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Amal Al KhedairyAmal Al Khedairy (born 1928)[1] is an Iraqi academic, lecturer, scholar,[2] art historian[3] and founder and director of the cultural centre "Al Beit Al Iraqi" ("The Iraqi House") in Baghdad.[1][4] The centre would focus mostly on reviving Iraqi crafts and finding new avenues for them, as well as concerts and lectures; being the only institution of its kind in Baghdad to do so during the 90s.[4] It was the only private center in Iraq focusing on Iraqi craft and heritage in Baghdad during the mid eighties until the fall of Baghdad on 9 April 2003. BiographyAmal Al Khedairy was born in Damascus, French Syria, 1928, to a Syrian mother and well-known Iraqi father, Yasseen Al Khedairy, whose family has deep roots in Iraq since the 15th century.[1] Her father's family are connected to the Shammar tribe who originated from Najd in the Arabian Peninsula.[1] They later settled in the old quarter of Baghdad, close to the Mausoleum of al-Gilani in the Bab al-Sheikh neighborhood, where her father would build a home later to become Amal's "Al Beit Al Iraqi" in 1988;[4] which was destroyed in a bombing by the American forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq on April 4, 2003. She studied at the University of London in the 1950s and also in Lausanne, Switzerland.[1] Fluent in Arabic, English and French, with conversational Turkish and Spanish, Khedairy has been a lecturer at both the University of Baghdad, in the College of Architecture and the Women's College.[1] Al Khedairy has one son, Munir El-Kadi (born 1970) and she resides between Amman, Jordan and Baghdad, Iraq. References
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