Maʿrûf al-Rusâfî and His Poems
In this study, Maʿrûf al-Rusâfî’s life and poems are discussed in four
parts. In the introduction part of the study, the political and sociocultural
dynamics of the period in which the poet lived are presented,
and the historical course of modern Iraqi poetry and the literary phases
it has gone through are mentioned. In the first part, Rusâfî’s life, literary
aspects and works are included. In this section, his educational life, the
political and cultural duties he performed, the friendships he established,
and the literary and political tendencies he nurtured are presented
to the reader in detail. In the second part of the study; The poems he
wrote on social issues were examined and his poems were evaluated in
the context of women’s rights and freedoms, economic problems, science,
rationality and ignorance, patriotism, and human values. As a
matter of fact, since Rusâfî adopted the principle of ‘art is for society’,
this section tried to reflect his social reformist identity. In the third part
of the study; The subject is the poet’s political poems. He was closely interested
in politics for many years, both during the Ottoman period and
when Iraq emerged on the stage of history as an independent state, and
this political identity was also reflected in his poems. As a result, he
wrote almost every political event he witnessed during his time in his
poems, as if making a note of history, and tried to express his own opinions
about these events. In the last part of the study, the war, history,
philosophy-related poems and traditional genres of elegy, eulogy and
descriptions in the poet’s divan are discussed. As a matter of fact, since
Rusâfî was a versatile poet, he wrote poems that penetrated almost every
field.
Keywords: Arabic Literature; Poetry; Iraq; Maʿrûf al-Rusâfî; Society;
Politics