Ṣalat al-Fann al-Ḥadīth al-fiĀlamı (Gallery of International Modern Art, or Art Moderne International (AMI)) was the first private art gallery in Syria. Launched by brothers…
Exploring modernity and its intellectual trends in the Middle East is a very fitting endeavour, as ‘Middle East’ itself is a ‘modern’ term which has…
The painter Elias Zayyat (born Damascus, Syria, 1935) has played a leading role in developing a Syrian modern art pedagogy and analysis of Syrian visual…
Fateh al-Moudarres is considered a leader among Syria’s generation of modernist painters born in the 1920s. Because of his early participation in literary salons, his…
Nizar Qabbani (1923–98) was born in Damascus, Syria, into a merchant family. He studied law at Damascus University and then entered the Syrian diplomatic service,…
Walīd Ikhlāṣī has become known as one of Syria’s most productive dramatists and novelists. Since his first short story collection in 1963 he has produced…
Saadallah Wannus, Syria’s best known and most respected contemporary playwright, was born in Tartous province. His plays were deeply critical of Arab power structures and…
Yūsuf al-Khāl was a Lebanese poet and writer, born in 1917 in Syria. He graduated in 1944 from the Philosophy Department at the American University…
Leila Nseir was one of the first women artists in Syria to achieve institutional recognition during the national art movement. In 1961 she traveled to…
Nazir Nabaa, a respected Syrian painter, made his greatest contributions to Arab modern art in the 1960s and 1970s, when he contributed to the graphic…
Born in Damascus, the Syrian painter Marwan Kassab Bachi, who often goes by only the name Marwan, began his career in Damascus before immigrating to…
Abdelké was born in Qameshli, Syria, in 1951. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus in 1976. Politically active as a member…
Taheya Halim was an artist who began her arts education as a student of the Syrian artist Youssef Taraboulsi. In 1943, she began working as…
Mahmoud Hammad, born in Jarabulus, Syria, was among the first Arab artists to adopt the letterforms of the Arabic language as a basis for modern…
Louay Kayyali was one of the leading painters of the emergent Syrian art scene during the 1960s and 1970s. His most admired works depict individual laborers…
Born in Damascus in 1931, Zakariyya Tāmir (Arabic زكريا تامر also transliterated Zakaria Tamer) is a renowned Syrian short-story writer, columnist, and the author of…
Al-Jaafari was one of the first painters in Syria to achieve recognition as a professional artist. Pursuing a semi-romantic realist style for the whole of…
‘Abd al Salām Al-‘Ujaylī was one of the most productive and versatile literary figures in twentieth-century Syria. His experiences both as a medical doctor and…
Muhammad Maghut, a Syrian poet born in Salamiya, is widely credited with introducing free-verse into Arabic poetry. He published his first collection, Huzn fi daw’…
Butrus Al-Bustani is known as the “father of the Arabic Renaissance” and was a leading pioneer of the Al-Nahda (النهضه) or cultural awakening. Al-Bustani sought…
Madiha Umar was the first Iraqi woman to receive a governmental scholarship to travel to Europe, where she officially studied education but also began art…
The Young Turk Revolution refers to the events that occurred in 1908 under the initiative of the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihad ve Terakki…
Avot Yeshurun was a renowned Hebrew poet who remained split between two cities throughout his life: his childhood village Krasnistav and the city of Tel-Aviv,…
Iraqi poet Abdul-Wahab al-Bayati was one of the foremost pioneers of Arabic poetry during the twentieth century. His poetry was revolutionary in poetic form and…