A Comparative Study of Anti-Colonialism in Ma‘ruf al-Rusafi’s and Farokhi Yazdi’s Poetry

Abstract

Colonialism is one of the phenomena that have had a harsh impact on the east. Due to the cruel treatment of the colonized by the colonizers, many classes of the people within the oppressed nations have risen against the oppressors. Among the Arab and Persian freedom fighters, one can refer to the remarkable struggle of such poets as al-Rusafi and Farokhi Yazdi, respectively. These two poets have entered this battlefield with their pens and poems, and have opened a new chapter in the book of struggle against colonialism. The present article attempts to study and highlight the nature of this poetic struggle by comparing the poems of Ma‘ruf al-Rusafi and Farokhi Yazdi. Colonizers resort to any accessible tool to incite discord among people, make false promises, stage deceitful agreements, suppress public education and awareness, attempt to obliterate the indigenous identity and national pride and history of the colonized nations, establish dummy parliaments, appoint puppet politicians as members of the parliament and as ministers, and all these devious measures and acts aim at establishing the colonizers’ position in their colonies. Al-Rusafi and Farokhi Yazdi defied and condemned these colonial tools and measures and fought the colonizers each in their own distinctive manners. Thumbing their books of poetry, one can catalogue their fight against colonialism as warning the people and inciting them to resist the colonizers by condemning and exposing the useless and imposed colonial agreements; by reminding the people of their glorious national history; by condemning the dummy parliaments and the puppet members and ministers; by calling the people to unity and admonishing them against public discord; by condemning the alien colonizers and exposing their deception.