Lamia Al-Gailani Werr

Al-Gailani was born in Baghdad on 8 March 1938. She studied at the University of Baghdad for a year, then completed her bachelor's degree at the University of Cambridge.[1] In 1961, she began working as a curator of the National Museum of Iraq, the institution that would be the focus of much of her later career. She returned to Britain in the 1970s, to complete a master's degree at the University of Edinburgh, and then a PhD at the Institute of Archaeology in London.[2][3][4] Her PhD thesis, supervised by Barbara Parker-Mallowan, was a study of Old Babylonian cylinder seals at the Iraq Museum. Published after much delay in 1988,[5] Dominique Collon, curator of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum, described the work as a "succinct and informative discussion" that should "serve as a model for all future studies."[6]

After obtaining her PhD in 1977, Al-Gailani remained in London as an honorary research associate at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).[3][7][8] She returned to Iraq frequently, working to maintain contact between Iraqi archaeologists and the wider academic world under the Saddam Hussein regime.[3][4] In 1999, she and Salim al-Alusi co-authored The First Arabs, a popular account in Arabic of the archaeology of early Arab culture in Mesopotamia.[4] From 2003, her work focused on the preservation of antiquities in Iraq. She helped rebuild the Iraq Museum after it was looted and damaged in the 2003 American-led invasion[4] and was a frequent commentator on the difficulties faced by museums and heritage protection in postwar Iraq.[9][10][11][12] She was a consultant to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and was closely involved in the reopening of the Iraq Museum in 2015 and the founding of the Basrah Museum in 2016.[3][4][7]

At the time of her death in 2019, Al-Gailani held a research fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where she was writing a book on the history of the Iraq Museum.[2][3]

A member of a prominent Iraqi family, Al-Gailani's lineage included Abdul Qadir Gilani, the founder of the Qadiri Sufi order, and Abd Al-Rahman Al-Gillani, the first prime minister of Iraq. Her parents were Ahmad Jamal Al-Din Al-Gailani and Madiha Asif Mahmud Arif-Agha.[1]

Al-Gailani married twice. Her first husband, Abd al-Rahman Al-Gailani, was an Iraqi historian of Islamic architecture. Her second husband was George Werr, a Jordanian businessman who died in 2003.[1] She had three daughters: Noorah Al-Gailani, Azza Al-Gailani and Hesn Werr.[1] As of 2019, Noorah Al-Gailani was the Curator of Islamic Civilisations at the Glasgow Museums.[4]

Al-Gailani died in Amman on 18 January 2019.[1][2] She was interred in the Mausoleum of Abdul-Qadir Gilani (her ancestor)[1] in Baghdad, following a funeral procession from the Iraq Museum.[2][3][4]

She was the only lifetime honorary member of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq and was awarded its Gertrude Bell Memorial Gold Medal in 2009.[3]

• "The First Arabs in the Fertile Crescent" by Dr. Lamia al-Gailani Werr
• Lamia Al Gailani Werr: Four Wars and the Museums in Iraq
• When words fail: Iraq's lost heritage and efforts to save it
• Iraqi archaeologist discusses ISIL's destruction of antiquities