Birth: NULL/NULL/1917 Death:NULL/NULL/1998
Born in Jaffa in 1917 to a Lebanese father and a Palestinian mother; started writing poetry and plays at the age of 15; received a BA in Arabic Literature from the AUB in 1937; worked as Arabic and English teacher in Jaffa and later in Annah, Iraq (near the Iraqi-Syrian border) from 1937-39; enrolled again at the AUB and gained an MA in 1940, focusing on Arab mythology; returned to Palestine and worked at the Palestinian Radio in Jerusalem; served with the British Mandate authorities as educational inspector of governmental schools in Jaffa and Southern Palestine; was member of several cultural and literary clubs; became well known as a nationalistic poet; moved to Lebanon after the Nakba of 1948, with bitter memories and the loss of all his manuscripts; was lecturer in Arabic Literature in several colleges in Baghdad from 1948-51, then at the American School in Beirut in 1952; was a guest professor at the University of Texas, where he established the Arabic and Oriental Studies Dept. in 1953; was assigned Director of Television in Kuwait, serving from 1959-65; then worked as head inspector of the Arabic Language at the Maqassed schools in Lebanon and as Director of the Ali Ben Abi Taleb Secondary School from 1965-87; his publications include: On the Path of the Mythology of the Arabs: A Study in Depth on the Arabic Beliefs and Myths Before Islam ((Arabic, Beirut, 1955; 1979); Heroic Arabic Poems (Arabic, Beirut, 1958); The Infidel Flame (Arabic, Beirut, 1963); The Magic Dagger (Arabic, Beirut, 1983); The Sheikh of Beirut: Al-Imam Al-Sheikh Muhammad al-Hout (Arabic, Beirut, 1994); left at least six unpublished manuscripts; is remembered as mythologist, poet and translator; died in 1998.
