“Al-Andalus arising from damascus”: Al-Andalus in modern arabic poetry

This chapter shows how the use and remembrance of al-Andalus in Arabic poetry can be tellingly examined by placing it within a developmental historical context. For the Arab poet the image of al-Andalus has long resonated along two intertwined tracks, and continues to do so. One of the prominent poets who frequently called up the image of al-Andalus in his poetry was Ahmad Shawqi, the “prince of poets” in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The image of al-Andalus in neoclassical Arabic poetry finds typifying expression in Ahmad Shawqi’s Andalusian poems, abounding as these do in sensuous descriptions of the Muslim Spanish heritage. As a mythical figure, Federico Garcia Lorca has inspired them to search the rich Andalusian Arabic heritage for connections between past and present that could serve as links in the cross-temporal and contextual chain asserted in and by their own collective and cultural memory.