Prominent Emirati poet Rabie Bin Yaqoot passes away

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

Poet Rabie Bin Yaqoot, a prominent poet of Nabati poetry in the UAE, died on Wednesday. He was 96.

Sheikh Ammar Bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, Crown Prince of Ajman and Chairman of the Executive Council, mourned the death of the poet. He said via his account on Instagram: “The great poet of Ajman has passed away. To Allah we belong and to Him we shall return. The distinguished poet Rabie Bin Yaqoot has passed away. We pray to Allah to have mercy on him and grant him paradise. Our condolences to his family and tribe, and there is no power or strength except with Allah Almighty.”

Rabie Bin Yaqoot was born in Ajman in 1928. He joined the Katateeb early but did not stay there for long. He tried to search for work to earn a living before he travelled to Kuwait in the 1940s with a group of his friends including Hamad Khalifa Bushahab and Rashid Bin Safwan. He was then in his early twenties and was known to have the talent of poetry.

In Kuwait, he worked at the Ahmadi Oil Company and continued his work there for 12 years. He then shifted to work in the Government of Kuwait’s works garage for 18 years, after which he returned home, a few years before the UAE federation was announced.

Following his return to his homeland, he met a group of young thespians, including actor and poet Sultan Bin Hamad Al Shamsi, an enthusiastic actor who became one of the most famous actors in the UAE and was known as Sultan the Poet.

Bin Yaqoot joined this group to become a theatrical actor and took part in three comedies. The group also included Hamad Khalifa Bushahab, who used to write these plays. Later, Bin Yaqoot left acting to be engaged in professional poetry.

Bin Yaqoot became involved in voluntary work through Ajman Folklore Art Society, where he found himself facing a new task of transferring the legacy from one generation to the other and it was incumbent on children to learn the arts of their fathers.