Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol.4, No.11 Publication Date: June. 25, 2017 DoI:10.14738/assrj.411.3308. Al-Rifai, N. Y. (2017). Wisdom in the poetry of Ahmad Shawqi. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 4(11) 227-250. Copyright © Society for Science and Education, United Kingdom Wisdom in the poetry of Ahmad Shawqi Nada Yousuf Al-Rifai (2017) College of Basic Education, PAAET, Kuwait. ABSTRACT Ahmad Shawqi lived between 1868 and 1932 and witnessed many events experienced by Arab and Islamic nations. These events greatly impacted his life and his poetry. He lived in Egypt from before the occupation of semi-independence and lived through the Orabi Revolution. He witnessed the British occupation of Egypt as well as the national movement led by Mustafa Kamel and Mohamed Farid. He was later exiled to Spain by the British after the First World War in 1914 and the deposition of Khedive Abbas. He advocated the 1919 revolution that erupted in Egypt, praising the fighters and watching the national strife in exile. Upon victory, he returned from his exile in 1920. Shawqi was influenced by European lifestyle during his stay in France and Britain, but this did not take away his eastern origins and roots. Shawqi's poetry immortalized the events of his time. His poetry collection reflects an important era in the history of Egypt, the State of the Caliphate, and all Arab countries. INTRODUCTION This is a man who seems to me as if Egypt chose him from among all its people as the spokesperson of its spirit. Only through him can Egypt say to history, “my poetry, my literature!” [Shawqi] is a name that is to literature as the sun is to the east: whenever it rises to its a position, it rises in every place, and when mentioned in the Arab world, the meaning of his name expanded to indicate the whole of Egypt as if it were the Nile or the pyramids or Cairo. People live through youth, adulthood, and senility, but the true man of letters lives youth, adulthood, and youth again, as long as the living poetic aims are there within his heart. (Al- Rafi'ei, 2001, p. 279) Ahmad Shawqi is one of the most prominent contemporary poets of not only Egypt, but also the Arab and Western world. He represents a certain artistic stage in the history of modern Arabic poetry. Following the approach of his teacher, Mahmoud Sami Al-Baroudi, Shawqi played an important role in reviving the literary movement and counting its constituents of great heritage. This movement was a new beginning in Arab poetry that followed a long period of inertia. Shawqi was also the poet of patriotism, who recorded the events of Egypt in his poetry, sang for its love, glorifying its great past and bright present, feeling sad for its weaknesses, and urging the people of Egypt to support their country. Shawqi also witnessed momentous events in the Muslim world at a time when Turkey, the Ottoman Caliphate state at the time, was losing many of its mandates. It abandoned Algeria to France in 1830, followed by Tunisia in 1881. England then occupied Egypt and Sudan in 1882, while Italy occupied Tripoli in 1912. Independent Islamic states such as Afghanistan and Iran were also not safe from the gamesmanship of colonialism. Shawqi was able to combine the old and the modern by providing Islamic character to the old religions and highlighting the call of monotheism by religions since ancient times. This trend also prevailed in Shawqi's theatrical poetry as well, which confirms the artistic and topical fact that Shawqi was keen to provide his themes with an Islamic tincture. Shawqi's historical poetry is full of names: events, people, and things, in which he imbued his portraits and artistic