Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
I became acquainted with the name Izz al-Din al-Manasra, at the beginning of my interest in Palestinian poetry and heritage . It was first when I read the collections of Abd al-Rahim Mahmoud and Tawfiq Ziyad, which he collected and attached to them two studies about their lives. Secondly, and this is most important, when I read the traditional story of “Jafra” in an old issue of the magazine “Palestinian Affairs” issued by the Research Center of the PLO (I checked the magazine on the Palestine Books channel on the Telegram application, and found that it was located on 25 pages of issue No. 127 in June. (June 1982, i.e. the last issue before the invasion of Lebanon). Then he published this expanded research in a small booklet.
That day, a marginalized heritage treasure was unveiled, at the height of the brilliance of Youssef Hassoun and Abu Arab on the Palestinian Revolution Radio in Beirut.
Al-Manasrah is credited with the fact that he established a set of Palestinian literary and cultural values and elements, and that he is a poet, critic, journalist, academic, artist, military commander, and activist who left Lebanon on board a ship following the Israeli invasion.
It is credited to him that he lived his research and writing until it was reflected in his poetry and moved from his mind to his heart and feelings. He wrote several poems about “Jefra” until he became known for two things: Jephra and Canaanite (relative to the Canaanites). The widespread story about his love for a girl from Nablus named “Jafra” who was studying in Beirut, about which some social media pioneers wove stories, has not been proven.
As for “Al-Kanaana,” he went far with it in searching for Palestinian roots and deepening identityPalestinian. He considered, "Canaan is the first name for Palestine, and that the Palestinians are Canaanite tribes." He considered that “Canaanite roots constitute an essential element in the Palestinian identity,” so “Canaanite” occupied a large area of his poetry, and he even gave the name “Canaanite” to one of his collections (in imitation of the Greek Iliad). All of this without denying his Islamic roots in Palestine, as he is from Bani Naim, the descendant of Naim bin Aws al-Dari, the brother of Tamim al-Dari, to whom the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, granted two-thirds of the Hebron region as an Islamic endowment in Palestine.
Translated by
Izz al-Din al-Manasra. He was born in the village of Bani Naim, on April 11, 1946. He studied primary school in the village school, and middle school in Port Said School in Wadi al-Tuffah, Hebron district. As for secondary school, Ibn Rushd and Al-Hussein bin Ali schools in the city of Hebron. He published his first poems when he was a child in 1959 in the Jerusalem newspaper Al-Massa.
He moved to Cairo in 1964, joining its university, and graduated in 1968 in Arabic language and Islamic sciences. During his studies, he published his poems in magazines such as Al-Adab, Al-Hurriyah, Palestine in Beirut, and Palestine News in Gaza, and he was a correspondent for Al-Foq Al-Jadeed magazine in Jerusalem. He also published in Egyptian newspapers such as Al-Masaa, Al-Akhbar, Al-Ahram, Al-Hilal, Al-Majalla, Al-Shair, and Al-Risala. He won the Egyptian Universities Prize in Poetry in 1968.
Then he obtained a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature in 1969 from the same university. Then he moved to Jordan and worked as director of cultural programs on the Jordanian Radio from 1970 to 1973. In the same period, he founded the Jordanian Writers Association with a group of Jordanian thinkers and writers.
In parallel with his work in the Palestinian cultural field, he volunteered in the Palestinian resistance in 1965. He moved from Cairo to Amman, and lived through the events of Black September there. Then he moved to Beirut in 1973 and worked in “Palestine Al-Thawra” magazine, the mouthpiece of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He was elected a member of the military command of the joint Palestinian-Lebanese forces in the southern Beirut area at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1976. He participated in several battles, including the Battle of the Mills, which aimed to ease the siege of the Tal al-Zaatar camp.
After his return from Bulgaria after obtaining his doctorate in comparative literature in 1981, he took up his job as editor-in-chief of the magazine “Palestinian Affairs” affiliated with the Palestinian Research Center in Beirut. He edited the newspaper "Al-Ma'rakah" during the siege of Beirut in 1982, until he left Beirut among the ranks of the guerrillas as part of the deal to end the siege, on board the ship "Shams Al-Madit" to Tartous, and from there to Tunisia. In 1983, he went to Algeria, where he worked as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Constantine until 1987.
Al-Manasra was active in the cultural and trade union field in every country he resided in. He formed friendships with poets and writers in Egypt, was a member of the Literary Society there, and hosted dozens of evenings. Noodles. He was one of the leaders of the General Union of Palestine Students in Cairo.
In Jordan, he played a prominent role in the poetic movement, hosted dozens of poetry evenings, and contributed to establishing the Jordanian Writers Association, and the Association granted him honorary membership in it.
In the early 1990s, he moved to Jordan, where he founded the Arabic Language Department at Al-Quds Open University (before its headquarters moved to Palestine), after which he became director of the College of Educational Sciences affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and Philadelphia University, where he obtained the rank of professor in 2005. He won several awards in literature, including: the Jordanian State Appreciation Award in the field of poetry in 1995, and the Al-Quds Prize in 2011. Al-
Manasra died on Monday, April 5, 2021 AD, in Amman due to complications from his infection with the Corona virus, at the age of 74 years.
Poetry collections
O Grapes of Hebron, 1968. Exit from the Dead Sea, 1969. Dead Sea Memoirs, 1969. Jerash’s Moon Was Sad, 1974. With Green We Shrouded It, 1976. Jefra, 1981. Kanaaniyada, 1981. Hiziya, A Lover of the Spray of the Oasis, 1990. Pastorals Canaaniya, 1992. I Don't Trust the Cuckoo, 2000. The Sky Has No Roof, 2009. Canaan Glows, 2008.
News about Izz al-Din al-Manasra
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
: From
To