This Wednesday (27), your ANBA Bulletin regretfully announces the passing of professor Helmi Mohammed Ibrahim Nasr, former Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce International Relations vice president and a pioneer in the teaching of Arabic at the University of São Paulo (USP). He died last Sunday (24) in Cairo, Egypt at age 97.
Nasr was born March 22, 1922 in Mansoura, in North Egypt’s Nile Delta area. After studying Arabic Literature at Cairo University and completing postgraduate studies at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, he arrived in Brazil in 1962 to teach at the USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences (FFLCH). He’d come to spend a year. He spent 53 instead.
The 1970s saw the professor join the Arab Chamber. He sat on the board during multiple administrations and was one of the driving forces behind the organization’s being recognized by the Union of Arab Chambers and the Arab League, in 1992.
Nasr published several educational and academic works and translations, the best known of which is a bilingual edition of the Koran, the holy book of Islam. The Arabic-Portuguese version was printed in 2005 at the King Fahd Complex in Medina, Saudi Arabia, and distribution in Brazil was handled by the Arab Chamber. That same year, he released an Arabic-Portuguese Dictionary, on occasion of the 1st Summit of South America-Arab Countries (ASPA), in Brasília.
In 2015, the professor – who’d become a widow seven years prior – decided to retire from the public eye and go back to Egypt to be closer to his family. “I feel lonely,” Nasr told ANBA back then. “I’ve completed my mission. I’ll live my last days at peace,” he said. He is survived by his son, the Cairo-based cardiologist Mohamed Nasr, and by two granddaughters, five great-grandsons, a brother, and nephews.
