A new book of translations is set to bring a classical Arabic poet into the Western imagination – and change perceptions of the Middle East with it. One of literature’s undeniable life lessons is that ...

Lost amid the azure depths of 1,500 years of Arabic prose? Don't know al-Qais from Darwish? Then start here A portrait painted on a street in Beirut by artist Yazan Halwani in January 2014 depicts the ...

The Algerian organization ONDA has recently published a collection of 40 popular poems in Arabic. <i>El Moudjahid</i> reports that a commission created within ONDA carried out a long research and went ...

An attractive pocket-sized manuscript that I recently acquired reflects a long tradition to recite the liturgical poem “Mi Kamocha, Ve’en Kamocha” of Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141) in Adar. This ...

Translator's note: Nizar Qabbani was the most popular and beloved Arab poet of the second half of the twentieth century. He was born in Damascus in 1923. He started out as a romantic poet, with daring ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

Not only was Islam leaving its poetic mark, at the same time there was a movement of Buddhists, Hindus and Chinese throughout SE Asia and these four major philosophies have left their marks on the ...

In The Million's Poet programme, competitors battle it out to impress a panel of judges with traditional Arabic poems, not pop songs. But instead of choosing an ode to the beauty of Bedouin life, ...