2026/03/01 by Abū al-Qāsim al-Shābbī
paper · doi:10.1632/s0030812926101692
It is difficult to categorize a figure as enigmatic as Abū al-Qāsim al-Shābbī (1909–34). In the early 1900s, the Tunisian poet engaged both evolving anticolonial, liberationist thought and European philosophical and poetic influences. He was a language purist and a fierce defender of classical prosody. Yet he considered himself a visionary modernizer, distinct from traditionalists in the Arabic literary sphere (Omri 294; Ostle 2). He was shaped by an Islamic education at the Zaytūna but was also influenced by French and English Romanticism, which he encountered in translation through the Ṣādiqiyya and Khaldūniyya libraries (Ostle 1–2). 1 His brief life and works, which include poems, criticism, letters, lectures, and private memoirs, suggest an intellectual dynamism and interdisciplinary awareness that deserve further critical attention. He is remembered today for revolutionary poetry that combines romantic imagery with a progressive vision of Tunisian life and literature (Husni). Many of his poems have circulated past his lifetime—especially “ Irādat al- ḥayāt ” (1933; “The Will to Life”) and “ Ila ṭughāt al- ‘ālam” (1934; “To the Tyrants of the World”), the lines of which were chanted and inscribed on signs and walls during the 2010–12 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings.