Samih al-Qasim
Palestinian poet, Israeli citizen (1939–2014)
Samīħ al-Qāsim al Kaissy (Arabic: سميح القاسم; Hebrew: סמיח אל קאסם; 1939 – August 19, 2014) was a Palestinian poet with Israeli citizenship whose work is well known throughout the Arab world. He was born in Transjordan and later lived in Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Before the Six-Day War in 1967, he was mainly influenced by Arab nationalism; after the war he joined the Israeli Communist Party.
Early life
Al-Qasim was born in 1939 to a Druze family in the Emirate of Transjordan (now Jordan), in the northern city of Zarqa, while his father served in the Arab Legion of King Abdullah. He came from a Druze family from the town of Rameh in the Upper Galilee. Al-Qasim attended primary school there and then later graduated from secondary school in Nazareth. His family did not flee Rameh during the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight (Nakba), which occurred in the midst of the invasion of multiple Arab armies aiming to defend the fleeing Palestinians. In his book About Principles and Art, he explains:
While I was still at primary school the Palestinian tragedy occurred. I regard that date as the date of my birth, because the first images I can remember are of the 1948 events. My thoughts and images spring from the number 48.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Samih al-Qasim” as palestinian poet, Israeli citizen (1939–2014). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as palestinian poet, Israeli citizen (1939–2014). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2734197. VIAF identifies the subject as 7419294. The Library of Congress control number is n81043014. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 2014, 1967 and 1948.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Samih al-Qasim” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.