Abdul Jabbar was born in 1911 to a
Mandaean priestly family in the town of
Qal'at Saleh,
Qal'at Saleh District,
Maysan Province (formerly Al-Amaarah) in southeastern Iraq. His father was
Ganzibra Abdullah, son of Ganzibra Sam ( in Baghdad; also known as Abdallah bar Sam;
Mandaean baptismal name: Adam Zihrun bar Sam). Ganzibra
Abdullah bar Sam was a
Mandaean priest from the Manduia and ‛Kuma families who initiated
Jabbar Choheili into the priesthood in 1948, and
Salah Choheili in 1976. Ganzibra Abdallah also copied the
Ginza Rabba by hand in 1928; as of 2010, that copy of the Ginza Rabba belonged to the Elmanahi family in New York state, United States. He studied in his hometown elementary school, built during the
British rule in Iraq. Upon finishing his secondary school education in Baghdad, he left for
Lebanon to attend university. There he enrolled at the
American University of Beirut (AUB) where he majored in physics and graduated with a BS in 1934. He subsequently pursued his postgraduate studies at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned his PhD, supervised by
Bernhard Haurwitz. In 1949, Abdullah returned to Iraq and joined the faculty of The Higher Normal College, where he served as chairman of the physics department. When the college, along with other Iraqi universities, was consolidated into the
University of Baghdad, Abdullah was a member of the Founding Council, which oversaw the unification process. In the aftermath of the
14 July Revolution in 1958, the Founding Council was replaced with a permanent University Council, and Abdullah was named the first president of the University of Baghdad. Abdullah was imprisoned during the
February 1963 coup d'état in Iraq by the revolting
Ba'ath forces, who charged him with being a political dissident. He was released from jail in October, although the charges were not dropped until several years later. Owing to mounting international pressure, he was eventually allowed to leave the country, and went to the United States. He took a position as a meteorology researcher at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research in
Boulder, Colorado. In 1966, Abdullah joined the faculty of the Atmospheric Science department at the
State University of New York at Albany. Shortly thereafter, he became ill with
Hodgkin lymphoma. He died at the
Albany Medical Center on July 9, 1969. ==Personal life==