Ṣabrī, Ismāʿīl - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
DeYoung, Terri
Leiden
Brill
(722 words)
Ismāʿīl Ṣabrī (d. 1923) is generally considered the most important Egyptian poet of Madrasat al-Iḥyāʾ (the Revivalist School) after Maḥmūd Sāmī al-Bārūdī (d. 1904), Aḥmad Shawqī (d. 1932), Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm (d. 1932), and Khalīl Muṭrān (d. 1949). In a famous formulation, his poetry, composed mostly in the early twentieth century, has been described as concerned primarily with love, death, and nationalism (Tawfīq, 64; see also Jayyusi, 1:40). Ṣabrī was born in Cairo in 1854 to a middle-class mercantile family of Ḥijāzī origin. In 1866 he was