Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Hassan Hassan Mohammed Hussein Al-Buhairi was born in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood in occupied Haifa in 1921, to a Palestinian family whose origins go back to the depopulated village of Al-Tira in the occupied Haifa district. He studied primary school at the Amiriya School in Haifa until the fourth grade. He worked at the Hejaz Railway Station in 1933, then in the employment department of the Railway Authority. This work allowed him to visit Egypt and meet some Egyptian writers. After 1948, he worked as an Arabic language teacher in Damascus schools until he retired in 1978, and as a supervisor of the literary section at Damascus Radio . He broadcast programs there, including: “With the Dictionary,” “From Our Literary Heritage,” “Morning Jokes,” and “Evening Jokes.” He then became head of the Cultural Programs Department at the General Directorate of Syrian Radio and Television.
In his childhood, Al-Buhairi was influenced by the preachers of Haifa mosques, such as Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Sheikh Nimr al-Khatib, and Sheikh Abdul Rahman Murad. He participated in the resistance in Haifa during the 1948 war; he was part of the night guard patrols, was active in planting mines, and supervised the demolition of the Great Palestine Mills in Haifa in April 1948, where a large number of Zionist forces were entrenched.
He wrote a number of articles in Palestinian newspapers and magazines, including the newspaper Al-Difa published in Jaffa, and participated in educational conferences held by the Arab League. He published a number of poetry collections, including: Al-Asael and Al-Ashar (1943), Afrah Al-Rabi' (1944), Ibtisam Al-Duha (1946), Haifa in the Blackness of the Eyes (1973), To Palestine I Sing (1979), Zilal Al-Jamal (1981), Al-Anhar Al-Zama' (1982), Tabarak Al-Rahman (1983), Jannat Al-Ward (1989), Risalat Fi Eid (1990), Li Eini Biladi (1993), I Will Return (1994), Alwan (1995), A Joke Between Seriousness and Jest (1996), and Khamrat Al-Shi'r (1997).
Al-Buhairi received the Jerusalem Medal for Culture in 1990 in recognition of his literary achievement. A number of studies and research papers have been written about his life and poetry, including the book “Hassan Al-Buhairi, the Poet in Whom Genius Triumphed Over Deprivation” by Subhi Obeid. His poems were also collected in a three-volume book entitled “The Piano of Palestine, Hassan Al-Buhairi - The Complete Poetic Works.” Al-Buhairi recommended that his house be converted after his death into a Palestinian cultural center under the name “Beit Palestine.”
Al-Buhairi suffered in his life; he was displaced with his family from Haifa during the events of the Nakba, specifically on April 23, 1938. He lived in refugee camps in Syria, and was imprisoned in Syria for several months. He suffered from heart disease as a result, and died in Al-Shami Hospital in Damascus on October 25, 1998. He was buried in the Martyrs’ Cemetery in Yarmouk Camp.
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