Shaul (Shaool), Anwar
SHAUL (Shaool), ANWAR
SHAUL (Shaool), ANWAR (1904–1984), Iraqi poet and journalist. Born in *Baghdad, Shaul was editor (1924–25) of the Arabic-language Iraqi Zionist journal, al-Miṣbāḥ. At that time he also wrote poems expressing his Jewish national convictions. He was secretary of the Baghdad Jewish community for three years, but then became estranged from the Jewish community. In 1937 he went so far as to sign an anti-Zionist declaration.
Shaul was the first Iraqi to deal with the life of the masses and to demand the abolition of the veil and an improvement in the status of women. His first stories were published in the anthology al-Ḥiṣād al-Awwal ("The First Crop," 1930). He compiled an anthology of translated short stories titled Qiṣaṣ min al-Gharb ("Stories from the West," 1937). His other books are Fī Ziḥām al-Madīna ("In the Tumult of the City," 1955) and a volume of poems, Hamasāt al-Zamān ("Whispers of Time," 1956). Like his colleague Meir Baṣri (1912– ), he considered himself an Iraqi Jew, a member of the Arab Iraqi nation; he did not immigrate to Israel with the great majority of Iraqi Jewry in 1951. However he left Iraq in 1971. He was a prolific writer and published in literary periodicals in the Arab world.
bibliography:
E. Marmorstein, in: jjso (Dec. 1959), 187–200.
[Hayyim J. Cohen]