored movement on the road. When he learned that he was sitting in an area that had rigged traps, he jumped off the wall; in the process, he injured his legs. Later, the Zionist militias saw him near Mount Zion Gate, and they shot him dead. The young men, joined later by one of his brothers, carried him away. ‘Ala’ al-Din was buried in a collective grave together with 25 other community protectors at al-Yusufiyya/Bab al-Asbat (Lions’ Gate) Cemetery in Jerusalem, near the Old City wall.

Recalling this loss more than 70 years later, Dajani said that her heart still breaks every day for her beloved brother. Once her mother got the news, a few days after his death, she fainted on the spot and died not long after at the age of 52.

“We lost everything—including the most precious people to our hearts,” Dajani said when she described the 1948 Nakba.4

The family became stranded, first in Hebron and then at some point in Syria, but they quickly returned to Jericho, fearing that they might be unable to return to Jerusalem if they waited. They stayed at her grandfather’s house in Jericho for a few months. During that time, she commuted daily as a volunteer teacher at al-Qadisiyya School in Jerusalem.

The family moved to Hebron, and Dajani began volunteering as an English language teacher at Dar al-Mu‘allimat and Hasan Mustafa Cultural Center.

After two years of volunteer work, she was hired as a full-time teacher at the Jordanian Ministry of Education, where she helped to develop the national physical education curriculum for the primary grades. In due time, she was appointed by the Ministry of Education as supervisor for physical education programs nationally. She mentored teachers of gymnastics, badminton, and dabke.

Dajani was a prominent and active member of the first Brownie pack (girls’ scout troupe), founded in 1954. She organized sports activities, scouting programs, and summer festivals and supervised sports competitions between schools. Her diligent efforts led to the establishment of a scouting association: in 1962, she became the first president of the Jordanian Girl Guides Association.5

She led the regional scouts’ groups, initially set up by Jordan’s Queen Zein (with whom she would personally meet on several occasions). In 1963, Dajani was elected by the Jordanian Ministry of Education to represent the Jordanian Association for Girls at the 18th World Girl Guides Conference held in Denmark. She had leadership roles in several scout conferences and camps in Finland, Egypt, Kuwait, Iraq, and Libya.

Dajani’s voluntarism earned her widespread praise and community recognition. In due time, she became director of the library at the Ministry of Education and a member of the Red Crescent Society.

In the mid-1960s, she joined al-Bireh Women’s Arab Union Society, a charitable and humanitarian society. Under the leadership of the late Samiha Khalil, this initiative evolved into the Family Revival Society, In‘ash al-Usra, in 1967. Dajani supervised the opening of its vocational training centers and helped establish women’s associations and social assistance connected with it. This society provided support to the most affected and marginalized Palestinian children and families.

In reflecting about her work with In‘ash al-Usra, Dajani recalls how she used to go to Gaza and other places every month, as the society distributed money to martyrs’ families—particularly during and after the 1967 Naksa. In‘ash al-Usra would grow to become an effective Palestinian welfare organization in continuous operation.

Dajani’s association with Dar Al-Tifel, the association founded by Hind al-Husseini to board and educate orphaned children, is a source of pride for her. She has worked with the association since 1962. “Hind al-Husseini had personally requested me to be part of the team in 1962,” Dajani shares, and so when al-Husseini passed away in 1994, Dajani was the logical successor.

Initially, though, she was reluctant. Out of the country when al-Husseini passed away, she started to receive various calls with many pleas and requests; she was regarded as the most suitable person to head the organization. Initially, she was adamant in her refusal to take on this overwhelming task: “I was aware of the challenges,” Dajani explains. However, once she returned to Jerusalem and attended a board meeting in 1995, she realized that Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi might even shut down unless someone who knew the organization well stepped in and made it their primary focus. She agreed to take on the voluntary role on a temporary basis, but as she observed almost three decades later, “One day and one challenge led to another.” Since 1995 and as of this writing, she has chaired the board of the foundation.

Among the memorabilia she shows visitors is a ledger she handles with care; it contains black-and-while photographs, names, and brief biographical data for the 55 children al-Husseini had seen standing barefoot by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that fateful April day, as well as the other children who were later sheltered at the Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi Orphanage that al-Husseini founded to care for them.

Dajani takes pride in her leadership role at Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi, and she is proud of the girls who have been educated there. She is happy to share their accomplishments, be it the education degrees they have received, the jobs they have secured, their creative accomplishments, or the families they have raised. “Serving orphans is a noble cause and benefits one’s homeland,” she stresses.

Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi Institution includes the Palestinian Heritage Museum. One of Dajani’s accomplishments was a folkloric fashion performance show in cooperation with a museum in Minnesota in 2011.

Her dream is to build a commercial center next to the Palestinian Heritage Museum as an income-generating project that would finance the work of Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi.

She began developing a blueprint for the new facility as long ago as 1995. She managed to raise $1.5 million, and she needs another half a million dollars to accomplish her vision.

She is determined to make that dream a reality.

Dajani feels proud to have helped realize a handful of dreams that al-Husseini had for Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi, including those for the Palestinian Heritage Museum. Her public relations and strong oratory skills have helped her steer the organization during difficult times. A speech she delivered in Sharjah on the situation in Jerusalem in the late 1990s was so moving that the Emir of Sharjah, Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qasimi, and his wife, Sheikha Jawaher, made a generous donation of 1 million dirhams (almost $300,000) to restore the museum in 1998.

Much like al-Husseini, Dajani has remained dedicated to investing in Jerusalem and its history through the organization’s research center, the Issaf Nashashibi Center for Culture and Literature. She described it as “an indispensable resource for researchers and university students.”

Dajani now lives in the Husseini/Dar Al-Tifel mansion in Sheikh Jarrah. On display in the living room are photos of herself with the late Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser and the late king Hussein bin Talal of Jordan.

She has participated in important conferences on Jerusalem, including one in Morocco in 1999 about the future of Arab Jerusalem under the patronage of King Hassan II, the Center of Arab European Studies, and the League of Arab States.

She has received several awards, including the Medal of Education from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1984 for her successful efforts in the educational and scouts’ departments and the Medal of Merit and Excellence from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2016, in appreciation of her educative, social, humanitarian, folkloric, and scout contributions and in supporting the steadfastness of Palestinian Jerusalemites.

She has published books, mostly about scouts, including The World of Girl Scouts and Guides: Giving and Belonging in 1997 by Al-Istiqlal University in Jericho.

She was honored by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Istanbul as a distinguished figure in Jerusalem in 2009. In 2016, she received the title of “Distinguished Jerusalemite Woman of the Year” by Al-Mortaqa Women Organization in honor of her contribution to Jerusalem society.6 She has been recognized for her service by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Al-Quds University, the General Union of Palestinian Teachers, the Arab Civic Associations Network, and Al-Quds Scouts Groups.

But ask her, and Dajani is likely to say that the accomplishment that means the most to her is serving orphans. She views this as a noble cause, and she believes strongly that all children and young girls deserve a chance for shelter, safety, a decent life, and education.

“The 1948 War.” Jordan Armed Forces—Arab Army. Accessed January 15, 2025.

“The Al-Bireh Women’s Arab Union Society (WAUS) Collection.” The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive. Accessed January 13, 2025.

“A Cherished Woman from the Land of Palestine: The Educator Mahera Muhammad Jamal Kamal al-Din al-Dajani.” [In Arabic.] Hasan Mustafa Cultural Center. Accessed January 19, 2025.

“Erdogan Honors Jerusalemite Mahera Dajani for Her Distinguished Palestinian Role.” [In Arabic.] Al-Quds International Institution. October 30, 2009.

“Jerusalemite Mahera Dajani: 37 Years of Voluntary Education.” [In Arabic.] Hind Husseini Foundation (Dar Tifel al-Arabi—Jerusalem). January 5, 2023.

“Jordanian Association for Boy Scouts and Girl Guides.” World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Accessed January 10, 2025.

“Mahera Al-Dajani.” All4Palestine. Accessed January 9, 2025.

“Mahera Dajani. Stories from These Times.” [In Arabic.] Qouchannel. October 11, 2020.

“Palestine President Awards Mahera Dajani Medal of Merit and Excellence.” [In Arabic.] President.ps. August 24, 2016.

Wikipedia. s.v. “Mahera Dajani.” [In Arabic.] Last modified December 23, 2024, 14:20.

[Credit for profile picture: Khalil Assali for Jerusalem Story].