Ibrahim al-Asta Umar

Ibrahim al-Usta Umar was born in 1908 in Tripoli, into a family of artisans. Blind from childhood and trained at the mosque, where he learned the Quran and prosody, he was loved as few Libyan poets were during the occupation: his verses, learned by word of mouth before any printing, combined romantic lyricism, satire of the notables and the pain of a subjugated country. He died in 1950, a year before the independence he had sung of, and his poems were set to music.

In the catalogue 1

• Poetryديوان البلبل والوكرIbrahim al-Asta Umar · 1967not translated into EnglishLiteraturePublic domain