He is an archaeologist and art-historian specialising in the history of Islamic art and architecture. He completed his masters in Islamic Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford, and wrote his doctorate on the concept of pedagogy and style in Islamic calligraphy at the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts.

In order to support his research, Bilal studied calligraphy in Istanbul for over five years under master calligrapher Efdaluddin Kılıç, obtaining his calligraphic Ijazah, in the Thuluth and Naskh scripts in 2017.