Syrian poet Issa al-Sheikh Hassan has published a book with Dar Nard titled Approaches… Thursday’s Lamp… Euphrates Amali, Part One. The book runs to 200 pages in a mid-sized format and is divided into 49 sections. Its title was handwritten by calligrapher Ubaida al-Banki, and the cover features a work by Abboud Hammam that evokes the heritage of the Euphrates. The book grew out of the author’s weekly interactive conversations on Facebook: he collected words from his native Busaldja and its surroundings, tracing how their meanings had changed and checking them against old and new dictionaries, including al-Zabidi’s Taj al-Arus and the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language (Doha). In this way, the local vocabulary and culture of the “periphery” meet the academic tradition.
The title invokes a literary heritage: amali refers to the genre of scholarly dictations associated with Abu Ali al-Qali, whose predecessors included al-Zajjaji and whose successors included Ibn al-Shajari (though the genre is most often linked specifically to al-Qali). The word “approaches” underscores that the author does not present his inquiries into spoken language as definitive. Instead, he draws closer to meaning by consulting old and new dictionaries, and sometimes even Google. He also looks for parallels in Turkish and Kurdish, as well as in Sorani and Kurmanji—for example, in his discussion of “waj/wahj”—giving the book a broad philological and cultural scope.
The book resonates with Syrians’ memories and pain: its author has lived through the fate of many forced to flee by hunger and fear. With tenderness and sorrow, he asks what Syrians eat for breakfast now—and whether they have breakfast at all—a question that lays bare the consequences of war and displacement. The people of the “periphery,” he writes, are those who “live in a vast geographical vessel,” far from major cities. They are content with an almost complete independence from the center, while remaining open to successive waves of ideology.
The book also gives special attention to the power of an encouraging word. When the author was 19, Hussein Hamdan al-Assaf said of his first poem: “I expect this young man has a future.” The words worked like magic, much like Imam Muhammad Abduh’s praise of a student who would later become a pioneer of literature and thought, or Saad Zaghloul’s description of Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad as a “mighty writer.” The author says that for years he studied the culture of “our people” and gathered enough to pour into a vessel, alluding to Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini and his Qabd al-Rih (Seizing the Wind). The image of a vast reservoir that fills in order to empty and empties in order to fill sounds like a hymn to reading. The article concludes by urging readers to ask themselves what place reading holds in their lives alongside the growing culture of images, and to make reading a daily nourishment, as far as possible.
Comments on the News
- What is Busaldja—the Euphrates area where the author collected local vocabulary—and how does it differ from Syria’s major cities? — Busaldja is a small local community or settlement on the Euphrates, probably in the eastern Syrian region of Deir ez-Zor, rather than a major city. It differs in scale, its river-based rural economy, strong family and clan ties, local dialect, and oral culture. In Damascus, Aleppo, or Homs, institutional culture and urban infrastructure are more prominent, as is a different social way of life.
- Who is the artist Abboud Hammam, and what place does his work hold in the contemporary Syrian art scene, particularly his works on the heritage of the Euphrates? — Abboud Hammam is a Syrian artist associated with the Euphrates region and Deir ez-Zor. His work engages with local daily life, memory, folklore, and the heritage of the river. In the contemporary Syrian art scene, he occupies a more regional, documentary, heritage-focused niche: his work is important for documenting Euphrates culture and voices from the periphery, though it is not necessarily part of the metropolitan mainstream.
Full version: "Euphrates Amali"… Unearthing the Memory of the Periphery and Documenting Syrians’ Suffering