Rabat – Morocco’s literary world is mourning the death of Mohamed Serghini, renowned poet, writer and critic who died Friday at the age of 96 after a long illness.
Born in Fez in 1930, Serghini built a decades-long career at the intersection of poetry, philosophy, criticism, and academia, becoming an influential voice in the evolution of modern Moroccan literature.
Rather than following established poetic conventions, Serghini developed a distinctive approach shaped by both Sufi thought and modern literary experimentation.
His work explored new forms of poetic expression and helped expand the boundaries of contemporary Moroccan and Arab poetry.
His poetry collection “Tahta Al-Anqadh, Faouqa Al-Anqadh” (Beneath the Ruins, Above the Ruins) earned him the Morocco Book Prize in the poetry category.
His wider literary output also included the novel “I Found You in This Archipelago,” published in 1992, and the 1986 play “The Song of the Ghost Train.”
Serghini’s interests extended well beyond creative writing. He made notable contributions to literary criticism, semiotics, philosophy, and translation, including Lectures on Semiotics, published in 1987, as well as work examining and translating the poetry of Salah Stétié.
His contribution to poetry received international recognition in 2004 when he received the Argana International Poetry Prize, awarded by Morocco’s House of Poetry.
Education was another defining part of Serghini’s career. After his early studies in Fez and at Al Quaraouiyine University, he pursued higher education in Iraq, earning a literature degree from the University of Baghdad in 1959.
He later returned to Morocco, where he obtained a degree in comparative literature from Mohammed V University in Rabat in 1963. He went on to earn a third-cycle doctorate in 1970 and a Doctorat d’État from the Sorbonne in Paris in 1985.
Serghini joined the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Fez as a university professor in the early 1960s.
Over the years, he combined teaching and research with academic leadership, serving as the faculty’s vice dean between 1986 and 1991.
For generations of students and researchers, Serghini was not only a poet but also a mentor and scholar who helped shape Morocco’s literary and academic landscape.
