Said ِFayad was the eldest son of Ibrahim Efendi Fayad - a local notable who served as a district governor under the French mandate - and Lamia Ali Dhaher, niece of the poet and religious figure Sheikh Suleiman Dhaher, a prominent intellectual in the Nabatieh governorate. Said was schooled in Nabatieh, Hasbaya, the Maqased in Saida and the Freres. He married to Badriya Fayad and they had eight children: Afaf, Talal, Hilal, Daad, Dalal, Dunia, Ghada and Randa. He spent most of his career between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia and then after retirement lived in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Morocco. He returned to Lebanon in the late 1990s where he died on 15October 2003.
Career
Said began his career in Saudi Arabia with al-Riyad Magazine and Saudi Radio in Mecca. He then returned to Beirut as a correspondent for Saudi Radio and wrote for the newspapers al-Hadaf and al-Rased from 1958 to 1968. His poems were published in numerous magazines including al-Wuroud, al-Irfan and al-Adeeb. He also produced some programmes for Lebanese radio, including Fairuz Shah and Hamza al-Arab. In 1963, he returned to Jeddah to work for the radio broadcasting office where he produced the daily radio programmes With the People, Wisdom of the Day, and Afternoon Sun until his retirement in 1975 for medical reasons. He wrote the Saudi national anthem. In 1975, he moved to London, then in 1985 to Switzerland. From 1990 to 1996 he lived in Morocco in a suburb of Casablanca, close to his eldest son. He returned to Lebanon in the late 1990s where he continued to write poetry, as well as his memoirs. Dr Pierre Khabbaz of the Lebanese University published a study of his works in 1998.
Since 2004, the Said Fayad Literary Prize has been awarded annually in Beirut to promote and encourage excellence in Arab poetry. The prize is worth 5,000,000 Lebanese Lira.
Poetry
Major poetic works include:
Blossoms براعم 1951
Bouquet 1955 عبير
Clarion Call of Affection 1984 هتاف الوجدان
Prose
He produced two anthologies of articles and works in prose:
