Nizar Qabbani

He was born in Damascus into a middle-class merchant family and raised in the Old City; the Arabic and Urdu articles and Wikidata give his birth on 21 March 1923, while the English article's lead and infobox give 22 March — a one-day disagreement recorded in his data record. He attended the National Scientific College School from 1930 to 1941 and studied law at Damascus University, graduating in 1945. The family name derives from the Arabic word qabban, a steelyard balance. ^{1 2 3 4}

At fifteen he lost his elder sister Wisal, who died under disputed circumstances; he later said the experience shaped his writing on the place of women and of love in Arab society: "Love in the Arab world is like a prisoner, and I want to set it free." ¹

While still at university he published his first collection, The Brunette Told Me (1942); its sexual themes generated considerable controversy, and the education minister Munir al-Ajlani approved the work and wrote its preface. After graduating he joined the Syrian foreign ministry and served as consul or cultural attaché in Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, Madrid and London; after the formation of the United Arab Republic in 1959 he was appointed vice-secretary for the union's embassies in China, and poems from his China posting are counted among his finest. He resigned from the diplomatic service in 1966 and devoted himself to writing and publishing. ¹

Damascus remained his enduring muse, most famously in The Jasmine Scent of Damascus, while his pan-Arab poems portrayed the Arab world from Mauritania to Iraq as a single community. ¹

In 1981 his wife, Balqis al-Rawi, was killed in the bombing of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. Her death marked his life and work: his long elegy Balqis joined personal grief to political anger, holding Arab regimes responsible for her death. He settled in London in his last years. ^{1 2}

Qabbani died in London on 30 April 1998. In his will, written in his hospital bed in London, he asked to be buried in Damascus, "the womb that taught me poetry, taught me creativity and granted me the alphabet of Jasmine"; he was buried in the city's Bab al-Saghir Cemetery. ^{1 4}

No article text states a religion or a school for Qabbani personally; Wikidata gives Islam in general, alone. His themes — and the campaigns of religious conservatives against parts of his verse — are his poetry's reputation and reception, not evidence of his own affiliation in either direction, and the museum does not treat them as such. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown, on the structured value alone. ^{4 1 2}

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