Rabab Al-Kadhimi (, also Rabab Al-Kazimi; 30 July 1918 – 1998) was an Iraqi feminist poet and

dental surgeon A dentist, also known as a dental surgeon, is a health care professional who specializes in dentistry (the diagnosis, prevention, management, and treatment of diseases and conditions of the oral cavity and other aspects of the craniofacial com ...

, who is considered a pioneer of women's poetry.

Early life and career

Rabab al-Kadhimi was born in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo met ...

on 23 August 1918. Her father was the Iraqi poet . Her Tunisian mother, Aisha, died when she was ten years old. Her father encouraged her interest in poetry and she published widely in Egyptian periodicals in the 1920s and 1930s. Some of these writings were so political that both she and her father were threatened with deportation by the Egyptian authorities. Her father died when she was eighteen years old and she was subsequently invited to visit Iraq and attend a memorial ceremony dedicated to his life and works. Her subsequent education the Princess Fawzia School in Egypt in 1936, funded by the Iraqi Ministry of Education. On Al-Kadhimi's return to Egypt she married Hikmat Chadirji and had a son. However in 1950 she returned to education to study dentistry. She spent time at

Georgetown University Hospital MedStar Georgetown University Hospital is one of the Washington, D.C. area's oldest academic teaching hospitals. It is a not-for-profit, acute care teaching and research facility located in the Georgetown neighborhood of the Northwest Quadrant ...

in Washington, specialising in

paediatric dentistry Pediatric dentistry (formerly pedodontics in American English or paedodontics in Commonwealth English) is the branch of dentistry dealing with children from birth through adolescence. The specialty of pediatric dentistry is recognized by the Ameri ...

. The couple then returned to Iraq so that Chadirji could take up a post in the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Al-Kadhimi continued to work and by 1956 was the Head of Dentistry for a hospital in Baghdad. The couple returned to Egypt and for several years Al-Kadhimi used her medical training to treat the wounded of the

Algerian Revolution The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence,( ar, الثورة الجزائرية '; '' ber, Tagrawla Tadzayrit''; french: Guerre d'Algérie or ') and sometimes in Algeria as the War of 1 November ...

. She died in 1998.

Legacy

In literature, al-Kadhimi is considered a pioneer of Iraqi women's poetry. The first works to be collated and sold by al-Kadhimi were published in 1969. However she had already been featured on 'Contemporary Poetesses of Iraq' in the ''

Islamic Review The ''Islamic Review'' (1913–1971) was an Ahmadiyya official magazine, first of the Woking Muslim Mission, and then of AAIIL, California (1980–1989). It was founded in London by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din. Originally the ''Muslim India and Islamic Rev ...

'' in 1950. She is also viewed as a feminist writer, using her work to draw attention to women's issues. Highlighting her lack of recognition as a woman, she wrote:

"My act of writing is my wound
And my crime is my knowledge"

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Al-Kazimi, Rabab 1918 births 1998 deaths Iraqi women poets 20th-century Iraqi physicians Women dentists Physicians from Cairo 20th-century women physicians Iraqi surgeons Female writers from Cairo 20th-century Iraqi women writers 20th-century Iraqi poets Feminist writers Iraqi feminists Iraqi people of Tunisian descent Women surgeons 20th-century dentists