Qasa'id min Nizar Qabbani (1956) is his most outstanding early collection, in which he assumed a female persona in three poems, 'Pregnant,' 'A Letter from a Spiteful Lady,' and 'The Vessels of Pus.' In the following collections Qabbani also wrote from a woman's viewpoint and urged women to fight against discrimination and defend their social freedoms. Qabbani's first collection of poems came out in 1942, when he was nineteen years old. Along with Bader Shaker al-Sayyab, Yusuf al-Khal, Onsi al-Hajj, Mohammad al-Maghout, and Adonis, he helped created modernism in Arabic poetry. Qabbani retired in 1966 and moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where he worked in literary journalism and eventually founded Manshurat Nizar Qabbani publishing house. Due to his poem, 'Bread, Hashish, and the Moon,' the Syrian parliament considered in 1954 demoting him from his diplomatic post. Syria had gained independence in 1946 and after several coups the power was seized by the Ba'ath Party. Qabbani studied law at the University of Damascus, graduating in 1945, and then started his career as a diplomat. Qabbani's brother Sahab became the director of Syrian Television and a career diplomat, who retired in the early 1980s. His residence in Damascus was a gathering place for the National Bloc. Because of his anti-French activity, he was frequently arrested and once his factory was burned by the authorities. 1954), a rich merchant and a member of the National Bloc, a nationalist movement created to end the French rule. Nizar Qabbani was born in Damascus, the son of Tawfiq Qabbani (d. In the 1950s, Qabbani was with 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati among the pioneers, who started to use the simple language of everyday speech in verse. Later he portrayed the complex relationships between men. He also revealed chauvinist attitudes of men towards women and urged women to rebel against their status in society. His central theme in his early erotic works was the physical attractiveness of women. Syrian diplomat, poet, essayist and playwright, one of the most popular love poets in the Arab world. Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998), also: Nizar Kabbani All pages are unmodified as they originally appeared some links and images may no longer function. The original website was published by Petri Liukkonen under Creative Commons BY-ND-NC 1.0 Finland and reproduced here under those terms for non-commercial use. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z