Issam al-Said (1938-1988) was a distinguished Iraqi painter, print-maker, designer, etcher, architect, philosopher and author who completed several major public buildings in Baghdad and in London.

He was the second son of Iraqi parents, Sabah Nuri al-Said and Esmat Ali Pasha Fahmi (who was of Egyptian ancestry) and the grandson of Nuri al-Said Pasha (Iraq's Prime Minister, 1930–58).

As an adult, his older brother, Falah, was the personal pilot to King Hussein.

He began preparing for a PhD on the Methodology of Geometric Proportioning in Islamic Architecture at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1988, but died in London of a heart attack[3] before he could complete it.

[5] From the 1960s, he began incorporating kufi script into his artworks, thereby joining the growing ranks of hurufiyya artists developing this style in the Middle East and North Africa in the 1950s and 60s.