Nizar bin Tawfiq al-Qabbani (March 21, 1923 – April 30, 1998) is a contemporary Syrian poet and diplomat from a prominent Damascene Arab family. His grandfather, Abu Khalil al-Qabbani, is considered one of the pioneers of Arab theater. He studied law at the Syrian University and immediately after graduating in 1945, joined the diplomatic corps, moving between different capitals until he resigned in 1966. He published his first collection of poems in 1944, entitled “Qalat Li al-Samra’a” (The Brunette Told Me). He continued writing and publishing, which reached 35 collections over half a century, most notably “Childhood of a Breast” and “Drawing with Words.” He established a publishing house for his works in Beirut called “Nizar Qabbani Publications.” Damascus and Beirut had a special place in his poetry, perhaps the most prominent of which are “The Damascene Poem” and “O Lady of the World, O Beirut.” The 1967 war, which the Arabs called “the setback”, was a decisive turning point in his poetic and literary experience, as it took him out of his traditional style as a “poet of love and women” to enter the political arena. His poem “Margins on the Notebook of the Setback” stirred up a storm in the Arab world to the point of banning his poems in the media. – The Palestinian poet Izz al-Din al-Manasra said about him: (Nizar, as I knew him in Beirut, is the most polite and kind of poets). On a personal level, Qabbani experienced many tragedies in his life, including the killing of his wife, Balqis, during a suicide bombing that targeted the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, where she worked, and the death of his son Tawfiq, whom he mourned in his poem “The Mythical Prince Tawfiq Qabbani”. He lived the last years of his life residing in London, where he leaned more towards political poetry. One of his most famous last poems is “When Will They Announce the Death of the Arabs?” He passed away on April 30, 1998 and was buried in his hometown, Damascus.