Jamal was born in Salamiyah in 1961 and studied mechanical engineering at the University of Aleppo. He now resides and works in Greece, Athens, which he first visited in 1988.[1] He chose Greece "for its natural light and colors, which cannot be imitated even by the best photoshop application, and for its culture".[2]
Exhibitions of his work have been held in the United States (New York), Germany (Düsseldorf), Lebanon, Jordan, Dubai, China, and Greece.[3] He held a solo exhibition (The Silk Road) in 2016, first in Athens at the Benaki Museum and then at the Museum of Asian Art of Corfu.[4] In October 2018 the exhibition was transferred to China, at the Dalian Modern Museum.[5]
According to, Jamal uses tradition as a basis for his powerful paintings, while real-life motifs are turned into "flowing colour energies". With his art, Jamal tries to look behind the surfaces, and to harmonically connect the oriental with the occidental artistic schools.[6]
History of art professor Manos Stefanidis regards Jamal as a "pictor classicus" – in the way Giorgio de Chirico used the term, namely a painter first addressing the problem of positioning the subject in space – who integrates modern European painting in his art, "but with terms of locality and an emphasis on the personal agony of expression".[7] According to Stefanidis, Jamal acts as a defender of "cultural reciprocity" between East and West, leading the artistic revival of the Arab world.[8]