Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
In the nineteenth century, Palestine was not immune from colonial ambitions. It was the target of all the powerful countries of that period. Western consuls and consulates had a clear influence on political life there. However, the deeper influence was on the social and cultural life that Western countries were able to instill through missionaries, churches, and schools.
In light of the need for schools that keep pace with the times, and the need of some sects for their own schools, establishing schools in the western Mediterranean was one of the means of achieving Western ambitions in areas of the Ottoman presence. The Western countries (France and Britain) established their political and military systems early, and then followed them with the cultural system. As for Germany and Russia, they did not enter the region militarily, but entered it culturally.
The Russian state established the Russian Seminar in Nazareth for boys and Bethlehem for girls. A number of teachers graduated from it during the Ottoman era, then the Mandate, as the number of schools of the Russian-Palestinian Society reached 114 schools. A number of teachers from the Renaissance and the diaspora era, as well as its writers and poets, graduated from this seminar, such as Mikhail Naima, Nasib Arida, Nasser Issa, and Iskandar Khoury Al-Bitjali. Khalil Beidas, Niamat al-Sabbagh, Salim Qabain, Abdel Masih Haddad, Nasser Rizk, Hanna Abu Hanna and others...
This number and quality of graduates must have had a great impact on Palestinian society, especially since these graduates led the cultural community at the time. However, his influence was not aggressive, but rather was acceptable and peaceful in Palestinian society. Evidenced by the fact that those who did not immigrate worked in their community and in educating their countrymen, and later participated in the national anti-colonial movement. From them, the phrase adopted in the book published by the poet was formedNima Al-Sabbagh, “The Vanguards of Renaissance Writers in Palestine, Nima Suleiman Al-Sabbagh, the First Poet of Nazareth,” as well as Hanna Abu Hanna’s book, “The Vanguards of the Renaissance in Palestine, Graduates of Russian Schools.”
Given the role played by teachers during the Mandate era in awareness and leadership, Nima al-Sabbagh and his colleagues played an important role in this direction. Whether in the curricula, the educational process, the Palestinian press, or the newly emerging trend of literature and poetry in Palestine.
Who is our poet?
He is Nimah Suleiman Al-Sabbagh, a poet and educator who was born in the city of Nazareth in 1886. He studied primary school at the Protestant School in Nazareth, then he joined the Imperial Russian-Palestinian Society School, known as the Russian Seminar, and graduated from the Teachers’ College there in 1904. After his graduation, he was appointed director of the Russian School. Primary school in the town of Manara in northern Lebanon for five years, and from there to Kousba School (Koura) for another five years, then he moved from there as director of the Russian School in Amioun, where he remained until the outbreak of World War I. (Note the succession of jobs between him and the poet Nasser Al-Issa, who collaborated with him in this study and exchanged tasks with him in education.)
After the first war, Al-Sabbagh returned to Nazareth in 1918 and was appointed director of the Orthodox school there until 1921. After that, he left the Russian schools and joined the Education Department in the Palestinian government, and was appointed director of the Amiri School in the town of Shefa Amr. He then worked in Jerusalem and Bethlehem for a period of time, after which he returned to Nazareth after he was retired in 1941. In 1945,
he was appointed director of the Catholic Episcopal School and the Sisters of Nazareth College in Haifa... and he remained there until the Nakba of 1948, when he left the country, leaving behind a house and a full library. His sister Naima preserved it after his death until her death, and it was said that it was later burned.
Following the Nakba, in 1948, he took refuge in Lebanon, where he worked as director of the Arabic section at Bchemzine High School. Then he moved to become a professor of the Arabic language at Tripoli College of the Levant and remained there for twelve years, after which he moved to Beirut to devote himself to writing in poetry and prose. Until he died in 1971.
He published his poetry in diaspora newspapers. "Cordoba" magazine, published in Argentina, and "Al Funun" magazine, published in New York. It was also published in the Egyptian newspaper "Al-Nafais" and other Arab newspapers.
His poetry is characterized by delicacy and a tendency to innovate meanings, far from concavity in words. He composed vertical poetry and Mwashah poetry and mastered them, and he excelled in using sentence counting to chronicle some occasions, which indicates his breadth of knowledge, mastery of the methods of the ancients, and mastery of prosody. In writing prose, he moved away from the ancient style of assonance, and followed the modernist prose style that began to appear with the beginning of the Renaissance in Palestine. According to the book “Nima Suleiman Al-Sabbagh...the First Poet of Nazareth (1885 - 1971)”, by Dr. Hani Al-Sabbagh. It is a book that includes his poetic and prose works.
News about Nima Suleiman Al-Sabbagh
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
: From
To