Constitutionalism in Poetry, Poetry in Constitutionalism: Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm’s Imagining of Contemporary Constitutional Movements

This paper focuses on the sociocultural and historical context in which the Egyptian poet Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm (c. 1872–1932) represented contemporary constitutional movements in the Muslim world, with special emphasis on developments in the Ottoman Empire and in late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Egypt – back then, at least nominally, still a part of it – and extending to Iran’s Constitutional Revolution. References in Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm’s poetry to constitutionalism in Japan will also be discussed in order to point out that the poet, while closely following constitutional movements in the Ottoman Empire and in Iran, in fact viewed constitutionalism as an historical process transcending geographical and cultural boundaries. Therefore, we shall also try to identify the general idea of history underlying Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm’s portrayal of constitutionalism. Comparative references to constitutional poetry in Iran of that time are intended to point out the supra-regional dimension both of constitutionalism itself and of poetical modes of imagining it. Likewise, this approach is designed to make the point that constitutional poetry in the Muslim world at that time was more than just poetic commentary on constitutional movements; it was itself part of them.