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Nizar Qabbani was born in the Syrian capital of Damascus to a middle class merchant family.^[2]Qabbani was raised in Mi'thnah Al-Shahm, one of the neighborhoods of Old Damascus. Qabbani studied at the national Scientific College School in Damascus between 1930 and 1941.^[3] The school was owned and run by his father's friend, Ahmad Munif al-Aidi. He later studied law at the Damascus University, which was called Syrian University until 1958. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in law in 1945.^[3]

While a student in college he wrote his first collection of poems entitled The Brunette Told Me. It was a collection of romantic verses that made several startling references to a woman's body, sending shock waves throughout the conservative society in Damascus.^[3] To make it more acceptable, Nizar showed it to Munir al-Ajlani, the minister of education who was also a friend of his father and a leading nationalist leader in Syria. Ajlani liked the poems and endorsed them by writing the preface for Nizar's first book.