Poetry
بنت فكر
Not translated into English
Maryana Marrash · 1893
Synopsis
Pieces of praise addressed to men of state and to the diplomats who frequented the author's circle, love verses, and poems that call on women to educate themselves and to shed what holds them back. At the head of the volume, the author explains why she gave it this name: these pieces came to her of their own accord, daughters of a thought she did not seek.
Context
The volume was published in Beirut, at the Literary Press, in 1893. To print it, the approval of the Ottoman education directorate in Aleppo was needed: she obtained it under number seven hundred and sixteen, after composing a poem in praise of Sultan Abdülhamid II, to whom she dedicated the work. She also left a history of Syria in the late Ottoman period, which her family kept in manuscript and which never appeared. The studies devoted to her still dispute what went on in her household, a notice of 1995 having circulated details that her descendants have denied.
Who it is for
A collection in Arabic, in a classical and ornate language. It helps to know that poems of praise take up much of it and that they name people about whom no one now knows anything.
Prizes and reception
The first poetry collection published by a Syrian woman, and one of the very first signed by a woman in modern Arabic letters.