WRITERS from Libya

Top 3

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Libyan Writers of all time. This list of famous Libyan Writers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Callimachus (-310 - -240)

With an HPI of 69.45, Callimachus is the most famous Libyan Writer.  His biography has been translated into 50 different languages on wikipedia.

Callimachus (Ancient Greek: Καλλίμαχος, romanized: Kallimachos; c. 310 – c. 240 BC) was an ancient Greek poet, scholar, and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works, most of which do not survive, in a wide variety of genres. He espoused an aesthetic philosophy, known as Callimacheanism, which exerted a strong influence on the poets of the Roman Empire and, through them, on all subsequent Western literature. Born into a prominent family in the Greek city of Cyrene in modern-day Libya, he was educated in Alexandria, the capital of the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt. After working as a schoolteacher in the city, he came under the patronage of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus and was employed at the Library of Alexandria where he compiled the Pinakes, a comprehensive catalogue of all Greek literature. He is believed to have lived into the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes. Although Callimachus wrote prolifically in prose and poetry, only a small number of his poetical texts have been preserved. His main works are the Aetia, a four-book aetiological poem, six religious hymns, around 60 epigrams, a collection of satirical iambs, and a narrative poem entitled Hecale. Callimachus shared many characteristics with his Alexandrian contemporaries Aratus, Apollonius of Rhodes and Theocritus, but professed to adhere to a unique style of poetry: favouring small, recondite and even obscure topics, he dedicated himself to small-scale poetry and refused to write longwinded epic poetry, the most prominent literary art of his day. Callimachus and his aesthetic philosophy became an important point of reference for Roman poets of the late Republic and the early Empire. Catullus, Horace, Vergil, Propertius, and Ovid saw his poetry as one of their "principal model[s]" and engaged with it in a variety of ways. Modern classical scholars view him as one of the most influential Greek poets. According to the Hellenist Kathryn Gutzwiller, he "reinvented Greek poetry for the Hellenistic age by devising a personal style that came, through its manifestations in Roman poetry, to influence the entire tradition of modern literature".

2. Ibn Manzur (1233 - 1312)

With an HPI of 53.05, Ibn Manzur is the 2nd most famous Libyan Writer.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Muhammad ibn Mukarram ibn Alī ibn Ahmad ibn Manzūr al-Ansārī al-Ifrīqī al-Misrī al-Khazrajī (Arabic: محمد بن مكرم بن علي بن أحمد بن منظور الأنصاري الإفريقي المصري الخزرجي) also known as Ibn Manẓūr (Arabic: إبن منظور) (June–July 1233 – December 1311/January 1312) was an Arab lexicographer of the Arabic language and author of a large dictionary, Lisan al-ʿArab (لسان العرب; lit. 'The Tongue of the Arabs')

3. Ibrahim Kuni (b. 1948)

With an HPI of 46.25, Ibrahim Kuni is the 3rd most famous Libyan Writer.  His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Ibrāhīm al-Kōnī (sometimes translated as Ibrāhīm Kūnī) (Arabic: ابراهيم الكوني) is a Libyan writer and is considered to be one of the most prolific Arab novelists.