The effect of drying air variables including: temperature (50, 60 and 70 ºC), velocity (0.2, 0.4 and 0.6 m/s) and surface load (125 – 500 g/ 0.22 m²) on the drying kinetics and color of Jew's mallow leaves under hot – air drying was determined. All studied variables affected the drying time. Seven drying models were fitted to drying data and evaluated by using the coefficient of determination (R²). The Thomson and modified Page models showed a better fit to experimental data as compared to other models. In the ranges studied, the obtained values of the effective moisture diffusivity (D_eff) ranged from 3.9167 x 10^-11 to 9.3118 x 10^-11 m²/s for Jew's mallow leaves calculated using the Fick's diffusion model. Using D_eff, the activation energy (E_a) was determined assuming the Arrhenius – type temperature relationship and was found to be 35.01 KJ/ mol. From the results of color quality, drying at 60 ºC, 0.4 m/s and surface load of 250 g/ 0.22 m² (i.e. about 1200g/ m²) were found to be the optimum conditions for drying Jew's mallow leaves.