1900 - 1997
The leading neoclassical poet of modern Iraq.
Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, born in al-Najaf, became a teacher in the 1920s. His poetry brought him to the notice of King Faisal I, who became his patron and protector. Closely associated with the Communist Party, al-Jawahiri became president of the Journalists' Association after the Revolution of 1958, and was Iraq's ambassador to Czechoslovakia until 1963. He returned to Iraq in the early 1970s but went into exile in Damascus a few years later. He was famous for his forceful revolutionary poetry.
— PETER SLUGLETT
