Poetry
ديوان الزهاوي
Not translated into English
Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi · 1924
Synopsis
Poems arranged in fifteen sections, in clear language and a classical metre stripped of the ornaments of the past, carrying bold ideas: philosophy and science, Arab unity, and above all the cause of women, against the veil, forced marriages, polygamy and the privileges of men. These verses led his adversaries to call their author a heretic and an atheist.
Context
The collection was printed in Egypt in 1924; its author had published a first collection around 1908. He championed a simple poetry, without the artifices of the ancients, that would serve social criticism. His verses on women continued the quarrel opened in 1910 by an article in which he urged women to give up the veil: the ulema of Baghdad had launched fatwas against him, and he had lost his chair of law before leaving for Cairo.
Who it is for
In Arabic, with no French translation. The poems keep to the classical metre and carry ideas that were not classical.
Prizes and reception
A collection by a poet whom his opponents called a heretic, counted with al-Rusafi and al-Jawahiri among the three great Iraqi neoclassicists.