The Mahjar poets, i.e. the Arab poets who emigrated to America, form such a distinct school of writing that they deserve separate treatment Moreover, they exercised a profound influence upon their contemporaries in the Arab lands, an influence which can be clearly seen not only in the works of minor poets. Both historically and culturally the Mahjar poets are an extension of Lebanese and Syrian poetry. Although they fell under the influence of western Romantic poetry, directly or otherwise (and some of them did that even before they emigrated to America), their early social, economic, political and cultural background in their homeland helped, to some extent, to shape their later output — although it is difficult to go as far as some recent scholars who tend to attribute the romanticism of these poets almost exclusively to their native background.

Like the distinguished authors who emigrated to Egypt, where they settled and took an active part in its intellectual and literary life, the Lebanese and Syrian poets who turned to North and South America left their homeland mainly for political or economic reasons or for both. The autocratic rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid made life generally difficult for these educated and freedom-loving Arabs who had enjoyed a modern education in European and Russian establishments. At the same time because of the increasing role of Europeans in the commercial life of the Lebanon after the 1860s there were fewer possibilities for the Lebanese at home than abroad and especially in the virgin lands of the New World.