L IS FOR LEBANON

I stumbled upon Rafic Charaf’s name when reading a book of Antarah’s poetry that I wrote about yesterday. Apparently, Charaf, a Lebanese painter, was very much interested in the life of Antarah and ended up creating a series of paintings depicting Antarah and his beloved Abla. They are as amazing and timeless as Antarah’s poetry, and could have easily been mistaken for either pre-Islamic art, or contemporary graphics. Which is what I greatly admire in Charaf’s work: it’s beautiful and rooted in the ancient traditions of the Middle Eastern art, and at the same time really cool-looking so they never age. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of Charaf’s heritage online, so I didn’t manage to find more paintings in HD, but here’s a really beautiful one, for which I know neither the title, nor the date. I’m not exactly sure if it is from the Antarah collection, but it’s in the same style and with subject matter of high proximity. Magnificent.