Ahmed Shawqi

Ahmed Shawqi never heard Umm Kulthum sing his greatest poems: he died in 1932, before her partnership with Riad Al-Sunbati turned his qasidas into the towering monuments of her repertoire. Crowned Amir al-Shu'ara — Prince of Poets — by his fellow writers in 1927, Shawqi was the last supreme master of the neoclassical qasida: court poet to the khedives, exiled to Spain during the First World War, and after his return the unrivalled poetic voice of Egypt and of Arabic letters at large. In the years after his death, Sunbati set five of his poems for her: "Salou Qalbi," "Wulida al-Huda," "Nahj al-Burda" — Shawqi's homage to al-Busiri's great ode to the Prophet — "Salou Ku'us al-Tila," and "Ila Arafat Allah." These settings sealed her authority as the voice of classical Arabic itself: verse of marble balance and Quranic cadence, demanding a singer who could bear its full weight line by line. Through her, Shawqi's poetry left the printed diwan and entered the memory of millions who would never open it — the Prince of Poets carried by the voice that outlived him.