Bios

Palestinian Jerusalemites have made myriad and diverse contributions to their city’s history and community fabric. Here we profile some of those people—past and present; famous and obscure—whose lives and work and stories have helped shape the larger Jerusalem Story over time.

Khalil Raad

A prolific photographer whose body of work documented daily life in Jerusalem over six decades

Nahil Bishara

One of the few female artists who depicted Jerusalem in the mid-20th century

The West Side Story Hanna Safieh

Among the first Jerusalemites to use a camera professionally to document key historical events as well as everyday life in pre-1948 Palestine and beyond

Find alphabetically by first letter of last name

Wasif Jawhariyyeh

A musician and diarist who created an invaluable account of life in Jerusalem from the late Ottoman to the British Mandate periods

Bandali al-Jawzi

A Palestinian scholar, historian, professor, and linguist who made significant contributions and prolific translations into Arabic and articulated and reformulated Islamic principles in a revolutionary manner

Salma Khadra Jayyusi

A poet and anthologist who spearheaded a massive effort to make Arabic literature available to English-speaking readers

Nazmi Jubeh

A historian, archeologist, and expert on Palestinian cultural heritage and its preservation, with special expertise on Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron