Abdullah Shams El-Din

Abdalla Shams El-Din was an Egyptian lyric poet, born in Cairo in 1921. He memorised the Qur'an as a boy and studied at al-Azhar, then served as cultural adviser to the Supreme Council for Muslim Youth, moving in Egypt's youth and cultural circles. He was known by the nickname "Poet of Tawhid" for the Islamic themes that run through his verse ^{1 2}.

He founded and led poetry forums including "Poets of Arabism" and "Poets of Islam", holding gatherings that brought together poets from across the Arab world, and he represented Egypt at poetry festivals in several countries, among them Syria, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Sudan and Indonesia ¹.

His best-known work is the anthem he wrote in 1956, during the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt, set to music by Mahmoud El-Sharif and opening with the words "Allah Akbar fawqa kayd al-mu'tadi" ("God is greatest, above the scheming of the aggressor"). The anthem spread across the Arab world, and Libya later adopted it as its national anthem; it remained the country's official anthem from 1969 to 2011 ¹.

Shams El-Din wrote heroic, devotional, social and love poetry, with Islamic and Sufi poetry taking a large share of his output. In his lifetime he published the collections Asda' al-Hurriyya (Echoes of Freedom, 1954), Allah Akbar and Hayy min al-Nur, while his collection Nida' al-Ruh (Call of the Spirit) remained unprinted, alongside many poems never gathered into a book. Leading singers performed his poems, among them Karem Mahmoud, Mohamed Fawzi and Suad Mohamed, and the chanters Sayed El-Naqshbandi and Nasr El-Din Tobar performed some of them as religious chant ¹.

He received a number of decorations, among them the Order of the Republic, first class, awarded to him by President Gamal Abdel Nasser. He died in Cairo at dawn on 13 March 1977, shortly after returning from a youth conference in Libya ^{1 2}.