Remembering Abdel Aziz al-Maqalih

Remembering

Abdel Aziz al-Maqalih

The passing of Professor Abdel Aziz al-Maqalih on 28 November 2022 at the age of 85 shocked so many in the Arab world and particularly in his own country of Yemen.  He taught so many thousands of Yemeni students over sixty years. During his lifetime he produced 35 works, including poetry collections, and many literary, critical, and intellectual studies. He leaves behind a massive heritage in cultural journalism with numerous articles in many Arabic publications.

The ministry of journalism and culture in the legitimate government said al-Maqalih “belonged to Yemen in his thought, spirit, and identity, leaving behind thousands of loyal students who have continued his journey in all Yemeni regions'".

The Union of Yemeni Writers, which he co-founded, said in a special tribute on his passing, that “he spent most of his life serving the national cause, modern poetry, and serious criticism", adding: “Yemen and the Arab world have lost one of the most esteemed poetry figures who enriched the modern Arabic poetry, and education.”

Abdel Aziz Al-Maqalih was born in 1937 in the village of Maqaleh in the governorate of Ibb where he learned reading and writing. He moved to Sanaa where he studied, graduating from the education institution there in 1960. He received his PhD in 1977 from  the Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University, Cairo. As a professor he taught at Sana'a University, becoming the President of the University from 1982 to 2001 and heading Yemen’s Center of Studies and Research until his passing. He also established the Yemeni Language Complex.

The awards he received included: the Lotus Award for literary in 1986, the UNESCO Prize for Arab Culture in Paris, 2022, the Knight Award of the first degree in literature and arts from the French Government in 2003, and the Arab Culture Award of the Arab Organization for Education, Culture and Science in 2004.

We reproduce in tribute to Abdel Aziz Al-Maqalih, the translations by Prof Issa J Boullata of Maqalih's "Summer Sonnets and other poems, published in Banipal 36 – Literature from Yemen Today (2009).

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Amjad Nasser introduced our readers to selected poems of Abdel Aziz Al-Maqalih from his collection The Book of Sana'a, with these words in Banipal 15/16 (Autumn/Winter 2002-Spring 2003)

In his poetry and literary criticism Abdel Aziz al-Maqalih is a modernist voice, not only in his own country of Yemen but also in the Arabian Peninsula as a whole and there he is certainly the first modernist voice. Before al-Maqalih appeared on the poetry scene in that part of the Arab world, poetry still repeated the echoes of ancient Arabic poetry, heedless of the battles raging between the old and the new in other centres of Arabic poetry such as Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Cairo.

Because of the weak educational system, poetry was more oral than written and “Nabati poetry”, oral poetry in the local Arabic dialects, was the most commonly performed in the region. But with the appearance of a poetic voice such as that of al-Maqalih, who had been educated in Cairo, this picture gradually began to change. Al-Maqalih not only offered poetic forms and topics different from those prevailing, but also strengthened modernist orientation in the Arabian Peninsula through his literary criticism. In other words, he moved into Yemen the battle for modernism, which subsequently proceeded in various degrees to the other countries of the Peninsula. In this sense, al-Maqalih is considered there the pioneer of poetic modernism.

However, the great influence that this Yemeni poet and critic wielded did not stop there; he also played an eminent educational role, realising that modernism could not be victorious, nor become rooted in societies suffering from comprehensive backwardness. He put his efforts into strengthening the role of education especially at university level; he participated in the establishment of the University of Sana’a, of which he was for many years president.

As president of the first university in Yemen, al-Maqalih attracted a number of professors from other parts of the Arab world known for their modernist orientation; he held many literary conferences and meetings which, while strengthening this orientation, displeased the traditionalists especially those of a religious leaning whose hostility to him went so far as to become a threat to his life.

But al-Maqalih did not change course, neither as modernist poet nor as president of a university from which graduated thousands of students who had become open to the modern literary programs prevailing in the world. Yemen today has a lively cultural movement, fully involved in issues such as modernism (and poetic modernism, in particular), that could not possibly have existed with this richness had it not been for the pioneering efforts of Abd al-Aziz al-Maqalih, whose poetry was the seed from which the tree of poetic modernism in Yemen has grown.He is currently Cultural Advisor to the President and Director of the Yemem Centre for Research and Study.

 Link to Banipal 15/16