Said Akl.

Renowned Lebanese poet and writer Said Akl passed away on Friday, Nov. 28, at the age of 102.

Akl was born in 1912 in the eastern town of Zahleh, and quit school at the age of 15 to help his family after financial difficulties. He later pursued studies in literature in the 1930s after moving to Beirut.

Famous for his radical Lebanese nationalism, Akl, also known as the “Little Poet”, promoted the use of Lebanese dialect written in modified Roman script rather than the modern standard Arabic alphabet.

He was defined by his Phoenician-centered nationalism, which made him popular among many Lebanese and controversial among others.

After having left the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Akl became one of the leaders of the Guardians of the Cedars, a radical nationalist political party created during the Lebanese Civil War which welcomed the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, seeing it as a golden opportunity for forcing Palestinians out of Lebanon.

Although mostly known for his poetry, Akl was also a journalist and wrote for several newspapers such as Al-Jarida, Al-Sayyad, and had a column in Assafir in the 1990s.

Considered one of the most notable modern Lebanese poets, Akl wrote in Arabic and French. His poetic works include “The Jasmine Bells”, “Poems from Her Notebook”, “Like Pillars”, and “Carving in Light.”

Legendary Lebanese singer Fairouz sang more than a dozen of his poems such as “Roddani Ila Biladi (Take Me Back to my Country)”, “Ghanaytu Mekka (I sang to Mekka)”, “Ummi ya Malaki (My Mother, My Angel),” and “Kara’tu Majdaka (I Read your Glory).”

Akl wrote three plays in poetic form, “The Daughter of Jephthah,” “The Magdalena” and “Cadmus,” and also published prose that includes “Loubnan in Haka” (If Lebanon Were to Speak).

Akl’s work was loved by Arab readers but he hated Arabism so much that he invented a latinised version of the Lebanese dialect. Throughout his career, he espoused contradictory views on politics in the tumultuous Middle East.

Some of his lyrics paid homage to Mecca and Israeli-occupied Jerusalem, while in the 1980s he celebrated the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

The renowned poet “died peacefully”, friends said at a press conference.

“Lebanon and all the Arabs today lost a giant of poetry, God rest your soul Said Akl,” former prime minister Saad Hariri wrote on Twitter.

Akl felt an affinity to a cultural and political trend adopted by some Lebanese Christians from the beginning of the 20th century until the outbreak of the 1975-1990 civil war, that sought to emphasize specific Lebanese cultural traits as standing apart from the rest of the Arabs.

The poet, whose bushy white hair and flamboyant gestures made him instantly recognizable, founded a newspaper called Lebnaan (Lebanon in Arabic) and wrote poems such as “Yara” in his alphabet.

At the same time, he maintained a paradoxical relationship with the Arabic language.

While publicly despising anything Arab, he was an innovative Arabic-language poet and master lyricist of songs that became favourites among Arab nationalists.

Akl went even further in his contradictions, once declaring: “The Arabic language is destined to become extinct. And if I have become one of the great Arabic-language poets, it is precisely so that I can have the authority to express this idea.”

Several of his more refined poems, some of which follow the “ghazal” model that expresses love for a woman, are taught in Lebanese schools.

In an interview, he referred to Israeli troops as “a liberation army” that sought to defend the Lebanese from Palestinian “terrorism.”

At the time of the invasion, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was based in Lebanon, and had the backing of local left-wing and Muslim groups.