Jamal was born in the Arsi Zone in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia, an area famous for distance runners, including Haile Gebrselassie, Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba.

Jamal later left Ethiopia with her husband, Tariq Yaqoob, due partially to political and economic problems.

[5] Bahrain, eager to gain a sporting image, granted this in exchange that she change her name to an Arabic one and that she compete in the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar in 2006.

She ran at the 2005 World Championships in Athletics, but was obstructed in the final, which resulted in the disqualification of the silver medallist Yuliya Chizhenko.

Jamal became the first female athlete to win twice at the Asian Cross Country Championships, taking her second gold and competing in Bahrain for the first time.

In 2010, Jamal competed on the inaugural Diamond League circuit, including a second-place finish behind Sentayehu Ejigu at the Herculis meeting.

[7] In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Jamal placed third in the 1500m race, finishing in 4:10:74, behind Asli Cakir Alptekin and Gamze Bulut, both of Turkey.

Alptekin was later given an eight-year ban for biological passport violations, a doping related offense, and stripped of her gold medal.

[8] In December 2021, Maryam Yusuf Jamal was upgraded to the gold medal after those ahead of her had been disqualified for doping violations in March of 2017.