Al Hariri of Basra

Al-Hariri of Basra was an Arab poet, scholar of the Arabic language and a high government official of the Seljuk Empire. He was born near Basra, Iraq, and studied Arabic literature in Baghdad. He was influenced by the free verse of Shathel Taqa and Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayyati and was also involved in politics from an early age. He joined the Iraqi Communist Party and was imprisoned several times for his opposition to the Ba'ath regime. He left Iraq in 1979 and lived in exile in many countries, including Algeria, Lebanon, France, Greece, Cyprus, and finally London. He was considered one of the most important contemporary poets in the Arab world and published thirty volumes of poetry in addition to seven books of prose. He also translated many well-known writers into Arabic, such as Oktay Rifat, Melih Cevdet Anday, Garcia Lorca, Yiannis Ritsos, Walt Whitman and Constantine Cavafy. He received many awards and honors for his literary work, such as the Al Owais Prize for poetry in 2004. He died of cancer on June 13, 2021, and was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery in London.