Youssef Al-Kahlout (Yūsuf al-Kaḥlūt) (يوسف شحدة الكحلوت), 63, was a professor in the Faculty of Arts at the Islamic University of Gaza and a former chair of its Arabic Department. He supervised numerous graduate theses and taught a signature lecture course on Islamic and Ummayad literature.

Dr. Al-Kahlout penned a corpus of research on the imbrication of poetry with its social contexts. He was particularly concerned with how Islamic ethics and aesthetics infused poetry in a range of historical epochs, including the Islamic conquest of the Levant, the Nakba, and the Second Palestinian Intifada.

Born in 1961 to a family from a village near ‘Asqalan, Dr. Al-Kahlout received a PhD from the University of the Holy Qur’an and Islamic Sciences in Omdurman, Sudan. His dissertation, revised into a 770-page book, is an exhaustive study of Islamic poetics in al-Andalus during the taifa kings period (1009-1091). The thesis pivots on a paradox: how did the poetry of this period, “infused with the light of Islam,” innovate and flourish despite a political context of intense fragmentation and unremitting wars between petty kings?

Dr. Al-Kahlout writes, “In light of the importance of poetry’s ethical dimension, I wanted to study it during this period to bring out its role as a guide to public life, and a correction to the course of life.” 

How poetry reflects and refracts its political context is also center stage in Muqarabat Naqdiyya fi Shi’r al-Muqawama (Critical Approaches to the Poetry of Resistance). This book analyzes new themes in the poetry of the Second Intifada, relative to earlier waves of resistance poetry, noticing increasingly raw descriptions of the devastations wrought by Israeli violence on Palestinians’ bodies and social fabric. Muqarabat examines additional dimensions, offering an exegesis of how Jerusalem appears in the poems; how they portray the Oslo peace process; and manifestations of intertextuality with the Qur’an, Hadith, folklore, history, and Arabic poetry. 

Another book is a full-length study of the Nakba-era poet and noted linguist Muhammad al-‘Adnani (1903-1981), a contemporary of Ibrahim Tuqan, but far less known and unjustly overlooked, argued Dr. Kahlout.

Shortly after 5 am on 10 August 2024, Dr. Al-Kahlout was performing dawn prayers with dozens of other worshippers at the al-Tabi`in school-turned-shelter in Gaza City, where he was living with his family and hundreds of other displaced families. The Israeli military dropped three bombs on the school, decimating the bodies of many worshippers; 90 were killed and over 70 could not be identified due to disfigurement. The spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense said, “Medical teams stand helpless before this horrific scene.” 

“Dr. Youssef was an angel on earth, a respected academic and intellectual who we have now lost,” said a former student who was also sheltering at al-Tabi`in and who lost her father in the attack. 

Photo Credit: Filasteen Online