Ilyās Farhāt

{{Short description|Lebanese poet}}

Ilyās Farhāt (1893- 1976) was a Lebanese poet who lived and wrote in Latin America.{{cite book|author=Salma Khadra Jayyusi|author-link=Salma Jayyusi|editor=Roger Allen|title=Essays in Arabic Literary Biography: 1850-1950|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FAp1uVaBaQIC&pg=PA86|accessdate=1 September 2012|year=2010|publisher=Otto Harrassowitz Verlag|isbn=978-3-447-06141-4|pages=86–93|chapter=Ilyās Farhāt}}

Ilyās Farhāt was born to a poor family in Kafarshima, Ottoman Empire in 1893. Though he hardly completed elementary education and went to work at an early age,{{cite book|author=Mounah Abdallah Khouri|title=Studies in contemporary Arabic poetry and criticism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GXQsAAAAMAAJ|accessdate=1 September 2012|year=1987|publisher=Jahan Book Co.|isbn=978-0-936665-02-3|page=72}} he started writing folk poetry in colloquial Lebanese Arabic. In 1910, he emigrated to join his brothers in Brazil, where he tried to earn a living as a travelling salesman. He subsequently wrote formal poetry, gaining recognition for his first collection in 1925.