Ahmed Rafiq Almhadoui

Ahmed Rafiq al-Mahdawi (Arabic: احمد رفيق المهدوي‎ 1898 - 1961) was a Libyan poet. Al-Mahdawi was born in 1898 in the village of Fassāṭo in Libya's Nafusa Mountains.

Early life

At the age of 13 he migrated to Egypt where he studied and achieved primary, secondary and baccalaureate.

Career

He returned to Libya and worked there as a secretary of the Benghazi Council, but the Italian Fascists excluded him, so he migrated to Turkey in 1934, before he came back, as an exile from Italians in 1936. He returned to his home in 1946, and participated in the national movement which led to the independence of Libya on 24 December 1952, when he was appointed a member of the Senate. Major events in Libya, Egypt, Palestine and Tunisia are covered in his poetry. The guru of Arab authors "Al-‘Aqqād" called him the leader of poetry renovation. He died in 1961 in Libya. His most famous poem is "To Italy", written after the defeat of the Axis countries in 1945.

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