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Qabbani's poems included a strong strain of anti-authoritarianism. But the Syrian capital remained a powerful presence in his poems, most notably in ''The Jasmine Scent of Damascus.'' In his later years, Mr.
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He held diplomatic posts in Cairo, Ankara, London, Madrid, Beijing and Beirut before resigning, and had lived in London since 1967. Qabbani published his first poem, ''The Brunette had Told Me,'' in 1944, a year before he graduated with a law degree from the University of Damascus. Qabbani as having been ''by any measure a great Arab poet who made a big effort to make his poetry understandable to all people and not only to the elite.'' Gamal el-Ghitanti, the Egyptian novelist and editor of the weekly News of Literature, praised Mr. Qabbani today, ''His greatness came from his ability to put into beautiful words not only the ordinary actions between men and women, but also between the ruler and ruled and the oppressor and the oppressed.'' The Egyptian novelist Mona Helmi said of Mr. When a man wishes a woman he blows a horn,īut when a woman wishes a man she eats the cotton of her pillow. In his poem ''Drawing with Words'' he wrote: But his writing also often fused themes of romantic and political despair, and it sometimes treated the oppression of women as a metaphor for what he saw as the Arabs' cursed fate. Qabbani was a committed Arab nationalist and in recent years his poetry and other writings, including essays and journalism, had become more political. After the Arab defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he founded the Nizar Qabbani publishing house in London, and his became a powerful and eloquent voice of lament for Arab causes. But it was not until he resigned from the Syrian diplomatic service in 1966 that Mr. He earned a reputation for daring with the publication in 1954 of his first volume of verse, ''Childhood of a Breast,'' which broke with the conservative traditions of Arabic literature. Qabbani made women his main theme and inspiration. Qabbani had been ''as necessary to our lives as air.'' The Syrian poet Youssef Karkoutly said in Damascus today that Mr. His work was featured not only in his two dozen volumes of poetry and in regular contributions to the Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat, but in lyrics sung by Lebanese and Syrian vocalists who helped popularize his work. Qabbani was revered by generations of Arabs for his sensual and romantic verse. The cause was a heart attack, his family said. Nizar Qabbani, who left life as a Syrian diplomat to become one of the Arab world's greatest poets, died today in London, where he lived.