Badawi al-Jabal

Badawi al-Jabal was a Syrian poet who was known for his work in the neo-classical Arabic form. He was also a prominent nationalist leader who fought against the French occupation of Syria and served as a member of parliament and a minister. He was born in 1903 to an Alawite family in the village of Difa, near al-Haffa, in the Latakia District. His father was a respected religious scholar and a member of the Arab Academy of Language. Badawi learned the Qur'an and classical Arabic poetry from his father and developed a passion for literature and politics. He joined the Al-Ali Revolt in 1919 and participated in the 1925 Great Syrian Revolt, leading raids and sabotages against the French forces. He was arrested and imprisoned several times by the French authorities, but managed to escape and seek refuge in Iraq, where he worked as a teacher and a professor of Arabic literature at the University of Baghdad. He also supported the Iraqi revolt against the British in 1941. He returned to Syria in 1943 and joined the National Bloc, a party that opposed French rule and advocated for Syria's independence and unity. He was elected to the parliament in 1943 and 1947 and became a founding member of the National Party, which opposed any merger with the Hashemite monarchies of Jordan and Iraq. He blamed the Arab leadership for the defeat in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and called for reform and modernization. He became the Minister of Health in the 1950s and continued to write poetry and essays on various topics. He was influenced by a mystical orientation and expressed his love for God, nature, and his homeland in his poems. He died in 1981 in Damascus and left behind a rich legacy of poetry and political activism. He was considered one of the greatest poets of the old school and a pioneer of the Syrian nationalist movement.