Poetry
ديوان سليمان الباروني
Not translated into English
Sulayman al-Baruni · 1908
Opening lines
ظهرت محاسن ذا الزمان فقابلت * بالبشر والاقبال والخير المزيد
The beauties of this age have appeared and greeted us * with gladness, favour and ever-growing good
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Classical qasidas by an Ibadi scholar from the Nafusa Mountains, issued from the press he had founded in Cairo. Its contents are not known; all the poems in the collection predate the Italian conquest.
Context
The collection came off the press that its author had founded in Cairo, where he also published a newspaper, and appeared in 1326 of the Hijra. It brings together qasidas by a man whom the Ottoman authorities had arrested several times, accusing him of wanting to restore an Ibadi imamate among the Berbers of the west. His poems also appeared in the newspapers of the countries where he stayed: Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Algeria. His daughter, born two years after the collection, gathered and published his papers and his verse after his death, and was herself one of the first women writers of short stories in the country.
Who it is for
A divan in classical Arabic, in the public domain. The qasida keeps its rules there, and the political allusions require knowing Ottoman Tripolitania.
Prizes and reception
No award. The collection is of interest for its author, regarded in Libya as a classic, and for the fact that it was printed on his own press.