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Ma'rūf ar-Ruṣāfi, 1875–1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Extract
In the year 1292/1875 there was born to a mixed Kurdish-Arab family a child who was destined to play a prominent part in modern Arabic literature. He was named Ma'rūf and was the second of two children in the family.
No one can say with certainty who was Ma‘rūf’s father because he himself rarely spoke about his family. So far as I am aware, there is not a single reference to his father in his Dīwān. Ma‘rūf’s unwise reticence concerning his family helped his opponents to allege that he was an illegitimate child. The late Tāha ar-Rāwī, the Iraqi philologist, who associated with Ma'rūf for over a quarter of a century, asserted that he avoided answering questions concerning his parentage and, if pressed hard, he would answer briefly and change the subject. The investigations of genealogists led them to the conclusion that his father belonged to the Kurdish tribe of al-Jabbārah, which was acknowledged by all the Kurds as being of ‘Alid origin. If so, then it must have been originally an Arab tribe which migrated to non-Arab districts. His mother is said to have belonged to the tribe of al-Qarāg
fūl, a branch of 
ammar which dwells in the plain regions of Iraq.
Rusāfī was brought up in his grandfather's house in the quarter of al-Qarāg
ūl in Baghdad. A small dark room was allotted to him, which made him inclined to solitude and meditation. In his childhood he was not seen to mix with other children. But his fondness for mechanical instruments led to an accident in which he lost one of his fingers.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , October 1950 , pp. 616 - 626
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1950
References
page 616 note 1 See Ma‘rūf’s verses in reply to those who asked him about his father, apud Ṭabanah, Ma'rūf ar-RuṢāfī, p. 28 foot.
page 616 note 2 The same thing for the same reason was said of Abū aṭ-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbi, the celebrated tenth-century poet.
page 616 note 3 Tāha ar-Rāwi, “Sadīqī ar-RuṢāfī,” an article in 'Ālam al-
add, vol. i, no. 9.
page 616 note 4 Mustafa ‘Alī, Ma'rūf's “rāwiyah ”, refutes this, and claims that it was due to Ma‘rūf’s natural inclination to silence, Adab ar-RuṢāfī, pp. 55 ff.
page 616 note 5 A tribe that dwells round about Kirkuk, a north-eastern town of Iraq.
page 616 note 6 His full name is Mahmūd 
ukrī b. as-Sayyid ‘Abd Allah Bahā'ud-dīn b. Abī a
-
anā’ 
ihāb-ud-dīn Mahmūd al-Ālūsī. He is the author of Kitāb Bulū 
al-arab fī ma'rifat ahwāl al-'Arab, in three volumes. He died in 1924.
page 617 note 1 Tabānah makes a mistake when he says that Ruṣāfī was first appointed a teacher in Bag
dād, op. cit., p. 35.
page 617 note 2 A small town in the Diyāla district in Iraq.
page 617 note 3 Thīs was at the instance of Nāmiq Pasha, the Governor of Baghdad.
page 617 note 4 Rofā'īl Buṭṭī, al-Adab al-‘Aṣrī fī’l-‘Irāg al-'Arabī, al-Maṭba'ah as-salafiyyah, Cairo, 1922, vol. i, p. 70.
page 617 note 5 Concerning him, see El., Supp., pp. 263–5. See also Hikmat Abdul Majīd, “Safha min hayāt az-Zahāwī,” al-Mu'attim al-Jadīd, Baghdad, Jan., 1940, vol. v, no. 1, pp. 61–4.
page 618 note 1 A district in Southern Iraq.
page 618 note 2 Musṭafa ‘Alī, op. oit., p. 72. Here again Ṭabānah makes a mistake and regards Balqīs as the sister of a retired officer lecturing in the Military College in Constantinople.
page 618 note 3 At this time he issued his daily paper al-Amal, which appeared on 1st October 1923, Only sixty-eight numbers were published, the last of which appeared on 20th December 1923.
page 618 note 4 The book is in two volumes; only Vol. I was published.
page 618 note 5 A small town near Baghdad.
page 618 note 6 See Dīwān, pp. 403, 414, and 418.
page 618 note 7 See his verses composed after the publication of his Dīwān, apud Muṣṭafa Alī, op. cit., p. 22 mid.
page 619 note 1 Ṭabānah, op. oit., p. 64.
page 619 note 2 See Ma‘rūf's defence of himself in ar-Risāla, No. 507 (11th December, 1944), and No. 579 (August, 1944).
page 619 note 3 al-
qqāfah, no. 428 (11th March, 1947), p. 23.
page 619 note 4 Muṣṣtafa Alī, op. cit., p. 86, tells us that instead of beginning his book with the customary-formula “In the name of God the Merciful the Compassionate; praise be to God, and His blessings and peace on Muhammad”, Ma'rūf begins it with 
“In the name of Absolute Unbounded Truth. Praise be to her and our blessings and peace be upon her”.
page 619 note 5 See the facsimile of his will in Ṭabānah, op. cit., pp. 64–5.
page 619 note 6 Anīs al-Maqdisī, al-'Awāmil al-Fa'ālah fī'l-Adab al-'Arabī al-Ḥadi 
, pp 2 and 7; Ri
ā a
-
abībī, introduction to Ṭabāna's Ma'rūf ar-Ruṣāfī, p. 11.
page 619 note 7 Dīwān, pp. 375 and 388.
page 619 note 8 See Ruṣāfī's verses of condolence addressed to Faiṣal on his father's death, in which he alludes to this point, apud Muṣṭafa ‘Alī, op. cit., p. 26.
page 620 note 1 From a letter by Ruṣāfī to a friend of his, dated 18th February 1944, published later in al-Wādī, Baghdad, vol. vii, no. 6, p. 7.
page 620 note 2 Dīwān, pp. 5, 56, 74, 94, 136, 183, 375, 388.
page 620 note 3 Ibid., p. 74.
page 620 note 4 Ibid., p. 56.
page 620 note 5 Dīwān, p. 113.
page 620 note 6 See al-Ḥurriyyah, vol. ii, no. 1, pp. 6–17.
page 621 note 1 See his bitter attack on the principle of “Art for art's sake”, in his Durūs fī Ta'nī 
Ādāb al-Lughah al-'Arabiyyah (Baghdad, 1928), vol. i, p. 29.
page 621 note 2 Muṣṭafa Alī, op. cit., 130, however, claims that Ruṣāfī did not compose more than twenty-seven verses of this kind.
page 621 note 3 Cheikho thinks that the first edition of the Dīwān would be safe to teach young students, provided that the description of dancers (pp. 165 and 209) and “The woman in thin dress” (p. 211), and what the poet saw in Beg Oghlu (p. 174) and “The stage” (p. 217) were cut out.
page 621 note 4 Ma'rūf was not, however, an innovator of pornography in Arabic literature, for classical Arabic contains many examples in this respect, to wit, the Mutajarridah of an-Nabig
ah, ad-Da'diyyah, Ibn ar-Rūmi's description of a black girl, and other poems by Abū Nuwās, Ibn al-Ḥajjāj, Ibn Sukkarah, and Ibn ar-Raqa'maq.
page 622 note 1 Shabībī, op. cit., p. 13.
page 622 note 2 The compiler of the first edition of his Dīwān (Beyrouth, 1910).
page 622 note 3 A member of the Young Turk party, who became prime minister in 1908 and was assassinated by his opponents shortly afterwards.
page 622 note 4 Vide supra.
page 622 note 5 Committed suicide on 13th November 1929.
page 622 note 6 Ṭabānah, op. cit., p. 203 ff.
page 622 note 7 Yet this is not an entirely new metaphor, as it occurs in the poetry of al-Fārūqī, an early nineteenth-century Irāqī poet, who says: <<
page 622 note 8 RAAD, vol. viii, pp. 32–5 (1346/1928).
page 622 note 9 Dīwān, p. 226.
page 622 note 10 Dīwān, 227.
page 622 note 11 Ibid., 236.
page 622 note 12 Ibid., 399. This is unique in Arabic literature, as no other poet composed a whole poem on the Tigris. It was in answer to a poem by Sulaimān Na
īf Bey, the Turkish poet who reproached the Tigris for its flood that caused the defeat of the Turkish army and the eventual capitulation of Baghdad.
page 623 note 1 al-Mustami ‘al-'Arabī, ix, no. 10, p. 22; Ṭabānah, op. cit., 165.
page 623 note 2 Muqtataf, March, 1948, p. 240; see Sa'īd a
-
artūni's comment on it quoted by Rusāfī, in his Durūs, op. cit., p. 63.
page 623 note 3 Cf. Ma
riq, xxxi, p. 135.
page 623 note 4 S. A. Khulusi, “Ma'rūf ar-Ruṣāfī”, al-Mustami', ix, no. 10, p. 22 foot.
page 623 note 5 Durūs, pp. 9.–19.
page 623 note 6 Ibid., p. 45, 11. 8–9.
page 624 note 1 Ibid., p. 45 foot–46 top.
page 624 note 2 Ibid.
page 624 note 3 Ibid., p. 46 foot–47 top.
page 624 note 4 p. 51 foot, 52 foot, 53 top, 54 mid.
page 624 note 5 p. 53 foot.
page 624 note 6 p. 55 foot.
page 624 note 7 p. 56.
page 624 note 8 Durūs pp. 57–68.
page 624 note 9 pp. 75–9.
page 624 note 10 pp. 79–82.
page 625 note 1 He also quoted Rudyard Kipling's “If” as an example of this style, p, 82.
page 625 note 2 p. 87 foot.
page 625 note 3 pp. 88–94