NASSERISM. As a political movement transcending Egypt’s frontiers, Nasserism began developing after Gamal Abdel Nasser achieved full power in Egypt in 1954. It stood for the liberation of the Arabs and all AfroAsian states colonized or dominated by the Western powers, with Egypt playing a key role at the coincidence of the Arab, African, and
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NASSER, GAMAL ABDEL (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970), more properly, Jamal `Abd al-Nasir, Egyptian soldier and statesman and proponent of Arab nationalism. Leader of the group of Free Officers which overthrew King Farouk (Faruq) in 1952, Colonel Nasser became chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council in 1954 and was elected president of the Egyptian
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NASR, SEYYED HOSSEIN (b. April 7, 1933), Iranian philosopher, philosopher of science, theologian, and traditionalist. A prolific writer, Seyyed Hossein Nasr is one of the most visible exponents in the West of an understanding of traditional Islam. He was born in Tehran on 7 April 1933; his father was a physician and educator. Nasr went
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NASIF, MALAK HIFNI (25 December 1886 – 17 October 1918), feminist and writer known as Bahithat al-Badiyah (Searcher in the Desert). Daughter of a scholar and litterateur, Nasif entered the `Abbas Primary School when the state opened a girls’ section in 1895. Receiving her diploma in 1901, she began to teach while enrolled in the
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NAQSHBANDIYAH. One of the most widespread and vigorous of the Sufi orders, the Naqshbandiyah is found in most regions of Muslim Asia (although rarely among Arabs) as well as in Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Volga-Ural region. Originating in Bukhara in the late fourteenth century, the Naqshbandiyah began to spread to contiguous areas of the Muslim
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NAMES AND NAMING. “Choose for your children pleasant and beautiful names,” the Prophet is reported to have said, and, as a measure of how significant names could be, he changed the name of an individual whose name he thought improper. This care about names has perhaps developed from the sensitivity to God’s beautiful names in
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NAJAF. A religious center of the Shi`is since the eighth century, Najaf is located in Iraq, south of Baghdad and 6 miles west of Kufa. It is the site of the mash-had of the first Shi’i imam, `Ali ibn Abli Talib, whose gravesite was revealed to the public in the early ‘Abbasid period by Ja’far
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NA’INI, MUHAMMAD HUSAYN (May 25, 1860-1936), the leading theoretician of the 1905-1909 Persian constitutional movement and the leading clergyman who granted legitimacy to the rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi. His life can be divided into three periods. During the first, he was actively engaged in bringing about the Constitutional Revolution and wrote a famous treatise.
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NAHDATUL ULAMA.Established in 1926, the Nahdatul Ulama (or Nahdlatul Ulama, abbreviated NU; from Ar., nahdat al-`Uama’) is one of the two largest Islamic social organizations in contemporary Indonesia. It embodies the solidarity of traditionalist `ulama’ and their followers who hold to one of the four schools of Sunni Islam, among which the Shafi’i school has
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NAHDAH. The Arabic word nahdah may be translated “rising,” “awakening,” “revival,” or “renaissance” and refers commonly to the revival, or renaissance, of Arabic literature and culture in the Levant and Egypt from about the middle of the nineteenth century to World War I. This revival began with the work of writers such as Nasif Yaziji
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