Zulfa al-Sa'di (1905 – 1988) was a

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

visual artist, known for her paintings. She also went by the name Zulfa Al Saadi.

Biography

Zulfa al-Sa'di was born in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

to a family of

Sufis Sufism ( or ) is a mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic purification, spirituality, ritualism, and asceticism. Practitioners of Sufism are referred to as "Sufis" (from , ), and ...

. She was a student of Nicolas Sayegh (1863–1942) from whom she must have learned how to use photographs that chronicled historical events or publicised political figures to develop her paintings. In particular, al-Sa'di was interested in an allegorical use that emphasized symbolic meanings about national Palestinian identity. In 1933, at age 23, she participated in The Arab Exhibition in Mandate Jerusalem. There, she exhibited portraits of eminent men in the Arab world of her time, including

Sharif Husayn Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi ( ; 1 May 18544 June 1931) was an Arab leader from the Banu Qatadah branch of the Banu Hashim clan who was the Sharif of Mecca, Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908 and, after proclaiming the Great Arab Revolt against ...

, King Faysal I of Iraq, and Egyptian poet

Ahmad Shawqi Ahmed Shawqi (, , ; 1868–1932), nicknamed the Prince of Poets ( ''Amīr al-Shu‘arā’''), was an Egyptian poet laureate, linguist, and one of the most famous Arabic literary writers of the modern era in the Arab World. Life Shawqi was b ...

. In 1938, she married Saif al-Din al-Dajani and lived and worked in

until the 1948 Nakba, when she was forced to move to Damascus, Syria, where she taught art to Palestinian refugee children in schools affiliated with the

United Nations Relief and Works Agency United may refer to: Places * United, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community * United, West Virginia, an unincorporated community Arts and entertainment Films * ''United'' (2003 film), a Norwegian film * ''United'' (2011 film), a BBC Two f ...

Artistic production

Al-Sa'di is best known for her paintings of prominent historical and literary figures such as

Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub ( – 4 March 1193), commonly known as Saladin, was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from a Kurds, Kurdish family, he was the first sultan of both Egypt in the Middle Ages#Ayyubid period, Egypt and Syri ...

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (Pashto/), also known as Jamāl ad-Dīn Asadābādī () and commonly known as Al-Afghani (1838/1839 – 9 March 1897), was an Iranian political activist and Islamic ideologist who travelled throughout the Mus ...

Omar al-Mukhtar ʿUmar al-Mukhtār Muḥammad Patronymic#Arabic, bin Farḥāt al-Manifī (; 20 August 1858 – 16 September 1931), called The Lion of the Desert, known among the colonial Italians as Matari of the Mnifa, was a Libyan revolutionary and Imam who ...

, and the poet

Ahmed Shawqi Ahmed Shawqi (, , ; 1868–1932), nicknamed the Prince of Poets ( ''Amīr al-Shu‘arā’''), was an Egyptian poet laureate, linguist, and one of the most famous Arabic literary writers of the modern era in the Arab World. Life Shawqi was b ...

, and she focused on the use of metaphors that emphasize symbolic meanings about Palestinian identity in her paintings. In 1933, at the age of 23, she participated in the first Arab National Exhibition organized by the Islamic Council in Jerusalem in 1932, where she exhibited several paintings representing a number of prominent people in the Arab world, such as

Sharif Hussein Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi ( ; 1 May 18544 June 1931) was an Arab leader from the Banu Qatadah branch of the Banu Hashim clan who was the Sharif of Mecca, Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908 and, after proclaiming the Great Arab Revolt against ...

King Faisal I of Iraq Faisal I bin Hussein bin Ali Al-Hashemi (, ''Fayṣal al-Awwal bin Ḥusayn bin ʻAlī al-Hāshimī''; 20 May 1885 – 8 September 1933) was King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 until his death in 1933. A member of the Hashemite family, he was a l ...

, and the Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawqi.

Death

Al-Sa'di died in Syria in 1988 at the age of eighty-three.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:al-Sa'di, Zulfa 1910 births 1988 deaths 20th-century Palestinian women artists 20th-century Palestinian painters Palestinian Sufis Palestinian women painters