Maghnam

Maghnam is an independent watch brand founded by Sohaib Maghnam, a Jordanian mechanical engineer and designer whose path into horology began during his student years in London, where he first encountered a watch whose price seemed impossible to justify — until he turned it over and discovered, in his own words, 'a micro-city of engineering perfection through the caseback.' What began as curiosity became a hobby, then a passion, then an obsession, and eventually a full career: after his automotive engineering degree, Sohaib spent two years developing a first watch that never reached commercial release because, as he puts it, it did not yet fully bear his own signature, before two further years of development produced Makina — the first true Maghnam watch, launched in 2020. Every Maghnam creation since has carried an Arabic name — Makina (ماكنة, 'Machine'), Madar (مدار, 'Orbit'), Mohareb (محارب, 'Warrior' or 'Gladiator'), and Noor (نور, 'Light') — a deliberate anchoring of the brand's avant-garde engineering in the language and culture that inspires it, merging Sohaib's Arab heritage with the technical rigour of Swiss watchmaking acquired through years of study. Today based in Doha, Qatar, Sohaib also serves as Creative Director and CEO of Beda'a Watches — the more classically-oriented Qatari brand whose Eclipse 1 was selected for the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève in 2025 — giving him a rare working perspective across both the avant-garde and classical ends of contemporary independent watchmaking simultaneously. 'My greatest wish,' he has said, 'is that one day a grandchild inherits one of my creations and loves it as much as their grandparent did. Good design is timeless.'

Makina (Form 2, discontinued), the brand's inaugural statement, defined Maghnam's identity as a creator of what Sohaib calls 'sculptures of time,' drawing on the golden age of mid-20th-century automotive design: a polished steel shell encasing a richly layered, architectural interior beneath a domed crystal, with a leather-'floored' multi-dimensional dial construction rejecting the traditional flat surface entirely, powered by a hand-wound SW210. Madar (Form 3, discontinued), Arabic for 'Satellite' or 'Orbit,' drew from imagery of galactic exploration and futuristic orbital motion, its defining innovation a continuous 360-degree bi-directional rotation mechanism allowing the wearer to freely reorient the entire watch on the wrist — practical for non-dominant-wrist wearers, but conceived primarily as an invitation to physical interaction beyond simply reading the time — built around the in-house MCJH1 jump-hour calibre developed on a Sellita SW200 base.

Noor (Form 5), Arabic for 'Light,' is Maghnam's most conceptually radical creation: a hidden watch, inspired directly by the retractable pop-up headlights of late-20th-century sports cars, that lies flat and dial-less within its Grade 5 titanium shell until a front-mounted pusher triggers two spring-loaded mechanisms, raising the entire watch capsule vertically and revealing the time only when summoned. Powered by the MCF5-01 — a reimagined La Joux-Perret D101 with shortened wheels and pinions to fit a capsule just 5.5mm high, finished to Maghnam's own standard with Côtes de Genève, anglage, cerclage, and sandblasting — Noor displays a sweeping sapphire hour disc through an opening that hovers above the indicators rather than beneath them, with the rotating Maghnam emblem itself indicating the minutes. Mohareb (Form 4), Arabic for 'Warrior' or 'Gladiator,' is the brand's flagship and best-known creation: an ultra-thin shaped watch — just 8.6mm at its case, tapering to 3.5mm at the edges, with a top plate machined to just 0.25mm by a manufacturer more accustomed to CNC-machining surgical tools than watch cases — built around the in-house MCR01-B, a heavily reworked Sellita SW210 fitted with a custom bi-retrograde module: hours sweep across a 120-degree arc before snapping instantly back to zero, while minutes read on a vertical linear track. Subtle engraved 'battle scars' and a modular architecture — interchangeable Blades, Halo, Wings, and Armour attachments that transform the watch's entire silhouette on demand, the Armour module even converting it into a pocket watch — complete the concept.

In late 2024, Revolution Watch partnered with Maghnam on the Mohareb Ocean Relic and Desert Relic — a pair of Blades-configuration Mohareb watches, named for water and earth, each carrying a unique laser-engraved pattern of runic symbols and hieroglyphics evoking ancient warrior culture, framed by Revolution as future relics unearthed from the desert sand or ocean floor. Revolution's editor Wei Koh, reflecting on first meeting Sohaib at Dubai Watch Week 2021 while he was still finishing Madar, compared the impact of encountering Mohareb to his own first sight of Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei's seminal Urwerk UR-103.03 — 'a creation of a young artist that has found his voice.'