Archive Note
Razzouk Tattoo is a Coptic Christian family workshop in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, operated today by Wassim Razzouk with his wife Gabrielle and his sons Anton and Nizar. The family has served Christian pilgrims from the Old City since about 1750, when a Coptic priest ancestor named Jirius Razzouk is credited with bringing the practice from Egypt to Jerusalem; the c. 1750 date is anchored by a surviving olive-wood block in the family library dated 1749 in Armenian script. The 2022 Guinness World Records certification recognizes the family as the longest continually operating tattooists, citing at least 270 years and counting only the documented Jerusalem operation, while the family's own oral tradition claims an older Egyptian phase of roughly 700 years and 27 to 28 generations. The principal scholarly record is John Carswell's Coptic Tattoo Designs (1956, expanded 1958), which catalogues the family's olive-wood stamps. The dominant motif is the Jerusalem Cross, a large central cross flanked by four smaller ones, applied to the right wrist or forearm of pilgrims, with the workshop running nearly around the clock during the Easter peak.