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Curated Humanity

Free Palestine

News, human stories, history and culture concerning Palestine.

Living heritage

Palestinian Culture

Palestinian culture is contemporary and changing, not a museum relic. This hub gathers what can be documented — UNESCO inscriptions, museum collections, scholarly encyclopaedias, named reporting — and links out to every source.

Written by Curated Humanity from the sources listed under each module. Where a tradition is shared across the Levant, we say so. Where the record is contested or incomplete, we say that too.

A visual regional guide

Openly licensed photographs

A visual regional guide

Several servings of musakhan: flatbread topped with roasted chicken, sumac-coloured onions and pine nuts.
Six servings of musakhan. Photo: Kokaly · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Dish profile

Musakhan: bread, sumac and the new oil

Musakhan is built from a handful of components: taboon flatbread, chicken roasted with plenty of onions cooked down in olive oil, a heavy dusting of sumac and toasted pine nuts. It is widely described as a national dish and is associated with the northern West Bank around Jenin, Tulkarem and Nablus.

Its timing matters as much as its ingredients: it is traditionally made when the autumn harvest produces new olive oil, which is why it belongs as much to the agricultural calendar as to the kitchen. We link to a published recipe rather than printing quantities we have not tested.

Sources / further reading

Food & table

The Palestinian table, region by region

Bread, olive oil, sumac and the long habits of hospitality — a cuisine best understood by region rather than by border.

A large round tray of orange-topped kanafeh at a Nablus market stall.
Kanafeh at the souq in the old city of Nablus. Photo: Guillaume Paumier · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
  • Musakhan — chicken roasted with onions, sumac, olive oil and pine nuts and served on taboon bread — is widely described as Palestine's national dish and is strongly associated with the olive harvest and the northern West Bank around Jenin, Tulkarem and Nablus.
  • Knafeh made with Nabulsi cheese, known as kunafa nabulsiyeh, is the variant tied specifically to the city of Nablus. Nabulsi cheese itself is made across the region from sheep, goat or cow's milk.
  • Olive oil sits at the centre of the table and of the agricultural year; the olive harvest in autumn is both an economic and a family event, and dishes such as musakhan are timed to the new oil.
  • Za'atar, sumac, olive oil and bread form the everyday base of the table, alongside dishes such as maqluba, maftoul and qidreh that are cooked in domestic and celebratory settings.
  • Coffee and the offering of it are central to hospitality. UNESCO inscribed 'Arabic coffee, a symbol of generosity' in 2015, submitted by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar; the State of Palestine is not one of the submitting states, although the custom is shared across the region.

What the record does not say

  • Maqluba, knafeh, za'atar and Arabic coffee are shared across the Levant and the wider Arab world. Curated Humanity does not present shared dishes as exclusively Palestinian.
  • The origin story of knafeh is popularly attached to Nablus, but food historians describe the documentary evidence for a single point of origin as thin. We present it as a regional association, not a settled fact.

Sources / further reading

Tatreez & dress

Embroidery as a language of place

Cross-stitch on a thobe records region, occasion and lineage, and is taught between generations of women.

Close-up of dense couched embroidery in silk, silver and gold thread from a Bethlehem dress.
Detail of silk, silver and gold embroidery on a Bethlehem dress, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
  • UNESCO inscribed 'The art of embroidery in Palestine, practices, skills, knowledge and rituals' on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021.
  • The UNESCO file describes embroidery as practised principally by women, learned informally within families and communities, and used on everyday as well as ceremonial dress.
  • Motifs and colour conventions differ by locality, which is why a garment can often be read as belonging to a particular area or period.
  • The Palestinian Museum's exhibition 'Labour of Love' examined the history and changing use of Palestinian embroidery; earlier and later iterations were shown at Birzeit from 2018 and in Doha in 2022–23.

What the record does not say

  • Attributions of specific motifs to specific villages vary between collections and scholars. Curated Humanity links to museum collections rather than publishing a motif-by-motif map we cannot source.

Sources / further reading

Music & dance

Dabkeh, folk song and the instruments of the region

A line dance performed at weddings and gatherings, recognised by UNESCO in 2023, and a living popular music scene.

  • UNESCO inscribed 'Dabkeh, traditional dance in Palestine' on its Representative List in 2023.
  • The UNESCO description sets dabkeh in weddings and communal celebration, accompanied by wind instruments and folk singing, including sung forms such as al-Dalona and Zarif al-Tawla.
  • The nomination file names zajal — improvised sung poetry — and the argul/yargul among the accompanying arts and instruments.
  • The oud, mijwiz and yargul are played across the eastern Mediterranean; their use in Palestinian music is part of a shared regional instrumentarium rather than an exclusive one.

What the record does not say

  • Dabkeh in related forms is danced in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The UNESCO inscription recognises the Palestinian practice; it does not assign ownership of the wider tradition.

Sources / further reading

Oral tradition

The Palestinian Hikaye

A storytelling form carried in the spoken dialect, performed largely by women for family audiences.

  • The Palestinian Hikaye was proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005 and was incorporated into UNESCO's Representative List in 2008.
  • UNESCO describes the Hikaye as narrated mainly by older women in the colloquial dialect, typically to small gatherings of women and children.
  • The form is transmitted by hearing and repetition rather than in writing, which makes the surviving recordings and transcriptions in research collections significant.

Sources / further reading

Family & social life

Weddings, hospitality and the religious calendar

Celebration, mourning and welcome are organised around extended family, and around both Muslim and Christian calendars.

  • Weddings are the setting in which several of the traditions recognised by UNESCO — dabkeh, embroidered dress, sung poetry — are practised together; the UNESCO dabkeh file describes weddings as a principal occasion for the dance.
  • Palestinian society includes long-established Christian communities, particularly in Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Ramallah, alongside a Muslim majority. Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012.
  • Hospitality customs, including the serving of coffee to guests, are shared across the region and were recognised by UNESCO in the multinational Arabic coffee inscription of 2015.

What the record does not say

  • Wedding and henna customs vary considerably by family, region and religious community. We describe them only at the level our sources support, and we will expand this module as museum-grade sources are added.

Sources / further reading

Land & agriculture

Olives, terraces and the farmed landscape

Dry-stone terraces, irrigation channels, olives and vines form a cultural landscape as much as an economy.

Archival photograph by Khalil Raad, 1930: people harvesting olives among trees.
Olive harvest, photographed by Khalil Raad in 1930. Photo: Khalil Raad · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
  • UNESCO inscribed 'Palestine: Land of Olives and Vines — Cultural Landscape of Southern Jerusalem, Battir' as a World Heritage Site in 2014, and placed it on the List of World Heritage in Danger at the same session.
  • The Battir inscription recognises terraced hillsides, dry-stone walls and an irrigation system fed by springs that supports vegetable growing alongside olives and vines.
  • The Jaffa or shamouti orange, developed by Palestinian growers in the nineteenth century and named for the port city of Jaffa, became the region's best-known agricultural export.
  • The autumn olive harvest remains a family and communal event, and links the agricultural calendar directly to the food described elsewhere in this hub.

Sources / further reading

Crafts

Soap, glass, wood and cloth

Workshop trades that survive in a handful of family businesses, several of them documented by UNESCO.

  • UNESCO inscribed 'Tradition of Nabulsi soap making in Palestine' on its Representative List in 2024, by decision 19.COM 7.b.8.
  • Nabulsi soap is made from virgin olive oil, water and an alkaline compound, and is associated with the soap factories of Nablus.
  • The Hirbawi factory in Hebron, founded in 1961, is the last remaining keffiyeh factory in Palestine; at its height Hebron had roughly thirty such workshops.
  • Olive-wood carving and mother-of-pearl work are long-standing Bethlehem trades, largely serving pilgrimage visitors.

What the record does not say

  • UNESCO's 2023 inscription for mother-of-pearl inlay was submitted by Azerbaijan and Türkiye. Bethlehem's mother-of-pearl craft is not covered by that inscription, and we do not imply UNESCO recognition it does not have.

Sources / further reading

Architecture & place

Stone, courtyard and old city

Courtyard houses, vaulted rooms and dense old-city fabric, catalogued building by building.

A covered market street in the Old City of Hebron.
The souq in the Old City of Hebron/Al-Khalil. Photo: Obada A Zatari · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
  • Riwaq, founded in Ramallah in 1991, began its Registry of Historic Buildings in 1994; the registry documents 50,320 historic buildings across 422 localities in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
  • Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017.
  • Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2023 under criteria (iii) and (iv).
  • Gaza's Great Omari Mosque, the territory's oldest, was largely destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in early December 2023; the minaret remained standing in footage verified by news organisations at the time.
  • The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities runs an online virtual museum of Palestinian objects and heritage, developed with UNESCO and Swedish support.

What the record does not say

  • Accounts of the destruction of heritage sites during the war differ between parties. We link to dated reporting by named news organisations and to UNESCO where it has spoken, rather than asserting a single version.

Sources / further reading

Literature & poetry

Writers who carried the subject

A literature read worldwide in translation. We link to biographies and publishers rather than reproducing the work.

  • Ghassan Kanafani (1936–1972), novelist and journalist, published 'Men in the Sun' in Beirut in 1962; he was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in July 1972.
  • Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008), born in al-Birwa in the Galilee, is the most widely translated Palestinian poet; he wrote the text of the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence.
  • The Institute for Palestine Studies publishes PalQuest, an interactive encyclopaedia with sourced biographies of Palestinian writers and cultural figures.
  • Contemporary Palestinian fiction and memoir in English translation — by writers including Sahar Khalifeh, Adania Shibli, Mourid Barghouti and Ibrahim Nasrallah — is widely available from international publishers.

What the record does not say

  • Curated Humanity does not reproduce poems or extended passages; the work remains in copyright with its authors, estates and publishers.

Sources / further reading

Film, art & photography

The image and who holds it

Cinema on the international festival circuit, a painting tradition with its own institutions, and photographic archives that predate 1948.

  • Elia Suleiman's 'Divine Intervention' (Yadon Ilaheyya, 2002) competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and won the Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize.
  • The film is the middle part of Suleiman's autobiographical trilogy, with 'Chronicle of a Disappearance' (1996) and 'The Time That Remains' (2009).
  • Khalil Raad (1854–1957) opened a photographic studio in Jerusalem in 1890 and is documented as Palestine's first Arab photographer; the Institute for Palestine Studies holds thousands of his images.
  • The Palestinian Museum in Birzeit opened in 2016, mounted its first major exhibition 'Jerusalem Lives' in 2017, and received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2019.

Sources / further reading

A cultural heritage timeline

Dated, sourced entries

  1. 1890

    Khalil Raad opens his Jerusalem studio

    Raad (1854–1957) is documented as the first Arab photographer in Palestine; his negatives survive in the Institute for Palestine Studies collection.

    Institute for Palestine Studies(opens in a new tab)

  2. 1961

    The Hirbawi keffiyeh factory opens in Hebron

    Founded by Yasser Hirbawi, it is now the last keffiyeh factory operating in Palestine.

    Al Jazeera(opens in a new tab)

  3. 1962

    'Men in the Sun' is published

    Ghassan Kanafani's novel appears in Beirut and becomes one of the defining works of modern Arabic fiction.

    PalQuest(opens in a new tab)

  4. 1991

    Riwaq is founded in Ramallah

    An architectural conservation centre established to document and restore Palestinian built heritage.

    Riwaq(opens in a new tab)

  5. 1994

    The Registry of Historic Buildings begins

    Riwaq's survey eventually records 50,320 historic buildings across 422 localities.

    Riwaq(opens in a new tab)

  6. 2002

    'Divine Intervention' wins at Cannes

    Elia Suleiman's film takes the Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize in competition.

    Festival de Cannes(opens in a new tab)

  7. 2005

    The Palestinian Hikaye is proclaimed by UNESCO

    The storytelling tradition is proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

    UNESCO(opens in a new tab)

  8. 2008

    The Hikaye enters the Representative List

    The element is incorporated into UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

    UNESCO(opens in a new tab)

  9. 2012

    Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity inscribed

    The first World Heritage inscription submitted by the State of Palestine, listed together with the pilgrimage route.

    UNESCO World Heritage(opens in a new tab)

  10. 2014

    Battir inscribed, and listed in danger

    The terraced landscape of southern Jerusalem is inscribed and simultaneously placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

    UNESCO World Heritage(opens in a new tab)

  11. 2016

    The Palestinian Museum opens in Birzeit

    Its first major exhibition, 'Jerusalem Lives', followed in 2017; the building received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2019.

    The Palestinian Museum(opens in a new tab)

  12. 2017

    Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town inscribed

    The old town is added to the World Heritage List.

    UNESCO World Heritage(opens in a new tab)

  13. 2021

    Palestinian embroidery inscribed

    'The art of embroidery in Palestine, practices, skills, knowledge and rituals' joins the Representative List.

    UNESCO(opens in a new tab)

  14. 2023

    Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan inscribed

    The site is added to the World Heritage List under criteria (iii) and (iv).

    UNESCO World Heritage(opens in a new tab)

  15. 2023

    Dabkeh inscribed

    'Dabkeh, traditional dance in Palestine' joins UNESCO's Representative List.

    UNESCO(opens in a new tab)

  16. 2023

    Gaza's Great Omari Mosque largely destroyed

    The territory's oldest mosque was reduced to rubble in an Israeli airstrike in early December 2023.

    BBC News(opens in a new tab)

  17. 2024

    Nabulsi soap making inscribed

    UNESCO adds the Nablus soap tradition to the Representative List by decision 19.COM 7.b.8.

    UNESCO(opens in a new tab)