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20/11/2023
Yesterday, Sunday, Sudanese Professor Yousef Nour Al-Daim, head of the Arabic Language Department at the University of Khartoum and one of the men of knowledge and advocacy in Sudan, died in Omdurman in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, yesterday, Sunday, at the age of over 83 years.
Pontiff Youssef Nour Al-Daim was born in the village of Al-Sorrab, located in the northern countryside of Omdurman, an environment filled with poetry. His father was a poet of lamentation and poetry. Nour Al-Daim studied at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Khartoum and was later sent to the United Kingdom, where he obtained his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Professor Al-Habre joined the Islamic movement and remained active in it throughout his academic life. He was distinguished by his proficiency in the sciences of the Arabic language. Many described him as the successor to the late scholar Professor Abdullah Al-Tayeb. He emerged as a skilled poet. He was a scholar of the sciences of the Qur’an and its interpretation. He was active in presenting Qur’anic interpretation programs on the radio. And television, such as “Sahar Al-Bayan” and “Ahsan Al-Hadith” programs.
The Sudanese writer Ahmed Amin Al-Ahmad, who resides in the British capital, London, wrote these elegiac words in his farewell to the poet Youssef Nour Al-Daim:
That distant winter on the coast of Al-Adik, before Al-Muqrin arrived, we were honored to enter the University of Khartoum, which is difficult to describe other than as a miniature picture of Sudan with all its regions, tribes, and classes.
An amazing place that has been visited by most of the names that have had a positive and negative impact on the memory of the old, new and future Sudan.
At the beginning of “that winter,” I was most honored to sit in the study sessions of our venerable, knowledgeable, and humble teacher, Sheikh al-Habir (the holder and interpreter of the book), whom we were honored to study in Hall 102 in the first grade. Despite his high academic and religious stature, he encouraged us to be very humble in appearance, and I remember that it was difficult He must speak without smiling, and this is the most beautiful quality of smiling in the face of your interlocutor. God blamed our master, beloved, and intercessor Muhammad – may God bless him and grant him peace – when he frowned and turned in the face of that blind man, may God be pleased with him.
Sitting in the lesson sessions of our sheikh, the scholar and scholar Youssef Nour al-Daim, in Hall 102, that distant winter while we were in Ramallah (a Sudanese term used for first-year students) was equivalent to heavy rain falling in a barren desert, turning it into green pastures and plows. Perhaps this was due to the strong presence of our sheikh, the scholar, at that time, with his abundant knowledge in ( Pre-Islamic literature), not to mention his deep understanding of the interpretation of the verses of the Wise Book, through humility and high Qur’anic character, made him an old man who could have the livers of camels beaten to him.
How happy would be the one who read pre-Islamic literature to Dr. Al-Habir in Hall 102 (currently Abdullah Al-Tayeb) at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Khartoum. Al-Habir, with his great knowledge and great cheerfulness, would enter us in that wide, bright hall, carrying with him the clouds of Wael, Alqama Al-Fahl, Sateh Al-Dhuhabi, Shaq bin Yasar, and Al-Marqashan, the Greater and the Younger. And all the poets of the Mu’allaqat, in addition to their sheikh and judge Al-Nabigha Al-Dhubyani, through his famous apology to Al-Nu’man in that famous Lamiya, and the orator of the Arabs, Qais bin Sa’idah, whom the Prophet Muhammad – may God bless him and grant him peace – saw in the pre-Islamic era of his people while he was on a red camel delivering a sermon, leaning on a sword and wearing a turban.
Dr. Al-Habir Youssef is one of the few in the Arab world who still have originality, value, and true knowledge of his language and its literature, interpretation and its sciences, the Qur’an and its numerous readings, in addition to the noble Prophet’s hadith through the availability and diligent focus on the true sources of all these sciences, which have begun to be marred by weakness, weakness, and weakness thanks to the misery of current education. Because he moved away from his solid sources based on explanations, texts on footnotes, and other footnotes on texts, and deep patience makes the student memorize Alfiyyah Ibn Malik and its commentary in less than two months.
Sheikh Al-Habre, like many of the Arabic professors at the University of Khartoum in the old Sudan, is a great poet, but he is a poet in a profane era. The most beautiful of the short poems I have read from him, entitled “The Breaths of Al-Qurayd,” which he read in the past, standing in the position of his sheikh and late teacher, Abdullah Al-Tayeb, whom he is credited with saying when he carried him. His camel was taken to the University of Sidi Mohammed V in Fez. His close and loving relatives blamed him for leaving teaching at the old University of Khartoum, and he replied to them: It is enough that he left behind him his beloved student, the rabbi Youssef, or as he said, may God have mercy on them both.
Indeed, how happy is he who reads the book, the interpretation, the hadith, the biography, the ancient language, the pre-Islamic prose, the soothsayers’ rhyme, and the proverbs in an era and space that is the Faculty of Arts at the University of Khartoum, in which Abdullah al-Tayeb, the rabbi Yusuf Nour al-Daim, al-Malik, al-Wathiq, Mahdi al-Ma’mun, and so on, gathered in its form.
Years ago, I was pleased with a generous copy of “With Al-Farazdaq in London.” It arrived in London with “The Southern Wind,” according to Adel Al-Qassas’s old dictionary, as a gift from Professor Nafisa Karima, the author, Abdul Rahim Al-Amin. I stood at the introduction of our Sheikh Al-Habir to travel, and I remembered the years of student studies in the old secondary school, when I was addicted to reading a magazine. The monthly “Doha”, headed by Muhammad Ibrahim Al-Shoush, Al-Nour Othman Abkar, and Al-Tayeb Salih.
And from the Doha Magazine book at the time, I was following the articles “Living Personalities from Songs” written by the Egyptian critic Muhammad Al-Mansi Qandil, and they later appeared in a book. In those articles, he was writing about “the days of the Arabs,” especially the “War of the Basus” and the Arab tramps from the presence of the rooster of the jinn and the Shanfari. Al-Salik, Tabut Shara, Urwa bin Al-Ward, and so on, and all of this is linked to the course of pre-Islamic literature that was dictated to us by the sheikh of the ink, that Old Testament, in Hall 102.
In his mention of the Al-Basous war, Muhammad Al-Mansi Qandil wrote that after the she-camel’s udder was shot with an arrow and her death, Jassas tried to appease his aunt Al-Basus with about 20 Aynaq (shah or camel), but she refused and asked him to kill Alal Beir Kulaib, “Al-Mudalla’,” and this was a request short of breaking the Qataad.
When night fell, Al-Basous recited poetic verses in a state of sadness that led to the incitement of war. These rare verses were known as “Al-Mawthabat.” Unfortunately, Muhammad Al-Mansi Qandil did not mention them in the article, so I continued searching for them and still do.
One late summer afternoon, I entered Dr. Al-Hebber’s office in his office opposite the college registrar’s office after knocking on the door. I was a “professor” asking him about these “protests” that sparked the Bassous War. I was astonished by his great humility and his good reception of a student despite his high academic and political stature and his fame (this behavior one acquires from his family). Since childhood, this is behavior that the institutions of science, politics, ignorance, and clowning do not grant you.
The ink’s memory was not enough to remember the verses of “Al-Muthabbat”, but he pointed to several references in which I might find “Al-Muthabat”, and unfortunately I did not find those references (with the passing of the era and the congestion of old memory, I forgot the titles of those references), but I am still searching for the “Al-Muthabat” that sparked The Basus War.
The “Sheikh of Ink” in the era’s end, the “Kaab,” is like a mole on the cheek. He is one of a rare group of people who master English with the same skill and clear tongue, like Abdullah Al-Tayeb and Abdul Rahim Al-Lamin, the author of this critical book with fine Shakespeare in the castle of the English language (Oxford).
Al-Habr gained the credit of studying in Wadi Sayyidna (near the capital, Khartoum), “and all Wadi Sayyidna graduates speak English like Khawajat,” and the University of Khartoum, and sending him a scholarship to Britain (without losing his Sudanese authenticity).
Likewise, Sheikh Habr, one of a rare group of Sudanese symbols of reason and light before the era of darkness, burning of libraries, cold-blooded murder, and then lies and denial, gained the honor of studying in Wadi Sayyidna, in its famous building, which contained Hussein Bazraa, Tayeb Salih, and Ali Al-Mak. Then he studied at the Arts University of Khartoum when it was a house of wisdom. He was sent to Al-Alam Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland, and he returned home when the Sudanese were returning to him.
I said that I had the honor of sitting in the sessions of Sheikh Al-Habir in Hall 102 before it became Abdullah Al-Tayeb Hall, and despite the obsolescence of the era and the ruin of memory, I still remember the “bench” that I used to sit on alone in the third row to the right of the interior, perhaps because it was broken and had thick dust in it that I used to wipe. With a handkerchief before sitting down, I remember well that beautiful group of male and female colleagues who regularly sat on the second bench directly in front of me, and each member of the group sat in a specific place and did not change it.
Mercy, forgiveness, intercession, and protection for those who passed away, for our honorable teachers, and for the living, long life in obedience to him, and may blessings and peace be upon the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace.
London, Autumn 2023, in which our venerable sheikh, Father Joseph, departed to Jannat and Nahr.
