The History of Jewelry Making in Palestine: Research Documenting a Dispersed and Overlooked Heritage

Not every journalistic story begins with a scheduled interview or a carefully planned idea. Some stories happen by chance.

During Jerusalem Story’s visit to the exhibit My Grandmother and Her Adornments, which opened on June 20, 2026, at the Palestinian Art Court—al-Hosh in Jerusalem, a small booklet caught our attention. It was a research paper documenting the history of jewelry making in Palestine, developed as part of the exhibit.

The paper explores the cultural and national significance of an ancient craft that has persisted throughout history, despite countless challenges and changes in Palestine. Its pages prompted us to examine this remarkable research more closely and to speak with its authors, Jerusalemite jewelry designers Rawan Bazbazat and Nour Qaimari, who spent six months conducting archival research and tracing historical details.

Here, we present some of the key findings of the paper, alongside interviews with the two designers to share the researchers’ initiative and aim.

According to the study, the origins of metalwork and jewelry making in Palestine date back to ancient times, even before the time of Jesus. Archaeological excavations at several Palestinian sites have uncovered tools and ornaments made of gold, silver, and bronze. These discoveries demonstrate an early mastery of metal smelting, casting, and decorative techniques, reflecting the important economic and cultural role that metal crafts played in local societies.

During the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods, the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus, and Safed experienced remarkable growth in the production of precious metals and copperwork. Goldsmiths’ markets became important commercial and artisanal hubs, where craftspeople mastered techniques including casting, soldering, inlaying, and engraving. They produced jewelry and metal tools that combined practical function with aesthetics. These industries were closely connected to religious architecture and everyday social life, contributing significantly to the urban identity of Palestinian cities.

At the beginning of the Ottoman era, traditional crafts were reorganized under a guild system. The guild of goldsmiths brought together artisans working in gold and silver from different religious communities. The profession was regulated by official authorities through an Islamic court and a hallmarking regulatory system that guaranteed the quality and purity of precious metals.

During this period, Jerusalem’s goldsmiths’ market became a major center of production and trade, maintaining its economic and social importance for centuries.

However, during the Colonial British Mandate, Palestinian traditional crafts—including jewelry making and metalworking—suffered a significant decline. While official discourse claimed a commitment to protecting local heritage and encouraging handicrafts, actual practices indicated greater support for Jewish artistic and artisanal institutions associated with the Zionist project.

The Pro-Jerusalem Society, founded by Charles Robert Ashbee, played a key role in reorganizing Jerusalem’s craft sector. Budgets were allocated to providing workshops for metalworking and other crafts, but these initiatives were carried out in cooperation with the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Crafts, which became the principal institution for training Jewish artisans and advancing modern artistic industries. Meanwhile, Palestinian craftspeople remained largely excluded from institutional support. These policies helped create conditions that strengthened institutions linked to the Zionist project at the expense of Palestinian artisans.

Exhibitions held during the British Mandate further reinforced this imbalance. Arab handicrafts were presented as relics of a traditional past, while Jewish crafts were promoted as symbols of modernity and industrial progress. As a result, Jewish institutions enjoyed greater access to funding, marketing opportunities, and international partnerships; whereas Palestinian artisans continued to depend primarily on traditional local markets in cities like Jerusalem, Hebron, and Acre.

This unequal distribution of support gradually reshaped the crafts sector. Jewish production came to be associated with progress and modernization, while Palestinian craftsmanship was increasingly confined to the realm of folklore and heritage. Consequently, jewelry making and other traditional crafts became part of the broader cultural and economic struggle over identity and representation in Palestine during the British Mandate period.

The research paper explores the cultural and artistic dimensions of Palestinian jewelry, revealing an extraordinary diversity of forms, functions, and production techniques. Far more than mere bodily adornment, Palestinian jewelry expressed social status, local identity, and served as a form of symbolic protection.

The ornaments included headpieces and hair jewelry—such as qaramel, samadeh, and shatweh—along with chin chains, necklaces, amulet chains, bracelets, anklets, and decorative elements attached to head coverings and belts. This variety demonstrates that jewelry was an integral part of dress and bodily expression, not a separate accessory.

The materials used reveal a flexible understanding of value. Worth was not determined solely by the purity of silver or the intrinsic value of the material itself but also by appearance, shine, and symbolic function. Craftsmen combined silver with plated copper, coins, glass beads, coral, agate, amber, cowrie shells, and even plant materials such as cloves.

This diversity reflects a dynamic local craft tradition that evolved through trade, pilgrimage, and regional exchange while preserving its aesthetic, social, and protective functions.

The two jewelry designers devoted a section of their research to the methodological challenges of studying Palestinian jewelry. They found that much of the existing literature—particularly works produced during the late Ottoman period, the British Mandate, and afterward—was shaped by a colonial framework of knowledge. Far from neutral, this framework directly influenced how Palestinian crafts were represented, and determined the forms of knowledge that were documented and preserved—and those that were concealed.

According to the authors, Western researchers and colonial administrators who documented crafts, including gold and silversmithing, generally focused on aspects that supported their view of the region as a so-called traditional society. In doing so, they detached the craft from its authentic social, economic, and political context.

Equally significant was the failure to document artisans’ practical knowledge in a balanced way. Most studies tended to emphasize the visual or folkloric qualities of jewelry while neglecting technical skills, production methods, and the networks of local craftspeople.

The researchers’ field interviews revealed another major obstacle: For generations, families that are engaged in jewelry making treated their technical knowledge, working methods, alloy formulas, and specialized shaping tools as closely guarded family secrets. This secrecy formed part of the culture of the craft. Skills were passed from father to son, or from one family member to another, without written manuals or formal archives documenting the profession. As a result, a large body of artisanal expertise remains undocumented and inaccessible to researchers, creating significant gaps in our understanding of historic jewelry workshops and traditional production techniques.

It was at this point that Jerusalem Story spoke with Jerusalem-based jewelry designer Nour Qaimari, who was responsible for the fieldwork and interviews after months of archival and theoretical research. Nour explained that what surprised her most was the reluctance of many artisans to share information. Families had their reasons. She recounted that some Armenian goldsmiths had once shown their craft to others and shared certain techniques; and those methods were later adopted in Hebron, where jewelers who had learned from the Armenian craftsmen established flourishing businesses. Another challenge is that most of the older generation of goldsmiths have already passed away. Those still living are generally over 90 years old, making it difficult for them to remember every detail of their craft or, in some cases, to be persuaded to discuss it at all.

Nour met with Alex Salman, a nonagenarian jeweler, in his shop in the Aftimos Market in Jerusalem’s Old City. He is the son of the late goldsmith Khalil Salman. Nour explained, “Alex is over 90 years old. He shared what he remembered with complete spontaneity. His answers were remarkably simple. They don’t work the way we do things today. We might spend months developing a design concept, but he told me he never sat down with paper and pencil to design anything. He simply created whatever came to mind. A piece might take the shape of an orange or a pomegranate, for example, without any prior consideration of its symbolism or meaning.”1

She was equally struck when Alex explained that women would purchase these pieces, and only later—once they spread throughout a village or town—would women begin assigning meanings to them. Symbolism, he insisted, did not originate with the maker.

“That realization completely stunned me. They worked in the exact opposite way that we do today. We spend months developing concepts before designing anything. Eventually, I came to understand that our current approach in this domain reflects a colonial way of thinking that was introduced during the British colonial period. We overthink and overplan because those were the educational methods brought to Palestine during that time," Nour said.

Nour’s second task was to document historical photographs of Palestinian jewelry. She examined collections housed at the Palestine Heritage Museum within the Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi compound, as well as the private collection of Yasser Barakat, who personally showed her the pieces in Jerusalem’s Old City. Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of jewelry making, Yasser and his son, Ihab, shared the stories associated with the pieces—a perspective Nour found especially valuable.

Jerusalem Story asked her about the object that captivated her the most. She said: “an open necklace rather than a closed one, from whose sides hung miniature lizards, frogs, and hearts. I learned from Yasser Barakat and his son that women traditionally placed this necklace on newborn children to protect them from evil spirits, the evil eye, and envy. This necklace inspired my most recent artwork, Crafting a Dream, from which seven Palestinian symbols were suspended, including the lizard motif.”

Jerusalem-based jewelry designer Rawan Bazbazat began by explaining what motivated her to work on the research paper. When she graduated, she found that there were very few books devoted specifically to Palestinian jewelry. Whenever jewelry was mentioned, it appeared only in discussions of the Palestinian embroidered thobe, treated as a complementary element rather than as a subject worthy of study in its own right.

Rawan also discovered how little information exists about Palestinian goldsmiths. While many of their names are known, almost no one knows where their workshops were located or how many generations in each family practiced the craft. “The information was always like scattered islands. It is clear that because of the British Mandate, the Jordanian period, and later Israeli occupation, a great deal of information has been lost,” she said.2

Her research also revealed the extent to which Palestinian jewelry has been shaped by the cultures surrounding Palestine. The craft was influenced by parts of Africa, Yemen, Ottoman Turkey, the Syrian city of Aleppo, and other regions. “Jewelry also tells the story of the civilizations that passed through our land. We can see the imprint of both the Ottoman and Mamluk periods on Palestinian jewelry, as well as the modern influences that later emerged. It is also important to remember that most Palestinian jewelry served a protective function. It was not worn solely for adornment but also to guard against evil, illness, and other forms of harm,” Rawan explained.

According to Rawan, jewelry also communicated a woman’s social status. It could indicate whether she was married or unmarried, reflect her father’s identity and standing within the community, and reveal the village or city from which she came.

Rawan also spoke about an important shift in the symbolism of Palestinian jewelry during the First Intifada in the late 1980s. The two researchers found that symbols such as Handala, the olive tree, and the map of Palestine began appearing in jewelry at that time.

The researchers also observed the emergence of new symbols following the most recent war on Gaza that began on October 7, 2023. These include the inverted red triangle, used by the Palestinian resistance to identify military targets during the war, as well as depictions of Abu Obeida, the masked spokesperson for the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in contemporary jewelry designs.

“This made us realize that Palestinian jewelry continues to evolve and, over the decades, has acquired not only a social dimension but also a political one,” Rawan said.

Following this research, Nour decided to draw her artistic inspiration not from nature, the streets, or Arabic calligraphy, but from Palestinian jewelry and its symbolic language. She explained: “I also want to create new symbols within the tradition of Palestinian jewelry, not simply reproduce what already exists, so that decades from now, future generations can see both what once existed and how this artistic tradition continued to evolve.”

Nour concluded that the project had left her with a profound sense of responsibility. She and Rawan have uncovered an immense body of knowledge that urgently needs to be documented in books. Their next goal, she revealed, is to produce a comprehensive study or book on Palestinian jewelry, since no single volume currently covers wide themes related to Palestinian jewelry. Existing works mention jewelry only briefly and in the last pages of books devoted primarily to Palestinian dress and usually focus on manufacturing techniques rather than symbolism or cultural significance.

Reflecting on the project, Rawan said: “This research left me with a tremendous sense of responsibility to gather and pass on more information, especially the knowledge that disappeared or became scattered during the Nakba. We have only shed light on the subject; in doing so, we have many new questions.”

The two researchers have decided to pursue their work in greater depth now that they have identified areas where information remains scarce. They hope to undertake this next stage of research in the near future.

Palestinian jewelry preserves more than the luster of precious metals. It carries the stories of those who wore it, the hands of the goldsmiths who crafted it, and the symbols that reflect a people’s attachment to their homeland and identity. While this research succeeds in revealing a forgotten history, one question remains: How many Palestinian stories and traditional crafts are still waiting to be documented before they fade into oblivion?