(1875-1945), leading poet of modern ʿIrāḳ and one extremely audacious and outspoken in expressing his political views. He was born in Bag̲h̲dād in 1875 to his father ʿAbd al-G̲h̲anī Maḥmūd, of Kurdish descent and from the D̲j̲abbāriyya tribe (between Kirkūk and Sulaymāniyya in N. ʿIrāḳ), who was a pious man and worked as a gendarme outside Baghdad; for this reason, Maʿrūf was brought up and educated by his devoted mother Fāṭima bint D̲j̲āsim at her father’s house (she was of the Ḳarag̲h̲ūl Arabic tribe, a branch of S̲h̲ammar, who inhabited the Ḳarag̲h̲ūl quarter in Bag̲h̲dād).
Maʿrūf was …