Tamim Al Barghouti

Tamim Al-Barghouti (Arabic: تميم البرغوثي‎‎, born in Cairo) is a Palestinian poet, columnist and political scientist. He is known for the capacity of his poetry to draw the attention of hundreds of thousands of people. The reception of his poetry among a diverse audience from various backgrounds and age groups is a testimony to the vitality of the centuries-old tradition of classical Arabic poetry.

Al-Barghouti was born in Cairo to Palestinian poet Mourid Al-Barghouti and Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour. That year, the Egyptian government had embarked on a peace process with Israel and expelled most Palestinians of prominence, including Al Barghouti’s father. Since childhood, Al-Barghouti has been immersed in the political realities of the Arab world, the way they affect the most personal aspects of an individual’s life, as well as in the literary means to express them.

Al-Barghouti studied spent his childhood between Egypt and various Europe, where his father worked as a diplomat. He received his B.A in Political Sciences and Economics in 1999 from Cairo University, his M.A. in politics and international relations from the American University in Cairo in 2001, and his Ph.D. in political science from Boston University, Massachusetts, in 2004.

He wrote his first short poem (the Canon) at 6, His first published poem at 18. In 1999, at age 22, he was able to return to Palestine for the first time, where he wrote his first poetry collection, “Mijana,” in the Palestinian spoken dialect of Arabic and published it in Ramallah. His second collection, “Al-Manzar,” followed shortly thereafter, written in Cairo using the Egyptian spoken dialect.

In 2003, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, Al-Barghouti left Egypt in opposition to the war and the Egyptian government’s position. The experience resulted in two works that gained Al-Barghouti a degree of fame in Egypt and the Arab world; the first was “Aluli-Bet- hebb-Masr” (They Ask: Do You Love Egypt), written in the Egyptian spoken dialect, and “Maqam Iraq,” in Standard Classical Arabic. Both works were well received. “Maqam Iraq” in particular was described by one critic as “something of a classical Arabic masterpiece…a lengthy epic-like diwan on Iraq comprising a variety of stylistic forms: song, narrative, and prose...that established Al-Barghouti as a master of Arabic language and history.”

In 2007, Al-Barghouti’s work “In Jerusalem” became something of a street poem. Palestinian newspapers dubbed Al-Barghouti “The Poet of Jerusalem”. The poem, which describes an aborted journey to the city, became the basis for a number of performances in Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem, Jericho, Amman, Beirut, Muscat, Berlin, The Hague, and Vienna, among others. "In Jerusalem" and other poems by Al-Barghouti have also had millions views of various TV Channels as well as on the internet, winning the poet an exceptional celebrity status in the Arab World.

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