Mustafa Wahbi al-Tal

Who was Mustafa Wahbi al-Tal?

Mustafa Wahbi Al-Tal, better known as Arar, was a Jordanian nationalist, poet, reformist, lawyer, teacher, judge, political agitator, philosopher and a major influencer in the Jordanian national and anti colonial movements. Arar was a pioneer of Jordanian patriotism and a spokesman for the nation's ideals and aspirations. He was known for his nationalist and revolutionary oeuvre and his activism in accordance to it. Rebellious patriotism in Arar's poetry is inextricably tied to his never-ending Don Juanism. As a lover, obsessed by the nostalgia for places that had once quenched his thirst for love, Arar created a quite new type of metaphors and terms of reference to the beloved and to her place in the poet's dream-world. Place-related identity terms referring to the poet's beloved or her close surroundings. And that helped establish a unique Jordanian literary tradition in the Arabic language. His use of dialect, idiom, proverb and other oral formulae helped delineate Jordanian Arabic as a vehicle for literary expression.