Nasser: Beloved of Millions

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A new biography of Egypt’s first elected president, Gamal Abd al-Nasser, presents his complex legacy, shaped as his country moved from colonial domination to a place of leadership in the Arab world. In historian Joel Gordon’s account, Nasser was a man of “simple tastes and large dreams” and of “great achievements and great failings.”

In Nasser: Hero of the Arab Nation, Gordon, associate professor in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas, tells the story of Nasser and his era through both first-hand accounts and through the lens of Egyptian popular culture.

Nasser was a leading figure among the “Free Officers,” a group within the Egyptian military who removed the last, corrupt Egyptian monarch by a coup in July 1952. He went on to lead Egypt for 18 years, first as part of a military junta and then as president from 1956 until his death in 1970.

Gordon opens the book with the lyrics of a song written in 1958 to commemorate the 1952 revolution and Nasser’s leadership. It begins “Gamal, beloved of millions — Gamal!” Those were heady times, and the song reflects the popularity of the leader from a modest background, the son of a low-level postal official. The revolution had freed Egypt from foreign domination and offered hope of political and economic reforms that could lead to a more stable and just society. The proposed reforms were an element in a version of socialism that became known as Nasserism. By late in 1958, Nasser’s regime had nationalized the Suez Canal and established the United Arab Republic, a short-lived union of Egypt and Syria.

Many anthems later, in 1966, came a popular song named “Sura” (“The Picture”), which, Gordon writes, reflects “the climactic moments of revolutionary socialist enthusiasm, before the fall” and “depicts the new, egalitarian Egypt on the march.”

The song’s lyrics evoke “a picture of a joyous people under the banner of victory” and describes a host of Egyptians, including pigtailed children, peasants as “the essence of good and beauty,” and bureaucrats who “serve you with good spirit.” The song ends with “This picture is completed with pioneers, with Nasser, their hands in his.”

Gordon writes, “The song, literally and figuratively, is a snapshot of an era, conveying the imagery by which the regime sought to identify itself.”

Gordon also writes about less uplifting images not evoked in the 1966 anthem or its predecessors. In addition to dispossessed aristocrats “gazing across a city and country that is no longer theirs,” he describes images of people in Nasser’s political prisons or those consigned to brutal concentration camps. While “the Nasserite state might be described as tyrannical,” Gordon observed, Nasser himself was not directly blamed, and in later assessments was even supported by some of those who had been imprisoned.

“Therein lies the complexity of Nasser’s legacies. A giant of postcolonial history, a leader who embodied the popular will of his people, the Arabs and others struggling for self-determination, none the less he remained an autocrat, surrounded by corrupt and corruptible agents of state repression,” Gordon writes.

In the bibliographic essay that concludes the book, Gordon mentions several full biographies of Nasser that were written shortly after his death. He notes that no authoritative biography has appeared in more than 30 years.

“This book has been shaped by many years of research in Egypt on the Nasser years and Nasser’s shifting legacies. In the mid-1980s, I was fortunate to be able to discuss the origins of the Free Officers and their early years in power with many of Nasser’s closest associates and most vocal opponents. In succeeding trips, I explored the cultural ramifications of the Revolution with leading figures in film, broadcast, music and publishing,” Gordon writes in the book’s conclusion.

Gordon’s Nasser is part of the series “The Makers of the Muslim World” published by Oneworld Publications, Oxford, and edited by Patricia Crone of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Gordon is also author of Nasser’s Blessed Movement: Egypt’s Free Officers and the July Revolution, the standard work on the early years of the Free Officers and the political background of the time. His contribution to an understanding of the cultural history of Nasserist Egypt is Revolutionary Melodrama: Popular Film and Civic Identity in Nasser’s Egypt.