Life and Education

Abdel Latif ElNashar’s intellectual development was influenced by both his father, Hamdi ElNashar, and his grandfather, ElNashar ElKabir. They wrote poetry and their writing became the foundation for Abdel Latif’s own literary career and inspired his poetry. He learned to read in a “kuttab" which was the pre-modern school in most Muslim countries where boys learned to read and memorize Qur’an. So, Abdel Latif was a “hafiz”  who completed the memorization of the Qur’an, a prestigious accomplishment. He then went to an English primary school in 1903 where he learned English and became interested in translation. Abdel Latif was unable to finish his secondary education, likely due to financial struggles, and left school after the fourth grade. 

A self-made man, he continued to educate himself by reading Arabic poetry and English literature. An interesting question is how Abdel Latif was able to acquire a mastery of English language, a rarity in his time. Out of necessity, he took a job as a scribe in the Egyptian court system which is the equivalent of today’s clerk of courts. He held that position throughout his prestigious literary career but often complained of the tediousness of the job. 

He married Moufida ElShayal and they had a son who died as a teenager.  His only daughter, Rafia, was born in 1932, (October 31, 1932 - December 11, 2011). In 1955, he moved to Cairo to be near her as she was appointed to the Ministry of Arts there.  He was lonely after the death of his wife and life-mate, Moufida, in 1967. He isolated himself from the hustle and bustle of the city contemplating the secrets of life and existentialism. His daughter, Rafia, had moved to London with her husband, Mahmoud Shawky Taman, M.D. (January 6, 1933 - May 6, 2016) and he traveled to live with her. In England, he delved into reading contemporary British writers and gained a special admiration for English literature. Abdel Latif returned to Egypt after Rafia moved with her family to the United States in 1971.

After his death in 1973, a street in Alexandria was renamed for him, Al-Afrah Street in Victoria.

Literary Career

Abdel Latif is best known as a poet. After his death his poems were compiled into two volumes Volume I Volume II that were published posthumously by his daughter, Rafia. She worked with Dr. Ahmed Mostafa Hafez, Ph.D., who was a mentee of Abdel Latif and a protégé in his own right. They worked through cross-Atlantic correspondence for several years and together they curated the collections. The volumes encompass several hundred poems over Abdel Latif’s 60 plus year writing career. Abdel Latif also had a book of poetry titled, “Pharaoh’s Heaven and Moses’ Hell” which is often referenced in writings about him. It is not known by this website’s archivists if this set is a lost work or if the two posthumously published volumes were an attempt to recreate it.

In addition to writing poetry, Abdel Latif was the first to translate at least three dozen books from English into Arabic. They were primarily classics by British, Russian, and American writers but also short stories by other writers of the time. The classics include Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace.  All were the first-ever translations of these texts into Arabic, expanding the lexicon of literature in the Arab world.

Abdel Latif’s translations were printed as serial chapters in newspapers. A chapter of each book was published weekly. This was common practice in Egyptian newspapers during the first half of the 1900s since books were costly and often out of reach of the general public. His translations contributed greatly to the availability of literature to the Arabic speaking world.

Upon considering the entirety of the translation, it is apparent that his intellectual curiosity focused on any literature where the authors had written in English about the East. Thus, he selected novels and stories written about Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. Later it was the Middle East and the Orient in general, especially about the influence of the British and other colonizers. For example, instead of Rudyard Kipling’s more famous works, he chose, what he titled, Hidden Treasures of Egypt, to bring to his Egyptian audience. This was collection of seven letters from Kipling’s visit to Egypt in 1913 that were first published in Nash’s Magazine under the title of “Egypt of the Egyptian” and Cosmopolitan Magazine as “Egypt of the Magicians” in 1914. He also translated works of writers who were influenced through their travel to these regions.

Unfortunately, only some of his translations still survive. About 17 novels and short stories are available in the original print as folios from the newspapers. Links to these archives are available on this page. here.

Abdel Latif wrote a regular column, Sunday Talks, in The Alexandrian, a newspaper of his time about Arabic literature, discussing the polemic of the use of classical versus modern Arabic styles. In 1924, he wrote a series of one-act plays for broadcast published in consecutive editions in his column. He was one of the first members of the Alexandria Cultural Dissemination Group, which was established in 1932 to support poets of Alexandria and publish their literary works. Among the most prominent poets of this group were Khalil Shaiboub ( 1892 - 1951 خليل شيبوب), who was the first president of the group, Flory Abdel Malik, and Munira Tawfiq. (1893-1965).

Most of his early career was with the Wad ElNil newspaper. Wad ElNil started in 1908 and was affiliated with the Egyptian National Party during the beginning of Egypt’s political volatility and the movement to oust the English from their hold on the country. Other well-known writers who were published in Wad ElNil included Yahia Haqqi, Mahmoud Abu al-Fath, Ahmed Abd ElGaffar, Tawfik Diab (whose grandson founded the Egyptian paper Al-Masry Al-Youm) Mohammed Hamdi, Mahmoud Azmi, Ahmed Hussein, and Fathi Radwan. In 1936 the paper transitioned to support of the Egyptian political party the Wafd, which had become the voice for Egypt’s independence. 

He came to be known as the Poet of Alexandria because of his writing after the 1941 bombing of the city during World War II. His poem, Alexandria, in the second volume of poetry, is a scathing criticism of those who abandoned the city during the bombing. His piece in A-Risala Magazine, “Alexandria After the Crisis” was another tongue lashing about how the city was neglected. His series, “Abi Farag, the Alexandrian” received acclaim.

Among the other newspapers that published Abdel Latif’s works were the Nizam and Al-Safeer where he published an ode to his wife Moufida upon her death. He published other works in contemporary magazines of his time Military Culture and Military Ballads.  There is an indication he wrote some English articles.

His daughter donated his papers and books to the library in the city of Mansoura, Egypt. While few of his writings survived other than the archived translations and a few articles, other of ElNashar’s works can be found in the National Archives of Egypt. Still, there is much unknown about his life and literary contributions to the Arab world.

Style and Impact

Abdel Latif ElNashar had both positive and antagonistic relationships with contemporary Egyptian writers including the more famous Tawfiq al-Hakim, Taha Hussein, Yahya Haqqi, Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad, and Ibrahim Abd ElQadir. These men of literature, as they were known at the time, often met in the coffee houses such as the Cafe Riche of Cairo. They engaged in literary debates on their works and on the classical versus the modern styles of Arabic writing. Abdel Latif was not an Arabic language purist, often taking liberties with the structure and meanings in the language. This created many clashes among Egypt’s literary intellectuals and the debates were often public,  published back and forth in the morning and the afternoon newspapers. In his autobiography, Depend on Allah (Khalliha a’la Allah), renowned Egyptian author, Yahya Haqqi, tells a humorous story about Abdel Latif ElNashar, “a colleague at the Wad ElNil newspaper who became a dear friend.” It seemed that Abdel Latif was portrayed by the newspaper as their correspondent in Ankara, Turkey, although Abdel Latif himself had never been to Ankara.  

Abdel Latif’s wife, Moufida ElShayal, was a cousin to Dr. Gamal el-Din ElShayyal (died 1967). ElShayyal was a renowned historiographer of Islamic history who was the Dean of the Faculty of Arts in Alexandria. ElShayyal’s prolific work pre-dated post-colonial thinkers including Edward Said. Abdel Latif and ElShayyal were lifelong friends and intellectual allies. 

Abdel Latif also held a deep respect for the writer Naguib Mahfouz, the 1988 Egyptian Nobel Laureate for Literature. His daughter, Rafia, worked for Mahfouz at the Ministry of Arts and he and Mahfouz often discussed the world of literature. Ironically, Mahfouz was the head of the censorship bureau in the 1950s. It is said he took the position so that he could navigate censorship for his own writing and for independence for other Egyptian writers. Rafia often told stories of how her father and Mahfouz wrote boldly, yet with subtlety, to avoid opposition from the government and religious authorities. The strategy did not always work as some of Mahfouz’ books were banned in Egypt. Since Abdel Latif is a lesser known writer, the website’s archivists do not know if he was also criticized or banned.

After His Death

During Abdel Latif’s life, literary critics wrote about his works and articles were written posthumously about his contributions to Arabic literature. In 2020, a group of Egyptians developed a project chronicling Egyptian writers, Arabic Literature Portal, and created a Wikipedia Arabic page on him عبد اللطيف النشار 

Upon the occasion of Abdel Latif’s death in 1973, Al-Safeer newspaper published, The London that Nobody Knows: A Tribute to Abdel Latif ElNashar. Dr. Ahmed Mostafa Hafez, the curator of two volumes of poetry, wrote an article about him in 1997 in Al-Azhar Magazine, Poet of Alexandria: Abdel Latif ElNashar. 

Abdel Latif ElNashar is survived by his grandchildren, Sahar Mahmoud Taman, Mona Mahmoud Taman, Tarik Mahmoud Taman, and his great-grandchildren, Nailah Randall Taman, Mazin Eustice Shawky Taman, Muhammad Shadi Ramadan, and Deena Magdy Ramadan. They reside in both the United States and Egypt.