Wadi 'al-Bustani

Wadi 'al-Bustani ( Arabic وديع البستاني, DMG Wadīʿ al-Bustānī ; * 1886 in Dibbiye ; † January 20, 1954 ) was a Lebanese poet and translator. He belonged to the Maronite Church .

He was born in Dibbiye in the Lebanese province of Schuf in 1886 . He studied at the American University of Beirut and became a translator at the British consulate in al-Hudaida ( Yemen ). Years of residency in India and South Africa in the British colonial administration followed. Eventually he settled in Jerusalem as a lawyer and in 1917 became an official in the mandate administration. In 1923 he was a co-founder of the Islamic Christian Association . He later became secretary of the Third Arab Delegation in London . He translated some books from English into Arabic, including Sanskrit literature such as the Ramayana or Persian poetry such as the quatrains of Omar Chayyām . His poems are collected in the volume Falastiniyat .

He also translated Chaim Weizmann's Trial and Error into Arabic.

literature

• Yaghi, Abd al-Rahman: Hayat al- adab al- falastini min awwal al- nahda hatta al- nakba , Beirut 1965.
• Stephan Wild: Judaism, Christianity and Islam in Palestinian poetry. In: Die Welt des Islams XIII-XXIV , 1984, pp. 259-297.