e was ninety-six, and his work is shared between two languages. The poet, novelist and critic Mohamed Serghini died on Friday, August 14, after a long illness, the MAP news agency reports.
Born in Fes in 1930, educated at the Qarawiyyin and then at the Sorbonne, he taught for three decades at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences of Dhar El Mehraz. The House of Poetry in Morocco saluted him as one of the fathers of Moroccan poetic modernity.
His work held together Sufi memory and the most demanding formal experiment, from Wa yakun ihraq asmaihi al-atiya (1987) to Tahta al-anqad fawqa al-anqad, crowned in 2013 with the Prix du Maroc du Livre.
He also wrote Fes in French, in Fès de la plus haute cime des ruses (2003), as though his native city could not be said entirely in a single tongue.
Photo: Adil Elouarti, CC0.
Maghreb Arabe Presse (MAP) — dispatch of 14 August 2026.
House of Poetry in Morocco — statement of mourning, 14 August 2026.
