Hanna Mina, an eminent Syrian writer who chronicled the lives of the poor and oppressed in dozens of books as one of the first Arab novelists to employ social realism, died on Tuesday in Damascus. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by Syrian state media.

Mr. Mina’s career spanned half a century, and several of his works were adapted for film and television. But only two were translated into English.

Bassam Frangieh, a professor of Arabic at Claremont McKenna College in California who translated Mr. Mina’s novel “Sun on a Cloudy Day” with Clementina Brown, called him “a majestic figure” in Arabic literature.