Biography of Nizar Qabbani (1923 – 1998)
Nizar Qabbani (21 March 1923 – 30 April 1998) was a Syrian diplomat, poet and publisher.
When Qabbani was 15, his sister (25) committed suicide because she could not marry the man she loved. During her funeral he decided to fight the social conditions he saw as causing her death. When asked whether he was a revolutionary, the poet answered: “Love in the Arab world is like a slave and I want to free it. I want to free the Arab soul and body of my poems. Relationships between men and women in our world are not right.” He is known as one as one of the most femenist and progressive intellectuals of his time.
The city of Damascus remained a powerful muse in his poetry, most notably in the “Jasmine Scent of Damascus”. The 1967 Arab defeat also influenced his poetry and his lament for the Arab cause. Furthermore, Qabbani had a strong conncetion to Lebanon and was deeply shaken by the Lebanese civil war. His wife, Balqis al-Rawi—an Iraqi he met in London—was killed in Beirut in the December 15, 1981 bombing of the Iraqi Embassy, believed to have been carried out by a pro-Iranian group.
He is one of the most revered contemporary poets in the Arab world.
Biography By: This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Nizar Qabbani.