Jehad Al-Baz
Jehad Al-Baz (Jihād al-Bāz) (جهاد الباز) was a prominent professor of Arabic language and literature at Gaza University, a writer, and a public advocate of literature. He was selected as the literary consultant of the Palestinian Chapter of the International Union of Arab Writers and Poets in 2021. Al-Baz received his PhD from the University of Ain Shams, Cairo, in Rhetoric and Literary Criticism. He obtained his MA in Literary Studies from the University of al-Fatih in Libya, with a thesis titled, `Abdullah al-Quwayri and the Art of the Short Story. The website, Ancient and Rare Pictures of Libya, posted this information after he was killed, with a note of appreciation for his work and his love of Libya.
Al-Baz was highly engaged in promoting literature, including poetry in its classical Arabic qasida form, with its metered lines and monorhyme, at both the local and national levels. His many books include, Abbasid Literature, Common Mistakes in Our Arabic Language, and A Smile That Won’t Die. He left a detailed Facebook page of his activities and his occasional thoughts and quotes from others. Among the numerous symposia, lectures, and conferences he participated in individually or with others are two workshops: one on “the Short Story, and Prosody,” and the second, “Lecture on Ghassan Kanafani on the Fiftieth Anniversary of his Assassination [by the Israeli intelligence Agency, the Mossad in Beirut, Lebanon in 1972], in which he presented a paper, “A Critical Study of ‘Passionate Memoirs’ by the writer Mohsin al-Shaykh Hashim al-Khazandar.”
Among Al-Baz’s many posts of brief reflections and quotes, one is from Japan of a brief exchange between a soldier who, when he notices a boy hauling on his back the body of his dead brother and cautions the boy, “Put him down, you will get fatigued,” the boy replies, “He is my brother, he is not heavy,” as if Al-Baz was anticipating the interminable reel of such sights during the current war on Gaza.
PEN International detailed harrowing experiences by Al-Baz’s family preceding and following his murder on 11 November 2023 “in his home when shrapnel from an Israeli rocket struck his neck after hitting his neighbors’ house in al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City.” The family fled, then returned five days later and hastily buried the 75-year-old patriarch in the courtyard in the menacing shadow of Israeli drones. They left again, and on their return to the house 25 days afterward they found a desecrated place, with foul drawings on the walls, destroyed furniture, his writing archive damaged, and books strewn all over the floor.
Al-Baz was married to Um Farid al-Baz, and together they had seven children. He was mourned by many people including his oldest son, Farid, who described his father as “a symbol of loyalty, sincerity, and giving.” Mohammad Khalid, who studied Methods of Teaching Arabic at al-Aqsa University, dedicated an elegy in his memory, appropriately in the classical Arabic poetry mode; as did a former student May Mohammad, the two lines below from her poem demonstrate her high esteem for her teacher:
I stood, ache in my chest,
weeping by the tomb of rhyme
How can I laud with my words
whose words are lasting emblems
