Tamim al-Barghouti

Who is Tamim al-Barghouti?

Tamim Al-Barghouti is a Palestinian poet and political scientist. Al-Barghouti comes from a literary family. His father is the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, and his mother is the Egyptian novelist and scholar, Radwa Ashour. Al-Barghouti is the author of four poetry collections: meejana, Al-Manzar, Qaluli Bethebb Masr, and Maqam Iraq. He is also the author of Benign Nationalism: Egyptian Nation State Building under Occupation and has recently published a book entitled The Umma and The Dawla: The Nation State and the Arab Middle East.

Al-Barghouti writes poetry in Standard Arabic as well as the Palestinian, Egyptian and Iraqi colloquial dialects. He obtained a B.A. in Political Science at Cairo University in 1999, and specialized in International Relations at the American University in Cairo, from which he graduated in 2001. He received a PhD in political science from Boston University in 2004, and became an assistant professor at the American University in Cairo in 2005. During 2003 and 2004, he wrote a weekly column in the Lebanese Daily Star newspaper on colonialism and Arab history and identity.