Safa Abdul-Aziz Khulusi (; 1917–1995) was an Iraqi historian, novelist, poet, journalist and broadcaster. He is known for mediating between Arabic- and English-language cultures, and for his scholarship of modern Iraqi literature.
Apart from his literary output, he is now mainly remembered for his theories on the Shakespeare authorship question, which involved the view that Shakespeare either was an Arab or was heavily influenced by Arabic literature.
Background and career Khulusi was born in Baghdad, the son of a lawyer. His mother died when he was four years old.Professor Safa Khulusi, Obituary, The Independent, 5 October 1995. His family originates from Khanaqin. His grandfather resettled the family in Baghdad where he served as an officer in the Ottoman army, but was killed during the military withdrawal from Mesopotamia at the end of World War I.
Khulusi was inspired to pursue a literary career from an early age by his uncle, the novelist and poet Abdul-Majid Lutfi.Safa Khulusi. Abdul-Majīd Luṭfī's Rejuvenation of Words. Journal of Arabic Literature Vol. 11, (1980), pp. 65–67Safa Khulusi, Modern Arabic Literature in Iraq, Islamic Review, February 1951, p.35-40 Khulusi travelled to London in 1935 on an academic scholarship,Safa Khulusi, Interview in the literary section of Al-Jazirah, p.7, edition 7764, 13 December 1993. living there until the latter stages of World War II and insisting on staying in the city during The Blitz. He returned to Iraq late in the war.
An Arab nationalist, Khulusi turned down an offer of a ministerial position in the post-war British administration of Iraq. Instead, he divided his time between Britain and Iraq, establishing an academic career in both countries. His first novel Nifous Maridha (Sick Souls) was published in 1941, when he was 24 years old. His first academic post was as a lecturer in Arabic Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. During his tenure (1945–50) he completed a PhD in Arabic literature in 1947. In 1951 he was appointed as Professor of Arabic at the University of Baghdad. He also served as head of the Arabic Department at al-Mustansiriya University.
In 1959, Khulusi married Sabiha Al-Dabbagh (1922–1998), one of the first women to graduate as a medical doctor in Iraq.Sabiha Al-Dabbagh, Obituary, The Guardian, Friday, 11 September 1998. Following postgraduate training in the United States she returned to practice in Baghdad, where she was introduced to Khulusi. She later became a regular contributor to health programmes on the Arabic section of the BBC World Service and a campaigner for women's health in the Middle East. The couple had two children, a son and a daughter.
Khulusi's work mediated modern European and American developments in scholarship. He extended the academic tradition of comparative literature, publishing Dirasat fi al-Adab al-Muqarin wa al-Mathahib al-Adabia (Studies in Comparative Literature and Western Literary Schools) in 1957, and al-Tarjama al-Tahlilia (Analytical Translation) in the same year. Although concentrating on literary and historical scholarship, Khulusi also published novels, short stories and poetry during this period. In addition, he translated modern Iraqi literature into English, publishing a number of translations of the work of Atika Wahbi Al-Khazraji.Salih Altoma, Iraq's Modern Arab Literature: A Guide to English Translations Since 1950, Scarecrow Press, 2010, p.97 In Oxford in 1972, he became one of the editors of the Concise Oxford English-Arabic Dictionary of Current Usage which sought to match new developments in both languages. He later published A Dictionary of Contemporary Idiomatic Usage. His books Fann al-Tarjama (The Art of Translation) and Fann al-Taqti' al-Shi'ri wa al-Qafia (The Art of Poetry: Composition and Prosody) were widely read and went through many editions. He was also a regular broadcaster on the BBC's Arabic service and a presenter of cultural programs on Iraqi television.
While participating in the Arabic literary revival Khulusi attempted to remain ‘neutral’ in the unstable politics of the era. In 1958 the king Faisal II of Iraq and his family were overthrown in a violent revolution. One of their executioners was an army officer who had been one of Khulusi's students. Many years later, when Khulusi met the man again and questioned him on his role in the king's death, the former student answered "all I did was remember Palestine, and the trigger on the machine-gun just set itself off". During Saddam Hussein's regime Khulusi spent most of his time in England where he enjoyed a greater freedom of expression in his writing, returning to Iraq for a couple of months a year to avoid the English winter. On one such visit, he explained to a friend who asked why he didn't remain in Baghdad permanently, "Our roots are here, but it's there that we flower best."
Khulusi was a devout Muslim. He was one of a group of scholars who assisted in the academic and religious reformation of the madrasas in Najaf.Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi'is of Iraq, Princeton University Press, 2003 p.262. Khulusi was elected Chairman of the National Muslim Education Council of the UK. He sought to improve Islamic education, while also supporting co-operation between faiths. He also defended traditions of tolerance within Islam. He wrote widely for Muslim publications.
Shakespeare and the theory of Arab ancestry and Arabic influence
Following the lead of the 19th-century Arab scholar Ahmad Faris Shidyaq, Khulusi wrote a book which attempted to prove that William Shakespeare was an Arab, the original form of his name being "Shaykh Zubayr". Academic Eric Ormsby summarizes Khulusi's claims as follows,
In a massive tome, the professor argued that the lone survivor of the shipwreck of an Arab merchant vessel washed up on the shores of Elizabethan England and made his way, wet, bedraggled, and famished, to the nearest village where he found hospitality and shelter. Establishing himself, there our mariner quickly mastered English and in short order was churning out remarkable poems and dramas. Relocated to Stratford-on-Avon and London, he rose to prominence in the theater, even winning the favor of the Virgin Queen. His original name had been Shaykh Zubayr, but (though there is no letter p in the Arabic alphabet) this was soon anglicized to Shakespeare. This thesis, which would have delighted Jorge Luis Borges, rested not merely on fanciful historical supposition but on a mad, meticulous, and painstaking inventory of Shakespeare's vocabulary. The Iraqi argued, with the unassailable logic of the truly demented, that most of Shakespeare's language could be traced back to Classical Arabic.... Even more telling, our scholar detected scores, even hundreds, of borrowings and "cognates" in the Bard's works. To give but one example: the Arabic adjective nabil, which means "noble," occurs, naturally enough, throughout the plays and poems.Ormsby, E, "Shadow Language", New Criterion, Vol. 21, Issue: 8, April 2003.
Khulusi's thesis was expounded in Arabic publications. He also wrote several articles in English on Shakespeare and Arabian literature for the Islamic Review, but did not claim Shakespeare himself was Arabian in these publications. In 1966 he suggested that Romeo and Juliet draws on the "basically Arabian" concept of Platonic love.Safa A. Khulusi, Arabian Influence on the concept of Platonic love in Shakespeare, Islamic Review, Oct 1966, p.18. In 1970 he summarized his arguments about Shakespeare's language, but confined himself to the suggestion that the poet was "under the influence of Arabic style".Safa A. Khulusi, Shakespeare and Arabic Grammar, Islamic Review, Oct/Nov 1970, p.20.
His view that Shakespeare had Arabic ancestors is highly speculative and lacks any evidence. His opinions have been opposed by other scholars including Abdul Sattar Jawad, Abdullah Al-Dabbagh, Eric Ormsby, Ferial Ghazoul, as well as the Egyptian scholar Ibrahim Hamadah, who devoted a book, ‘Urubat Shakespeare (The Arabism of Shakespeare) 1989, to refuting Khulusi's thesis. p. 9. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi endorsed Khulusi's views in 1989.Margaret Litvin, Critical Survey, Volume: 19. Issue: 3., 2007, p.1.
Abu Nuwas in America His novel Abu Nuwas fi Amrika (Abu Nuwas in America), written during Khulusi's sojourn in Chicago, has been called a "hilarious satire" recounting the extraordinary adventures that befall the Abbasid poet Abu Nuwas, wine- and boy-lover, when he is miraculously transported into America, from his presence on a stamp brought into that country. Part parody of Arabic works on the bewildering experience of life in the West, part picaresque novel, it has the hero tour the louche subcultures, gay and heterosexual, of America from Queens through Las Vegas to Los Angeles, while rising ineluctably to become an authority in the United States on the Arab world.
Notwithstanding the high satiric energy of the novel, Khulusi's intention was to introduce American culture to an Arab readership. He compares Iraqi and American nationalism and the practice of religion in his adopted culture with the Muslim faith. He concludes that, just as American identity comes from a melting pot of peoples, so too is Arab identity, a cultural commitment by peoples of markedly different ethnic background who have come to intermarry, and replace the allegiance of blood with an attachment to a shared language and culture.Orit Bashkin, The other Iraq: pluralism and culture in Hashemite Iraq, Stanford University Press, 2009 pp.167–168Joyce Moss, Middle Eastern literatures and their times,Thomson Gale, 2004 p.140.
Arabic poetry in English
Khulusi set out to introduce English readers to contemporary Iraqi poetry by translating the works of some of the most prominent and influential poets of the first half of the 20th century.Safa A. Khulusi, Poetry as a vehicle of social and political reform in Iraq. Islamic Review, Jul–Aug 1962, p.15-17Atika Wahbi al-Khazraj, Farewell to Baghdad, translated by Safa Khulusi Islamic Review, 1951Atika Wahbi al-Khazraj: O’ Palestine, The Miserable Woman, Love of the Fatherland. Poems translated by Safa Khulusi, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1950, 3–4, p.151-157Safa Khulusi, Contemporary poetesses of Iraq, Islamic Review, June 1950, p.40- 45 This was a period of significant social and political change, an era of wars and civil strife, and also a time when poetry was highly valued and influential in Arab society and particularly in Iraq. The appearance of a famous poet at a public meeting for example, would generate a large crowd, and mainstream daily newspapers regularly replaced their lead paragraph with poetic verses employing all manner of eloquence and rhetoric to win the affection of the reader and sway a political argument.
Political and social themes
From the end of the 19th century, the rise to prominence of talented radical poets Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi (1863–1936) and Ma'ruf al-Rusafi (1875–1945) popularized poetry containing social and political themes. According to Khulusi, both al-Zahawi and al-Rusafi learned from contemporary Turkish poets, such as Tawfiq Fikrat, the value of charging poetry with powerful messages. Al-Rusafi was the more ferocious and shocking in his political attacks, while Zahawi's ire was directed at what he believed to be outdated social attitudes.
Al-Zahawi's poetry extolling a utopian society was his attempt to set the agenda for a social revolution, particularly on views towards women in post-Ottoman Iraq. According to Khulusi, this was largely unwelcomed at the time, but proved nonetheless influential as a catalyst for change in the decades that followed. Khulusi renders the incendiary work including what he calls “Zahawi's tirade against the veil”: O Daughter of Iraq! tear the veil into pieces, And go about unveiled, for life demands revolutions.