Safa Khulusi

Safa Khulusi
صفاء عبد العزيز خلوصي
Safa Khulusi (age 24 years) as he appears on the cover of his first novel published in 1941
Born	(1917-08-17)17 August 1917 Baghdad, Ottoman Empire
Died	8 September 1995(1995-09-08) (aged 78) London, England
Occupation(s)	Linguist, writer, poet, journalist, translator, lexicographer, historian
Spouse	Sabiha Al-Dabbagh

Safa Abdul-Aziz Khulusi (Arabic: صفاء عبد العزيز خلوصي‎; 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. He is also remembered for his theories on Arabic grammar, on Shakespeare, as well as his role in Islamic education and his work on the poetry of al-Mutanabbi.

Background and career

Khulusi was born in Baghdad, the son of a lawyer. His mother died when he was four years old. 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. Khulusi travelled to London in 1935 on an academic scholarship, 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. 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. 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 programmes 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. 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.

Islam Our Choice

In his book Islam Our Choice, first published in 1961, Khulusi set out a collection of personal accounts from individuals who converted to Islam from other religions. The extracts, many sourced from The Islamic Review, were collected over a number of years and provide an insight into the spiritual, social and cultural factors that led influential individuals to embrace Islam in the first half of the 20th century.

Two of the more famous converts included by Khulusi were the Irish peer Rowland Allanson-Winn, 5th Baron Headley (1855–1935) and the English baronet Sir 'Abdullah' Archibald Hamilton 5th and 3rd Baronet (1876–1939). The former became known by the adopted Muslim name Shaikh Rahmatullah al-Farooq. He converted to Islam in 1913 and went on to write several books on Islam, including A Western Awakening to Islam (1914) and Three Great Prophets of the World (1923). The latter, like many others in the book, was attracted to the 'simple purity' of Islam.

'The democracy of Islam' as described by the American convert Donald Rockwell in 1935, where 'potentate and pauper have the same rights on their knees in humble worship'. (Illustration: Prayer on the Housetops in Cairo by Jean-Leon Gerome, 1865)

Other common themes amongst Western converts to Islam are largely summarised by the American Donald Rockwell, who became a Muslim in 1935. He was inspired by the religion's teachings on temperance and moderation, by its broadminded tolerance of other faiths and by its freedom from idolatry. He also cites Islam's rules on charity and the pioneering declaration on Women's property rights. He remarks on the earnestness of the faithful in answering the call to prayer and the compelling atmosphere of the great mosques of the East in fostering contemplation and self-effacement. Colonel Rockwell was Editor-in-Chief of Radio Personalities and author of Beyond the Brim and Bazaar of Dreams.

Another part of Khulusi's book details some of the influential non-Muslim writers who showed a regard for Islamic teaching, culture and history during the Age of Enlightenment. Amongst these is Simon Ockley, a Cambridge scholar, who is noted for his book History of the Saracens (1712–18), a remarkable publication for its time, because of its generous tone towards Islam. Voltaire is also included for his fight for religious tolerance, outlined in the passionate Traité sur la Tolérance, (1763).

Gotthold Lessing, hampered by the censor, gives his ideas the shape of a drama, Nathan der Weise (1779), which he bases on the Oriental legend of the Three Rings. The play, regarded as a defence of religious tolerance and religious values, was later translated into many languages.

Johann Gottfried Herder, an outstanding scholar of theology, approaches the Arabic field through a scholarship of Hebrew literature and poetry. Herder achieves knowledge of Arabic civilisation and becomes familiar with the pre-Muslim poems of the Mu'allaqat, translated and published by Sir William Jones (1783). He earnestly describes Muhammad as "an accomplished offspring of his tribe and town, of his nation and of its history, and a genius in its magnificent language."

In his schooldays Johann Wolfgang von Goethe acquired a copy of the Qur'an in the Classical Latin translation of 1698, which had been re-edited in Leipzig in 1740. The original translation was the work of Louis Maracci (a scholar working with Pope Innocent XI). Goethe translated some of the passages into German and began to design a play about Muhammad, fragments of which remain. Mahomet's Nachthymne is a poem from 1773, the last strophe of which is a monologue of Muhammad and is one of the fragments of the unfinished play. For the first time in Western literature, Goethe represented Muhammad as a prophet of God.

Saladin in Jerusalem. The Eastern tale of the Muslim leader Saladin and the Jewish merchant Melchizedek was adapted by Gotthold Lessing into the drama Nathan der Weise and used to introduce the concept of religious tolerance into Western Europe. Religious censorship at that time prevented performances of the play until after Lessing's death.

Goethe devoted himself to Oriental studies during the latter stages of the Napoleonic Wars. The result was the West Eastern Divan (1819), which comprises a garland of verses in an Oriental style, deep interpretations of Eastern thought and profound love poems and a set of scholarly essays. In the remarkable prose essays Noten und Anhandlungen Goethe gives the background to Hebrew, Arabic and Persian poetry. The chapter on Muhammad gives the fundamentals of Islam and a character-sketch of the Prophet.

Goethe's Oriental studies are considered an 'escape' from war-ridden Europe to a more peaceful East, where the poet views 'a wise religion, a contented civilisation and elements of the patriarchal age'. This escape he refers to in the title of his poem Hejira. In the poem he says, "When North and West and South splinter, thrones burst and empires tremble, flee to the pure East and breathe the air of the patriarchs." There follows what appears to be the motto of the Divan:

Gottes ist der Orient,

Gottes ist der Occident.

Nord' und suedliches Gelaende,

Ruht im Frieden seiner Haende.

(God is the Orient, God is the Occident, The North and the South, all rest in the Peace of His hands) which seems to be a free rendering in accomplished verse of Sura' II, 115 from the Qur'an.

Thomas Carlyle became an inspired and re-inspiring pupil of Goethe, corresponding with him from 1820 until Goethe's death in 1832. He delivered a series of lectures on heroic leadership which were later compiled into a book, Heroes and Hero-worship (1840). The second lecture was devoted to Muhammad and Islam, in which he refutes misrepresentations "that are disgraceful to ourselves" and gives his own deeply personal and respectful views of Islam based on historic events. He goes on to quote the words of Goethe: “We resign ourselves to God. If this be Islam, do we not all live in Islam?”

Khulusi's book suggests that Western appreciation of Islam became unambiguous and overt in scholastic works during the Age of Enlightenment. It then flourished further as the desire grew for an understanding of the essentials of faith. However, amongst notable intellectuals the impetus had its roots long before then and was intertwined with the quest to learn the language and understand the culture of the Arabs. By the 20th century, appreciation of Islam was also joined by conversion to the religion by those in the West who wished to be associated more closely with the fundamental teachings and practices of Islam.

Abu Nuwas in America

His novel Abu Nuwas fi Amrika (Abu Nuwas in America), written during Khulusi's sojourn in Chicago, has been called an "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.

Shakespeare and the theory of Arab ancestry and Arabic influence

The Chandos portrait of Shakespeare. Khulusi argued that the dusky features and pointed 'Islamic' beard were evidence of Shakespeare's Arabic ethnicity.

Following the lead of the 19th-century Arab scholar Ahmad Faris Shidyaq, Khulusi wrote an article in the Arabic Journal, al-Ma'rifa (The Knowledge), in 1960 which attempted to prove that William Shakespeare may have had Arab ancestry, the original form of his surname being 'Shaykh Zubayr'. Khulusi suggested that the family name originated from Zubayr, an autonomous province in the Ottoman Empire ruled by an Emir (or Shaykh), hence 'Shaykh Zubayr', a name which he suggested was then anglicized to Shakespeare. Khulusi notes that Shakespeare had many variations in the spelling of his name, including hyphenated forms. He suggests that a name that is unusual may produce many written versions, and that the hyphenated variants, such as 'Shake-speare', could reflect an original that is composed of two parts.

Khulusi records some of the known details about Shakespeare, including his birth and early life in Stratford-upon-Avon, details of his parents and his literary career. He suggests however, that information relating to Shakespeare's ancestral origin is lacking and believes that evidence pointing to his Arab ancestry is reflected in his choice of writing style and the content of his work, as well as in his own personal appearance. He comments on Shakespeare's possible ancestral lineage based on physical features in the Chandos portrait, which was painted during Shakespeare's lifetime.

In other parts of his theory, Khulusi identifies words originating from Arabic that appear in Shakespearian plays and sonnets and argues that their use is more common than expected for that time. Certain words were unheard of before being introduced by Shakespeare. The earliest literary use in English of the word assassination (from the Arabic word ħashshāshīyīn) is in Macbeth.

Khulusi notes the observations of Walt Taylor (Arabic Words in English, 1933) that about a thousand main words of Arabic origin and many more of their derivatives, were incorporated into the English language through translations of French, Spanish and Latin re-workings of Arabic texts (mainly scientific and medical). However, about a third of all loan words (mainly conversational), were taken directly from Arabic, from the end of the 16th century to the time of the Restoration. Many of the words are now obsolete or rare but the ones still in everyday use have a completely English appearance, accent, stress and pronunciation. By all appearance they are not consciously regarded as Arabic. In contrast, more recent borrowings have neither settled pronunciation nor settled form. Taylor suggests that the absorption of Arabic words directly into English was the result of increased travel and trade as well as direct contact with both Arabic speakers and texts.

Khulusi adds that it was around this time that Arabic began to be studied in England. William Bedwell (1561–1632) is credited with introducing formal academic studies in Arabic. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud (1573–1645), in his role as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, recognised the importance to English of Arabic as a source of reference material. He procured numerous original Arabic manuscripts and books for the University, housing them in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. He created the position of Professor of Arabic in 1636, appointing the Chaplain of Aleppo, Edward Pococke, as the first Laudian Professor of Arabic at The University of Oxford. Pococke was tasked with returning to the East and collecting further Arabic scholastic and scientific works. He was accompanied by other academics and scientists, returning to England a few years later, with numerous Arabic texts. The astronomer John Greaves travelled with Pococke and secured valuable Arabic manuscripts for his own work. He was later appointed as Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford.

File:Arabic features of Shakespeare.jpg

Khulusi evaluates and annotates scores of lines from Shakespeare's plays that he believes directly refer or allude to Arabic language, customs, traditions and mythology.

Khulusi speculates about the inclusion of large numbers of Arabic geographic locations and place names in Shakespeare's work. He details Arab countries from North Africa that are referred to by Shakespeare, including Egypt, Morocco, Tunis (Tunisia), Mauritania, Argier (Algeria) and Libya. While from the Middle East he mentions Palestine, Syria, Arabia (Saudi) and Mesopotamia (Iraq). In addition Khulusi remarks on the references to various Eastern cities in Shakespeare's plays, including Alexandria, Memphis, Tyre, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Antioch, Damascus and Tripoli. He also specifies Arab historical sites and natural and geographic features covered in Shakespeare's work. He indicates that the influence of the physical and natural Arab world is unusually pervasive and includes lines and extracts from Shakespeare's work to illustrate this. The following are a small number of the examples that he includes:

Let the bird of loudest lay,

On the sole Arabian tree,

Herald sad and trumpet be,

To whose sound chaste wings obey. The Phoenix and the Turtle

And so to Tripoli, if God lend me life. The Taming of the Shrew. IV, ii

I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip. Othello. IV, iii

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees their medicinal gum. Othello. V, ii

The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds

Of wide Arabia are as thoroughfares now

For princes to come view fair Portia. Merchant of Venice. II, vii

This be Damascus, be thou cursed Cain,

To slay thy brother Abel, if thou wilt. King Henry VI, part I. I, iii

If she be furnish’d with a mind so rare,

She is alone the Arabian bird, and I

Have lost the wager.

Boldness be my friend!

Arm me, audacity, from head to foot! Cymbeline. I, vi

A statelier pyramis to her I'll rear

Than Rhodope’s or Memphis’ ever was: King Henry VI, part I: I, vi

A living drollery. Now I will believe

That there are unicorns, that in Arabia

There is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix

At this hour reigning there. The Tempest. III, iii

Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ the Tiger: Macbeth. I, iii

Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Macbeth. V, i

Khulusi notes the writing of William Bliss (The Real Shakespeare, 1947) that Shakespeare may have travelled “on board the ship the Tiger to Tripoli at some time between 1585–93 which was wrecked in the Adriatic on the way back home.” He argues that as a result of visiting North Africa, Shakespeare gained material for his work, and that his plays bear similarities to much earlier Arabic stories. He finds similarities in plots, characters, and even dialogue. Othello, The Moor of Venice, he says "has a reflection in The Arabian Nights tale of Qamar Al-Zaman (Arabian Nights 962–967)" and that his name may have originated from Ata-Allah (The Gift of God), a name common in North Africa, while The Merchant of Venice 'bears similarities' to the story of Masrur The Merchant and Zayn al-Mawasif. The plot of The Tempest is similar to that of The Isle of Treasures in The Arabian Nights (Suhail Edition, Vol. V, p. 238–242), and the characters of both Caliban and Ariel find their counterparts in The Nights story. Macbeth he says "embraces three Arabian tales in one story", The Three Witches, Zarqa Al-Yamamah, and the story of the Himyarite 'Amr and King Hassan. This resemblance between Macbeth and the Arabian stories was first noted by Reynold Nicholson in his book A Literary History of The Arabs.

Shakespeare may have become familiar with Eastern story themes and plots through European sources containing reworked and translated Eastern tales. One source being Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron. Boccaccio (d.1375) freely admits that his frame story collection of a hundred tales is heavily influenced by earlier stories. Many of these have origins in Arab (including Spanish-Moorish), Persian and Sanskrit literature. Aspects of Cymbeline, for example, are recognisable in The Decameron story II 9. Khulusi adds that some of the details in plays such as Macbeth, Othello and The Merchant of Venice have such a close affinity to their Eastern counterparts, that these details must have been sourced from the Eastern originals rather than via an intermediate step.

Khulusi reports on an exhaustive inventory of Shakespearian lines and phrases that he believes show 'Arabic influence'. One of the many examples that he gives:

Was mahomet inspired with a dove? Thou with an eagle art inspired then. Henry VI. i, 1:2.

He says that symbolically Shakespeare shows deference to the Prophet Muhammad and to Islam. However, he adds another more literal interpretation. Islamic history records that Qur'anic verses were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the angel Jibra’il (Gabriel) who appeared with angelic wings of a dove thus ‘inspiring’ Muhammad to believe in his authenticity and that of his message. Khulusi suggests that Shakespeare may have had an understanding of Islamic history.

Khulusi studies Shakespeare's language in terms of its grammar and compares this to Arabic grammar. According to Edwin Abbott (Shakespearian Grammar 1870), Shakespeare's language is unique in that he prefers clarity to grammatical correctness, and brevity to both correctness and clarity, leaving sentences unambiguous but seemingly ungrammatical. Khulusi suggests that Shakespeare's grammar should not be analysed by the fixed rules of modern English, as Elizabethan English was far less structured and in a 'transitional phase' of development. He adds that the language was ready to 'borrow' idioms, rhetoric and even rules of grammar from older, more established languages and that Shakespeare may have chosen to adopt Eastern literary methods to enhance the richness and distinctiveness of his work.

Khulusi gives examples of similarities between Shakespearian rules of grammar and those of Arabic. One rule he explains as follows: “The frequent omission of the word The before a noun already defined by another, especially in prepositional phrases. In Arabic it is a strict rule to drop the definite article al(the) from a noun in the possessive case, i.e. by an implied English (of)”. Some of the examples given are:

At heel of that defy him, Antony and Cleopatra. ii, 2:160.

For honour of our land, Henry. V iii, 5:22.

Thy beauty's form in table of my heart. Sonnet 24.

In another rule, Khulusi reports that Shakespeare uses The Which. He says that in French there is lequel but not lequi whereas in Arabic the relative pronoun is always defined. Shakespeare is nearer to Arabic than French. He uses the which and the whom and the latter is unique to Shakespeare.

The better part of valour is discretion: in the which better part I have saved my life. Henry IV, part 1, v, 4:125.

The example of this rule is reminiscent of a line from al-Mutanabbi (d.965), who says (metre: al-Kamil)

Discretion comes before the valour of brave men. It stands first; valour comes next.

Khulusi goes on to detail eleven other grammatical rules in common with Arabic and provides examples to illustrate these.

Khulusi suggests that Romeo and Juliet draws on the ‘basically Arabian’ concept of platonic love and that the story is very close to the older Arabian tales of Majnoon Layla and Qays and Lubna. He details examples of Eastern imagery, customs and traditions in Romeo and Juliet and remarks that the linguistic style, particularly the extensive use of rhetorical devices helps to bring the story "nearer to similar ones in the literature of the East."

Khulusi's thesis was expounded in Arabic publications. 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 Al-Mamouri, Abdullah Al-Dabbagh, Eric Ormsby, Ferial Ghazoul and the Egyptian scholar Ibrahim Hamadah who devoted a book, ‘Urubat Shakespeare (The Arabism of Shakespeare) 1989, to refuting Khulusi's thesis. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi endorsed Khulusi's views in 1989.

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. 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) popularised poetry containing social and political themes. According to Khulusi, both Zahawi and Rusafi learned from contemporary Turkish poets, such as Tawfiq Fikrat, the value of charging poetry with powerful messages. 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.

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.

Tear it and burn it without delay

For indeed it is a false guardian.

Khulusi illustrates Zahawi's attempt to introduce the concept of gender equality in his celebrated poem Ba'da alfi 'Am (A Thousand Years Hence):

If you happen one day to see their women

You will stand perplexed, like someone who has lost his sense

They share with men their hard work briskly

And they do their work ably and perfectly.

They sit side by side with men in courts,

And display ideas and thoughts that are so close to perfection.

Amongst them are governors and generals

Amongst them are soldiers and workers.

Their marriage is none other than a contract

It is observed by a couple so long as love endures.

But the upbringing and education of their children

is according to their law, the responsibility of their government

Which is the Mother of all.

Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi devoted his energy to versifying the quest for gender equality in Iraqi society

As with Rusafi and Zahawi before him, Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri (1899–1997) also versified his challenge to the established attitudes towards women. He chose a less aggressive, more persuasive tone which Khulusi attempts to capture in this sample of his translation:

We have merchandise that provides us with children

We raise and lower its price according to financial crises.

I found her in other nations as object of pride

That brightens the house, the markets and the churches.

According to Khulusi, Jawahiri takes up the cause of social exclusion and poverty from Rusafi. He illustrates the gulf in society by describing life in the houses and villas of the rich, built next to shanty dwellings where the deprived live in squalid conditions with their children and livestock.

In those palaces and rich houses,

Nights of dancing rakishly pass

Where the legs of the beautiful ladies are bare.

Liquors and wines are brought to them from East and West,

From wherever they are distilled best.

And only next door to them a woman lies on the ground

Scorpions flirting with her flanks.

In Khulusi view, Jawahiri was also “the poet of every revolutionary movement”. The revolt of January 1948 was one example. He composed long epics on the subject, and elegized his brother, Ja'far al-Jawahiri who died during the revolt. The same year saw war in the Holy Land and Jawahiri directed his anger at Arab leaders who promoted themselves during this time as 'saviours of Palestine'. Khulusi tries to capture the tone of sarcasm of the original poem:

He defeated the calamity with his handkerchief.

Boastfully pretending, like a silly lad

That his eyes burst with tears.

Martial law in 1948 was officially a means to protect the military operations in Palestine and to save the rear of the Arab armies. According to Khulusi, the law was skilfully extended to deal with young men with liberal ideas. Living close by, Jawahiri regularly passed the prison gates in Baghdad and could see groups of young men, from all backgrounds and professions, being led inside, and relatives waiting for news of other men already taken. In his poem Jawahiri says:

May you not wait for long.

And may the shackled time hurry your steps forward

So Balasim, give the teacher his due,

And support him, for he has no supporter.

If it be possible for a free man to prostrate himself in adoration,

Then I would have been a prostrated slave to the teacher.

Later in the same poem he adds prophetically:

A future era will say of our present state of affairs

With which we are being scorched:

Curse thee you extinct era!

Women and poetry

Following Zahawi's death in 1936, Salma al-Kadhimiyya (1908–1953) writing under the name Umm Nizar, enters the Iraqi literary scene. According to Khulusi, her first poem is also the very first to be published for any woman in Iraq and appropriately its Zahawi's elegy.

When merciless death called on you,

Poetry burst into tears to mourn

The Iraqi nation, when it saw

Your charming place vacant,

O you who had brought back

To the East its past glory,

Which it had nearly forgotten but for you.

Umm Nizar refers to Zahawi's poetry on the subject of emancipation. Khulusi records that Zahawi wrote about a fictitious character named Leila who is denied her rightful and equal place in society. Leila is intended to symbolise the Iraqi woman. Umm Nizar writes:

Who is now to defend Leila:

O thou who were her champion?

We never thought that you would one day forsake her.

When you were singing, you used to inspire even inanimate objects

With feeling, intelligence and perception.

According to Khulusi, Umm Nizar echoes Zahawi's message, calling on women to break the fetters of centuries and step forward as saviours of their country. He reports that the feminist genre of her poetry adds a description of the status of women and their achievements during various periods of Islamic civilization. She details their intolerable position in 1930s and 40s Iraq, and describes in verse how the place of women has not only fallen far behind modern civilization, but far below where it had been in the Middle Ages. The following couplet affords a good example of Umm Nizar's style as depicted by Khulusi.

We have become so used to weakness;

And felt so contented and at home with our misfortune,

That we do not aspire in our life to anything

Save a skirt and a mirror!

Umm Nizar is followed into print by a number of other women including her daughter Nazik Al-Malaika, who writes emotional, imaginative and rebellious odes. Lami'a 'Abbas 'Amara is noted for her humour and epigrammatic lines. 'Atika Wahbi al-Khazraji versifies the tragedy of Majnoon Layla. Fatina al-Naib, better known by her pen-name Saduf al-'Ubaydiyya, composes poetry for her own personal enjoyment rather than public acclaim and eventually finds that she has completed the contents of four volumes. Khulusi renders entire poems and extracts of this ground-breaking literary work and illustrates the range and versatility of these pioneering women.

Selected publications

• Nifous Maridha (Sick Souls), novel in Arabic 1941

  نفوس مريضة

• Bint al-Siraj, Rihla ila Spania (The Saddlers Daughter, Travels Through Spain) 1952

  بنت السراج ، رحلة الى اسبانيا

• Abu-Nuwas fi Amrika (Abu-Nuwas in America) 1956

  أبو نؤاس في أمريكا

• Fann al-Tarjama (The Art of Translation) 1956

  فن الترجمة

• Dirasat fi al-Adab al-Muqarin wa al-Mathahib al-Adabia (Studies in Comparative Literature and Western Literary Schools) 1957

  دراسات في الأدب المقارن والمذاهب الأدبية

• al-Tarjama al-Tahlilia (Analytical Translation) 1957

  الترجمة التحليلية

• al-Nafitha al-Maftuha: Siwar Min al-Sharq wa al-Gharb (The Open Window: Images from East and West) 1958

  النافذة المفتوحة : صور من الشرق والغرب

• Dirasa Hawl Shakespeare (Study of Shakespeare) al-Ma'rifa Journal, Baghdad 1960

  دراسة حول شكسبير، مجلة المعرفة ، بغداد

• Islam Our Choice (1961)
• The History of Baghdad (in the First Half of the 18th Century). Elaboration on the manuscript by Abdu al-Rihman al-Suwaidi (1962)

  تاريخ بغداد لابن السويدي ، تحقيق صفاء خلوصي

• Fann al-Taqti' al-Shi'ri wa al-Qafia (The Art of Poetry: Composition and Prosody) 1963

  فن التقطيع الشعري والقافية

• al-Mawaqi' al-Goghrafia wa Asmaa al-A'laam fi al-Masrahiat al-Shakespeareia (Geographic Locations and Place Names in Shakespearian Plays) 1964

  المواقع الجغرافية واسماء ألاعلام في المسرحيات الشكسبيرية

• Arabian Influence on the concept of Platonic love in Shakespeare, Islamic Review, (Oct 1966)
• al-Fasir aw Sharih Diwan abi't-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi Li Ibn Jinni (Elaboration on the Diwan of Abi't-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, and the commentary of Ibn Jinni) 1969

  الفسر إو شرح ديوان أبي طيب المتنبي لابن جني

• A Literary History of The Arabs (Tarikh al-Arab al-Adabi), English original by Reynold Nicholson, translated into Arabic by Safa Khulusi 1970

  تاريخ العرب الأدبي ، رينولد نكلسن ، ترجمة صفاء خلوصي

• The Logical Basis of Arabic Grammar, Islamic Review, (July/Aug 1970)
• Arabic Aspects of Shakespeare. Parallel Texts from Othello and Macbeth. Islamic Review (Sept 1970)
• A Comparative Study of Shakespearian and Arabic Grammar, Islamic Review, (Oct/Nov 1970)
• Jafar al-Khalili and the Story of Modern Iraq (1976)
• 'Ma'rūf al Ruṣāfī in Jerusalem', in Arabic and Islamic garland: historical, educational and literary papers presented to Abdul-Latif Tibawi, Islamic Cultural Centre London (1977), pp. 147–152.
• A Dictionary of Contemporary Idiomatic Usage. English- Arabic. National Publishing House, Baghdad (1982)

• 
  Nifous Maridha (Sick Souls) 1941
• 
  Dirasat fi al-Adab al-Muqarin wa al-Mathahib al-Adabia (Studies in Comparative Literature and Western Literary Schools) 1957
• 
  Fann al-Taqti' al-Shi'ri wa al-Qafia (The Art of Poetry: Composition and Prosody) 1963
• 
  A Dictionary of Contemporary Idiomatic Usages. English- Arabic (1982)