Ahmad al-Safi al-Najafi (1897 – 27 June 1977) was an Iraqi poet, "a poet of extreme simplicity of style and a poetic diction that often approximates to ordinary speech".[1]
Ahmad al-Safi was born in Najaf to an Iraqi father and a Lebanese mother. From 1920 to 1927 he left Iraq for Iran.[2] He met Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi in 1927, who declared he was proud to have "discovered" him. In 1929, illness drove him to leave Iraq for a milder climate in Syria.[1] In 1933, he left the country again for Lebanon, where he lived until a year before his death.[3] Involved in resistance against the British colonial occupation since the 1920s, he was arrested for his anti-colonial stance in 1941.[4] In 1976 he returned to Iraq, having been wounded in the Lebanese Civil War.[5] He died on the 27 June 1977.[6]
In November 2011 plans were announced to erect a memorial to him in Najaf.[7]
Works
- Al-Amwāj [The Waves], 1932