Ya'qub Bilbul

Ya'qub Bilbul (, , also transliterated Jacob Bilbul and Ya'coub Balbul; 1920–2003) was an Iraqi Jewish writer. His literary works were published in Arabic, and he achieved recognition as early as 1936 after publishing an article in the Iraqi journal, Al-Hatif. Known for his naturalistic stories, he is considered one of the first writers of social realist fiction in Iraq, and a pioneer of the Iraqi novel and short story.

Education Bilbul studied in English at the Shammash and Alliance schools in Iraq. He graduated in 1938 and continued on to study economics and business. After emigrating to Israel in 1951, he majored in law and economics at the University of Tel Aviv, graduating from there some five later.

Career In 1938, Bilbul released his first collection of short stories. Entitled Al-Jamrah al-Ūla ("The first coal"), he described it as the only belletristic book published in Iraq that year.

Bilbul worked as a clerk in the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce, whose president between 1938 and 1945 was another poet, Meir Basri. He and Basri revived the muwashshahat, strophic forms of poetry that were popular in Andalusia. It is the only story known to have been subject to pre-publication editing in Iraq, where such a practice was wholly uncommon. After two Muslim brothers who worked at the printing press expressed being offended by the assigning of obviously Muslim names to the two primitive and cruel characters in the book, while the midwife was given a common Jewish name, Bilbul changed all the names to more neutral ones to please his friends.

Reflective of his desire to present authentic accounts and to reach the masses, much of the dialogue in Bilbul's stories was written in colloquial Arabic. Praised for his short-story technique, focus and unity, and social realism, he was also criticized for naivete, lack of originality, and weakness in characterization. He is nevertheless cited as one of the 21 most important novel and short story writers from the period between 1920 and 1955.