By: Hadia Gassim
Muhammad Miftah Al-Fitouri is a prominent Sudanese poet, and an sumptuous star in the sky of creativity that extends over the expanses of Africa and the vast Arab world. He is considered one of the pioneers of modern free poetry. He is called the poet of Africa and Arabism. Some of his poems were sung by great singers in Sudan.
His Birth
Muhammad Muftah Rajab al-Fitouri was born on November 24, 1936 AD in the city of El Geneina in West Darfur State in Sudan, and his father is Sheikh Muftah Rajab al-Fitouri, and he was a Sufi caliph in the Shadhili, Arousiyah, and Asmariyya religious group.
His Upbringing
Muhammad Al-Fitouri grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, and memorized the Holy Qur’an in the early stages of his education. Then he studied at the religious institute and moved to Cairo, where he graduated from the Faculty of Science in Al-Azhar Al-Sharif.
His functional life
Al-Fitouri worked as a literary editor for the Egyptian and Sudanese newspapers, and was appointed as a media expert at the League of Arab States in Cairo between 1968 and 1970. Then he worked as a cultural advisor at the Libyan Embassy in Italy. He also worked as an advisor and ambassador at the Libyan Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, and as an advisor for political and media affairs at the Libyan Embassy in Morocco.
In 1974, during the era of President Jaafar Nimeiri, the Sudanese government revoked his Sudanese citizenship and withdrew his Sudanese passport for his opposition to the regime at that time. The Libyan Jamahiriya adopted him and issued him a Libyan passport. He had a strong relationship with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. With the fall of the Gaddafi regime, the new Libyan authorities withdrew from him the Libyan passport, so he resided in Morocco with His Moroccan wife, Rajat, in the suburb of Sidi El-Abed, south of the Moroccan capital, Rabat. In 2014, the Sudanese government returned and granted him a diplomatic passport.
His Literary works
Al-Fituri is considered part of the contemporary Arab literary movement, and he is considered one of the pioneers of modern free poetry. In the poem “under the Rain” we find that he is freed from the old purposes of poetry such as description and spinning, and abandons stanzas and rhyme, to express the conscience and subjective experience he feels. His poetry often focuses on the contemplative aspects, to reflect his own abstract vision towards the things around him, using the traditional and creative tools of rhetoric and eloquence. In the poem “The Music of a Wandering Dervish,” Al-Fitouri says:
In the presence of the one I love, longings messed me up
I stared without a face and danced without a leg
My visions and drums crowded the horizons
My love is annihilating my passion
and my annihilation is absorption
I Owned by you, but I am the Sultan of lovers…
Afrikaans in the poetry of Fitouri
Africanism in Al-Fitouri’s poetry constituted a broad and vast trend and linked to the issue of colonialism where the African poets have thoroughly scooped up from this issue that inspired and filled them, and came up with countless African poetry productions. the Africanism was manifested in his first four collections, which came chanting in the name of Africa: (Remember me, O Africa- Songs of Africa – a lover from Africa – the sorrows of Africa) and this Fitouri identifies with his reader until he was able to embody Africa in the form of his darling, as he said:
No, your love were not an illusion
And wasn’t mine
I thought your soul
May embodied in my steps
(Your love) Still a hungry child
Sucks from my blood
Al-Fitouri dealt with Afrikaans by dealing with African characters such as (Lumumba), (Nkrumah) and (Nelson Mandela).
He was a supporter of liberation movements everywhere in Africa and called for African freedom and that the character of (Lumumba) was also addressed by Jailly Abd al-Rahman in his poetry, when he said about him:
The radio shrieked “Lumumba is captive”
And grief walked over our neighborhood, heart by heart
And bitter hell in the joints…
On the day when they took you to prison, majestic as mountains
Scattering pride on the rock
And the sorrows of the hills replaced by a thousand poems and a martyr.
As for Al-Fitouri, he wrote about Lumumba, saying:
Oh my country’s golden sword
That is poured and directed on the executioners necks
Be the sun that sun has died
O’ Lumumba in my heart you are the black hero
With the two bare feet
running on the Congo River
It is worth noting that Lumumba is a hero from the Congo and he was a fighter and an anti-colonialist, as he was executed, and his execution stirred the feelings and interiors of poets who wrote about him.
Through his words, the poet embodied the tragedy of Africa (the virgin continent) and the tragedy of the African:
He walked on thorns from time to time
And embrace the sun hungry and naked
And fell under the moan of the ax a cemetery
And rats walked hidden behind the corners of the hut
A sad song melted between the barmaids of the night
And the garden branches hidden.
Muhammad Miftah Al-Fitouri dealt with the issue of slavery and enslavement and how the African was bought and sold:
And ships packed beautiful slave-women
With musk, ivory and saffron
Gifts without festival
The wind leads them (ships) all the time
for the master of all time.
And he also said:
Ships crowding the depths of the displaced seas
Ships come and others go
Ships full of weapons
With the people and bounties of my country
And I am full of the cracks of the earth
With the traces of bloody whips and our heads are bare
and faces are crying and the paths are like graves
Black masses mingled with them (faces) and cattle.
He also called and urged the African to wake up from his deep sleep:
Africa Wake up.. wake up from your dark dream.. have not you sick tired of the master feet!
He yearned very much for freedom.
Say it, don’t be coward, don’t be coward
Say it in the face of humanity
I am a nigger and my grandfather is a nigger
And my mother is a nigger
I am a nigger but I’m free
I have freedom.
The poet here was proud of his African roots and his color and did not find anything wrong with that, but rather he was proud of it.
Al-Fitouri pointed out that the African, although he was enslaved, was able to greatly influence those regions to which he was taken, and that the glories of Westerners were built on the shoulders of the African.
Arab Nationalism and Sufism tendency in Al-Fitouri poems:
Al-Fitouri wrote his poetry, in which he affirmed his affiliation with nationalism and Arab nationalism and called for Arab unity. Al-Fitouri grew up in a religious environment and is a descendant of a Sufi family, and he summoned Sufi personalities in his poetry such as (The Sapphire of the Throne):
The lowest of us did not rise above us, O’ Sapphire
Be the lowest and you will be the highest
And his summoning of other personalities symbolized by (Darwish):
My soul turned pale and became a twilight
It illuminated with cloud and raised
Like a dervish hanging at the feet of his master
I’m wallowing in my prison, I’m rotting in my body
Others are blind, no matter how much they listen, they will not see me.
Al-Fitouri employed the Sufi symbols in his poetry in that Sufi courtyard:
My love is annihilating my passion and my annihilation is absorption
I Owned by you, but I am the Sultan of lovers
He also employed the sea in his Sufi poetry:
From which seas of the world do you ask me, my beloved, about a whale whose feet are of rock, whose eyes are of sapphire!!
Al-Fitouri understands Sufism as possessing the truth from one side, as it is far from being attained, because in his poetic imagination he aspires to the secret and the truth.
In Arab nationalism, he was looking forward to Arab unity, as he rejected the deteriorating Arab reality, and his rejection was a constructive rejection. He continued to push the Arab nation towards advancement and wrote great nationalities. He wrote about Sadat’s visit to occupied Jerusalem and went on to provide his poetry with the symbols of the Arab revolution, such as (Omar Al-Mukhtar), the leader of the Libyan revolution against Libyan tyranny, he wrote a poetic play about him, and portrayed the true hero as the Libyan people themselves. Al Fitour’s Arab nationalism manifested in his collection (The Revolution, the Hero and the Gallows), which he dedicated to the spirit of Gamal Abdel Nasser.
The poet also wrote about Arab cities such as Beirut – Baghdad – Jerusalem, Karbala – Najaf and others:
Muhammad al-Arabi was imprisoned
Fleet defender saw
And Al-Quds Al-Sharif there is crucified without hands
The sword was buried in the lungs
God, oh Baghdad, where you stood
You don’t ascend the positions of men and the will uncertain.
As for the Arab heritage, Al-Fitouri assembled it in his poetry, and he accompanied the simple traditional places and homes and rituals.
He wrote about (Tarabai), a Lebanese boy:
O hall of wondrous legends and green mirrors
Here I am alone and the Arab darkness over the graves of the martyr.
His death
Muhammad Miftah Al-Fitouri died on the afternoon of Friday the twenty-fourth of April 2015, at the Sheikh Zayed Hospital in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, at the age of 85, after a long suffering with illness. The body was transferred by an ambulance, towards the “Martyrs’ Cemetery” in Rabat near the Atlantic coast.
Yes, Al-Fitouri died with his body, while his magical, wondrous spirit remained fluttering in the skies of Africa and the Arab world. Of course, his name will remain immortal for his rich intellectual and literary cultural production.
