The directory «Plots»

Shawqi Ahmad(أحمد شوقي)
(1868—1932)

Foremost Arab neoclassical poet. In the course of his poetic career of forty years, Ahmad Shawqi both renovated the language of Arabic poetry and endowed it with the genre that had been missing in it, namely, the verse drama. After receiving a thorough Arabic and Islamic education in Cairo, he was sent by Khedive Tawfiq to France, where he spent three years, 1891 to 1893, during which he immersed himself in French literature, especially the Romantic Trio: Alfred de Musset, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo. This was the decisive influence on Shawqi - his window into Western literary art, through which he was able to rejuvenate modern Arabic poetry.

On his return to Egypt, he became in 1893 the court poet of Khedive Abbas Hilmi II. This marked the first phase of his poetic career, which lasted until 1914, when the First World War broke out. During this period, he composed odes on the khedive and the Alawi Dynasty and on Egyptian history, and he emerged as the poet of Islam and the Islamic Caliphate (then the Ottoman Empire). He also wrote a number of historical novels, perhaps inspired by his model, Victor Hugo. In 1898 he published his collected poems as a diwan titled al-Shawqiyyat, and this immediately established his reputation as the leading poet of his generation in the entire Arab world.

In 1914 his patron, the khedive, was deposed by Britain, and Shawqi was sent into exile. He chose Spain, where he spent the second phase of his poetic career, four years (1915 - 1919) in Barcelona, devoting his time to reading and contemplation. These four years witnessed the composition of splendid odes in which he remembered the glories of Spanish Islam.

The third phase of Shawqi's poetic career began in 1919 on his return to Egypt and lasted until his death in 1932. Shawqi was free from involvement with the court and court life, and with the abolishment of the caliphate in 1924, he became more interested in Arab nationalist aspirations, especially in Egypt and Syria, which inspired his memorable odes with pan-Arab overtones. It was also in this period that he composed his verse dramas, the most striking of which are Majnun Layla and Masra Cleopatra.

Shawqi did not limit his themes to the Arab and Islamic world. He is the poet of the Mediterranean par excellence and of pharaonic Egypt. His odes on both, hardly known in Europe and the United States, stand well in comparison with the best in world literature. Four years before his death, his preeminence as a poet was recognized when delegates from the Arab world travelled to Cairo, fêted him, and saluted him as Amir al-Shuʿara ("Prince of Poets").

Egipte, 1957, Ahmad Shawqi

Egipte, 1982, Ahmad Shawqi and Ibrahim Hafes

Egipte, 2007, Ahmad Shawqi