This paper examines the political awakenings of four prominent Najafi poets, ?Ali al-Sharqi (1890-1964), Ahmad al-Safi al-Najafi (1897-1977), Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri (1899-1997), and Muhammad Salih Bahr al-?Ulum (1909-1984). The paper is based on an intensive reading of archival documents, newspapers, journals, memoirs, and poetry related to the period between the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the formal termination of the British Mandate. My reading of these sources demonstrates the ways in which formal and informal networks of education and conversation between different generations and different locations contributed to the intellectual and political awakening of each poet. Each of the four poets under consideration in this paper experienced an acute sense of political alienation and social dislocation as a result of their intellectual education. All four experienced the classical education of the Najafi religious academies before ultimately abandoning the clerical vocation in favor of literary and political endeavors. All four had early encounters with modernist thought through their engagement with prominent foreign periodicals like the Egyptian journals al-Muqtataf and al-Hilal and the Lebanese periodical al-?Irfan. All four associated themselves with the anti-colonial political currents of their era and ultimately abandoned the literary and political confines of their native Najaf for the more expansive and enticing atmosphere of the urban metropolis. In sketching the links between these shared intellectual experiences and political journeys, the paper demonstrates how education and intellectual awakening served to exacerbate generational conflict, heighten social tension, and increase political alienation. Discussions of constitutionalism, Darwinism, and Marxism drew these poets, their family members, and their teachers into broader conversation with the politics of modernity that was reshaping the intellectual environment of the Middle East. The experience of British occupation radically transformed the political environment of Iraq, claiming the life of Muhammad Sa?id al-Habbubi, the dominant personality of the Najafi literary salons, and pitting opponents and proponents of collaboration with the British Mandate against one another. These intellectual transformations simultaneously expanded the geographic and ideological worldview of these poets while reinforcing their sense of social isolation and political alienation. My analysis of the critical friction between tradition and modernity in the historical experience of each poet underscores the centrality of education to political awakening.

“The Dar al-Mu'allimin al-'Aliyah (Baghdad Teachers College) was a focal point for the nationalist movement against the military alliances and the feudalism prevailing during those years,” writes 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati (d. 1999) in his autobiography Springs of the Sun (1999). “It was also a Tower of Babel for different ideologies: Salafist, religious, and progressive,” he continues, also mentioning that the College brought together a wide variety of young men from poor, rural backgrounds and young women from well-to-do families. Pioneers of modernist poetry in Arabic, which got its start in Iraq during the late 1940s and 1950s, honed their craft in this “mixed” environment. In addition to al-Bayati, famed poets Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (d. 1964), Nazik al-Mala'ikah (d. 2007), Sa'di Yusuf (b. 1934), Sulayman al-'Isa (d. 2013), Lami'ah 'Abbas 'Imarah (b. 1929), and Buland al-Haydari (d. 1996), among others, attended the Dar, which provided them with a new sort of space to explore the perils and possibilities of Iraqi modernity. This paper gives us a glimpse of how young Iraqi poets got to know each other at the College’s hanut (canteen), where, for instance, al-Bayati invited al-Sayyab to share a cup of tea so they could while away the day reading poetry and skipping class. Although these young poets did take advantage of their coursework as well to learn about English and Arabic literature—among other subjects—they often also experienced a political awakening at the Dar. Al-Sayyab, for instance, recalls his involvement with the Communists taking off while attending. The Dar brought together a wide swath of Iraqi society and provided a venue for interactions between people of different ideological and class backgrounds, a mixture that had a lasting impact on the ways poetry was written in Iraq and the subjects it took up. By investigating how the poets of the Dar recall their poetic formation through interactions with other poets, students, and teachers, I argue that the Baghdad Teachers College offered a space for the elaboration of a new poetry and a new poetics in Iraq. The Dar thus played an important part in the history of modern (and particularly modernist) Arabic poetry more broadly.

Beginning in the 19th century and carrying into the 20th global and local agents enthusiastically sought to remake traditional worlds. In Iraq too, the interwar state demonstrated an increased interest in the education, sexuality, and gender of its citizens. The educational system of Iraq was largely a reflection of the state that determined the political and cultural atmosphere of the country. Institutions such as the army, youth movements, and schools were mobilized to inculcate new and gendered ideals. Organizations such as sports clubs, the Iraqi Boy Scouts and the Futuwwa were founded to emphasize and promote nationalism, new forms of masculinity, and militarism. Recently, historians have pointed out that voices, from across the political spectrum, responded to and were critical of these tendencies. This paper seeks to further challenge conceptions of education in interwar Iraq by addressing informal institutions and networks that emerged contemporaneously and at times in opposition to state education. More specifically, this paper turns to foreign education in Iraq. It uses Baghdad College as a case study. Baghdad College, which was affiliated with Boston College, opened its doors in 1932. Al-Iraqi, the bilingual yearbook of the school, contains a wealth of information pertaining to the many clubs, societies, and extracurricular activities that were organized under the auspices of the College. The College hosted drama and poetry societies in addition to societies of photography, business and chemistry. The students of the College took part in the mandatory military drills organized by the al-Futuwwa movement and Al-Iraqi enthusiastically reported about such drills and other forms of parades and competitions. While ultranationalist and authoritarian voices made themselves audible in the public sphere in 1930s and 1940s, the case of Baghdad College suggest a much more nuanced picture. The college supported and facilitated a much less authoritarian, although no less ideological, ideal of education. Using Al-Iraqi and the student essays and short stories it published, this paper argues for the need to recognize the multiplicity of intersecting influences that played a role in the lives of Iraqi youth. It furnishes a counter narrative to the official infatuation with authoritarianism and militarism, which has often been accentuated in historical scholarship on Iraq. When read in tandem with autobiographical accounts, the yearbooks paint a picture of the Baghdad College as place that mobilized students around values such as creativity, health, the good life, success, and morality rather than nationalism and militarism.