Hamza Mohammad Bogary or Boqari ( ar, حمزة محمد بوقري) (1932–1984) was an Arabic author from
Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red ...
who also worked in broadcasting, becoming Director General of Broadcasting; from 1965 to 1967, he served as
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
's Deputy Minister of Information. In 1967, he became a cofounder of
King Abdulaziz University
King Abdulaziz University (KAU) ( ar, جامعة الملك عبد العزيز) is a public university in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. With over 117,096 students in 2022, it is the largest university in the country. Located in south Jeddah, the univ ...
in
Jeddah
Jeddah ( ), also spelled Jedda, Jiddah or Jidda ( ; ar, , Jidda, ), is a city in the Hejaz region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the country's commercial center. Established in the 6th century BC as a fishing village, Jeddah's pro ...
. Of his writings, the best known outside of Arabia is his "lightly fictionalized memoir" ''Saqifat al-Safa'' ( ar, سقيفة الصفا), translated into English as ''The Sheltered Quarter'': "His descriptions of school and family life resemble closely what we know of a male student's rounds in eighteenth-century Mecca. The book is a Meccan bildungsroman, calling up those final days before the oil boom that transformed Saudi Arabia and the Hajj."
[Michael Wolfe, ''One Thousand Roads to Mecca'' (Grove Press, 1999: ), p. 441.]
Bibliography
* Bogary, Hamza. ''The Sheltered Quarter'', trans. Olive Kenny and Jeremy Reed, University of Texas Press, 1991: .
References
1932 births
1984 deaths
People from Mecca
Saudi Arabian writers
{{SaudiArabia-writer-stub