Sami Burhan
1929–2021 · Aleppo & Rome
Sami Burhan was born in the al-Jallum quarter of Aleppo on 20 February 1929. He learned the Qur'an at the Kawakibi school, and as a young man studied calligraphy in Aleppo with a master named Husayn Husni; on a visit to Istanbul in 1952 he also sought out Hamid Aytaç al-Amidi. After teaching drawing in Syrian schools he went to Paris in 1954, then settled in Italy and studied painting and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome from 1963 to 1967, later adding medal-making. From 1972 he taught Islamic calligraphy at the University of Rome. His work joins Arabic letters with painting and sculpture, and critics place him among the first Syrian artists of the 1960s to build modern pictures out of calligraphy and ornament. He designed the United Nations anti-drug emblem of 1986, made large murals and sculptures for buildings in Riyadh and Jeddah, and set up public letter-sculptures in Aleppo. Sharjah honoured him in 1993 and 2010. Late in life he tried to return to Aleppo, but war destroyed his farm, and he died in Rome on 30 July 2021.
Achievements
- Studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris (1954) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (1963–67).
- Taught Islamic calligraphy at the University of Rome from 1972.
- Won the United Nations anti-drug poster design ('Yes to life, no to drugs'), 1986.
- Made four 18-metre murals and the marble sculpture 'Ya Shafi' for King Fahd Medical City, Riyadh, 1992.
- Named a 'pioneer of Arab art' at the first Sharjah Biennial (1993) and honoured at the Sharjah Calligraphy Biennial (2010).
Taught by: Husayn Husni, Hamid Aytaç
His work
He died in 2021, so his work is still under copyright and is not shown; no free photograph of him was found on Wikimedia Commons.
Write in the tradition this hand shaped.
Open Mashq Studio →Living calligraphers you can buy from — signed originals on paper, from AED 550: Anwar Alhulwani (Thuluth) · Ahmed Alhawary (Jali Thuluth, Naskh) · Rasha Kasim (Kufi).
Sources
- dates, teachers, studies, Rome teaching 1972, prizes, murals, death 30 July 2021 ar.wikipedia.org
- Al Bayan profile: hurufiyya, studied with Husayn Husni (1954) albayan.ae
- obituary: death in Italy, 2021 zamanalwsl.net
- identity wikidata.org
Written by the MASHQ studio · last updated 2026-10-05. Further reading, the standard references in English: Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh University Press, 2006) · Annemarie Schimmel, Calligraphy and Islamic Culture (New York University Press, 1984) · Yasin Hamid Safadi, Islamic Calligraphy (Thames and Hudson, 1978).