My presence in an exciting neighborhood such as the South Caucasus coincided with a
delicate period of time in which ideas and intellectual and ideological references were mixed.
The levels of ideological debate enabled me, metaphorically, to come to the conclusion that
people who have absorbed different civilizations in hard times have succeeded in rejuvenating
themselves over the years. They made sure not to reproduce other models in order to obliterate
their culture, but rather to contain them so that the two could coexist together. Based on this
belief, the idea of publishing this book in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, in Arabic and Azeri
arose as the first step of an even more ambitious project, namely the publication of the anthology
of Moroccan poetry in the Azeri language and the ontology of Azeri poetry in Arabic—and
hopefully waiting for the opening of such a space for other literary genres.
I wrote this book titled ‘The Caspian Hymns’ in a short time while in Azerbaijan. I
thought of this country as the mystery of the South Caucasus and the icon of the Caspian. Culture
there forms a mosaic that breathes a shared heritage that warms the heart and sharpens the mind.
All of this gives the visitor and the explorer alike a unique opportunity to dive into the depths of
a rich heritage that, for decades, has been and continues to be part of human civilization.
