Tamim Al-Barghouti is a Palestinian poet widely read throughout the Arab World. His poetry readings are attended by thousands, sometimes packing stadiums and amphitheaters, and his poems have had several hundred million readers and viewers on various old and new media, winning him an exceptional celebrity status in the Arab World. Since 2007, Tamim’s work “Fil Quds” (In Jerusalem) became something of a household poem. Palestinian newspapers dubbed him “The Poet of Jerusalem”. Sections of the poems have even become ring-tones, and school children compete in memorizing and reciting it. During the Egyptian uprising of January 2011, a TV recording of Tamim’s lyrical poem “”Hanet”” (Almost there); was projected in Cairo’s Tahrir Square every couple of hours on makeshift screens, despite the internet being down and regional news channels being banned.
Tamim published seven poetry collections in both colloquial and classical Arabic including Meejana (Ramallah: 1999), Al-Manzar “The Scene” (Cairo 2000), Maqam Iraq (Cairo: 2005) and Fil Quds “In Jerusalem” (Cairo: 2008), one volume of selected poems translated into English: In Jerusalem and Other poems (Northampton, MA: 2017) and two academic books on Arab politics and history: “Al-Wataniyya Al-Aleefa” (Cairo: 2007) and The Umma and The Dawla: The Nation State and the Arab Middle East (London: 2008). He is also the author of “War, Peace, Civil War: a Pattern?” in Palestine and the Palestinians in the 21 st century (Bloomington: 2013), “Cracking Cauldrons” in Shifting Sands: the Unraveling of the Old Order in the Middle East (London: 2015). And “The Post-Colonial State: The Impossible Compromise” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics. (Oxford University Press, 2014). He is also the principal author of the United Nations Report: Injustice in the Arab World, published by the UN Economic and Social Commission on Western Asia, where was the special assistant for the executive secretary and deputy of the General Secretary of the United Nations.
He received his PhD in political science from Boston University in 2004, and has since taught at Georgetown University, the Free University in Berlin, and the American University in Cairo. He was also a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced studies 2007-2008 (Europe in the Middle East), and worked with and at the United Nations from 2005 till 2006 and from 2011 till 2017. He currently has his own Program “With Tamim” on Al-Jazeera’s digital platform AJ+ Arabic.
