Aʻmālī fī al-muʾtamar

Ahmed Shawqi (1868–1932) was born in Cairo and raised near the court of the Khedive, who sent him to study law in France. He became the court poet of Egypt, and when the British exiled him to Spain during the First World War, the years in Andalusia inspired some of his most beautiful poems of longing for home.

In 1927 poets from across the Arab world crowned him the Prince of Poets. His collected poems, al-Shawqiyyat, revived classical Arabic verse, and he brought verse drama into Arabic with plays such as The Death of Cleopatra and Majnun Layla. Many of his poems live on in the voices of Umm Kulthum and Mohammed Abdel Wahab.