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Salih al-Souissi al-Qayrawani (1871-18 February 1941) was a poet, Kairouanese notable, social reformer and political activist, credited by Tunisian intellectual Ahmed Touili as being the “Father of the Tunisian novel .”

Life

Salih al-Souissi al-Qayrawani
Salih al-Souissi with his daughters. Taken in the 1930s
Born	1871 Kairouan
Died	1941 February 18 Kairouan
Occupation(s)	Poet, writer, social reformer and political activist

Salih al-Souissi was born to a middle-class Sharifian (descended from the prophet Muhammad) family in the holy Islamic city of Kairouan. At the age of five, his family moved to the capital Tunis, where they lived for the next ten years. In Tunis, al-Souissi received a traditional Islamic education in a kutta ̄b (Muslim primary school). But, despite displaying academic aptitude, Salih never advanced to higher education. He returned to Qayrawan in 1886, with his father dying within a year . He began writing in the 1890s.

Souissi, aged ten at the start of French colonial rule in 1881, was pre-occupied with the social, political and cultural challenges facing Tunisian and Kairouanese society under foreign occupation. He founded the proto-nationalist Kairouanese literary club, al-Khawarnaq. Souissi's activities were deemed radical enough by the French authorities to impose two periods of exile (1897 in the southern town of Touzeur, and later in Beja in northern Tunisia). He was also associated with the anti-colonial Young Tunisians group and later the pro-independence Destour Party.

Souissi’s writings encompassed a wide variety of forms. These included newspaper articles, both local and to Egyptian publications, poetry, Maqamat (rhymed prose), an autobiography, a novel, al-Hayfa’ wa-Siraj al-Layl, and even a proto-nationalist song book for school children, Al-Anashid al-Maktabiya lil-ashabiba al-Madrasiya.

Influences

Souissi was heavily influenced by the Arab Nahda, or cultural renaissance, of the late nineteenth century. He was an avid reader of Egypt-based Muslim reformers, such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh.

Souissi saw himself as firmly part of this wider Arab/Islamic reformist tradition. Egypt provided the location for Tunisia’s first novel, al-Hayfa’ wa-Siraj al-Layl, published in serialized form in 1906. The Al-Khawarnaq literary group took its name from a sixth century Arab Lakhmid dynasty fortification, instrumental in defeating the Byzantines in the year 581.

Tunis-based Muslim scholar, Shaikh Muhammad al-Nakhli, a father-figure to other reformers of the period, was also an important guide for Souissi .

Like those of his mentors, Souissi’s intellectual energies were focused on how to revive Arab and Islamic societies. And like them, Souissi identified the Islamic world’s material backwardwardness relative to the West as stemming from centuries-long cultural decline. The solution, Souissi argued was to return to the values of a pristine and idealized Islamic Golden Age.

Pan-Arab interests aside, Souissi saw himself, first and foremost as a son of Qayrawan . As Tunisia’s capital until from the seventh to 13’th century, and home of the first mosque in North Africa, Qayrawan plays a central role in Souissi’s cultural imagination. Souissi wrote a guide book on the city - Daleel al-Qayrawan – detailing its historic personages and architectural heritage.

Souissi was known for his personal piety and charity work on behalf of the town’s poorer citizens, including the handicapped. His youngest daughter, Mufida, born in 1928, contracted polio, as an infant.

Death

It was this championing of Kairouan’s poor and oppressed that was responsible for Souissi’s death. In early 1941, en route from Tunis, where he had been petitioning the Bey on behalf of a man he believed had been unjustly imprisoned, Souissi contracted pneumonia and later died.

Works

• Tarjamat al-Mu’allif bi-Qalimihi
• Khasouma Bayna Madina wa Idara
• Al-Hayfa’ wa-Siraj al-Layl, (1906)
• Kitab Manjam al-Tibar fi al-Nathr wa-Shi’ir (Goldmine of Prose and Poetry, published by Maktaba al-'Ilmiya, 1906)
• Horrible Drama of Orphans and Poor People (published by Dar al-Tunisiyya Lil Nashr, 1917)
• Daleel al-Qayrawan (Guide to Kairouan, 1911)
• Zafiraat al-Dhamir (published by Beit al-Hikma, 1911)
• Apologia for the Prophet Muhammad (Unknown date, publisher)
• Al-Anashid al-Maktabiya lil-ashabiba al-Madrasiya (published by Anahdha Tunis, 1926
• Autobiography, (published by Dar Tunisiya, 1987)
• Collected Poems (Published, Tunisian Ministry of Culture, 1977)

References

1.  Ahmed Touili: Salih Souissi al-Qayrawani: Ra’id al-Islah al-Ijtima’I bi Tounis.

2.  Kimberly Katz: Urban Identity in Colonial Tunisia: The Maqa-mat of Salih Suwaysi al-Qayrani from International Journal of Middle East Studies. 44 (2012), p. 693–712

3.  Ibid

4.   ‘Man kanit munyatahu bi- ardin, fa-laysa yamut fi ardin siwa-ha’.

Translation: ‘For whoever has a desire/affection for his country, he would not wish to die anywhere but in that  country.’ Quoted in Kimberly Katz: The city of Qayrawan in the  works of Salih Suwaysi: a place of memory in the Journal of North African Studies.