Jabra Ibrahim Jabra was born in 1919 in Adana, which was then part of the French Mandate of Cilicia, to Ibrahim Yahrin and his wife Maryam. His mother's first husband Dawood and twin brother Yusuf had been killed in the 1909 Adana massacre. After Maryam remarried, her husband Ibrahim was drafted into the Ottoman Army during World War I. The couple gave birth to their first son, Yusuf Ibrahim Jabra, in 1915.