Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the world's leading experts on
Islamic science and spirituality, is University Professor of Islamic
Studies at George Washington University. Professor Nasr is the authour of
numerous books including Man and Nature: the Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man
(Kazi Publications, 1998), Religion and the Order of Nature (Oxford, 1996)
and Knowledge and the Sacred (SUNY, 1989).

Introduction
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, currently University Professor of Islamic Studies at
the George Washington University, Washington D.C. is one of the most
important and foremost scholars of Islamic, Religious and Comparative
Studies in the world today. Author of over fifty books and five hundred
articles which have been translated into several major Islamic, European
and Asian languages, Professor Nasr is a well known and highly respected
intellectual figure both in the West and the Islamic world.

An eloquent
speaker with a charismatic presence, Nasr is a much sought after speaker at
academic conferences and seminars, university and public lectures and also
radio and television programs in his area of expertise. Possesor of an
impressive academic and intellectual record, his career as a teacher and
scholar spans over four decades.Born in 1933, Professor Nasr began his illustrious teaching career in 1955
when he was still a young and promising, doctoral student at Harvard
University. Over the years, he has taught and trained an innumerable number
of students who have come from the different parts of the world, and many
of whom have become important and prominent scholars in their fields of
study.

He has trained different generations of students over the years since 1958
when he was a professor at Tehran University and then, in America since the
Iranian revolution in 1979, specifically at Temple University in
Philadelphia from 1979 to 1984 and at the George Washington University
since 1984 to the present day. The range of subjects and areas of study
which Professor Nasr has involved and engaged himself with in his academic
career and intellectual life are immense. As demonstrated by his numerous
writings, lectures and speeches, Professor Nasr speaks and writes with
great authority on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from philosophy to
religion to spirituality, to music and art and architecture, to science and
literature, to civilizational dialogues and the natural environment.For Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the quest for knowledge, specifically
knowledge which enables man to understand the true nature of things and
which furthermore, "liberates and delivers him from the fetters and
limitations of earthly existence," has been and continues to be the central
concern and determinant of his intellectual life.

Brief Biography
Seyyed Hossein Nasr was born on April 7, 1933 (19 Farvadin 1312 A.H. solar)
in Tehran into a family of distinguished scholars and physicians. His
father, Seyyed Valiallah, a man of great learning and piety, was a
physician to the Iranian royal family, as was his father before him. The
name "Nasr" which means `"victory" comes from the title "na~r al-aibb
(Victory of Physicians) which was conferred on Professor Nasrs grandfather
by the King of Persia. Nasr also comes from a family of Sufis.

One of his
ancestors was Mulla Seyyed Muhammad Taqi Poshtmashhad, who was a famous
saint of Kashan, and his mausoleum which is located next to the tomb of the
Safavid king Shah Abbis,is still visited by pilgrims to this day.As a young boy, Nasr attended one of the schools near his home. His early
formal education included the usual Persian curriculum at school with an
extra concentration in Islamic and Persian subjects at home, as well as
tutorial in French. However for Nasr, it was the long hours of discussion
with his father, mostly on philosophical and theological issues,
complemented by both reading and reaction to the discourses carried on by
those who came to his fathers house, that constituted an essential aspect
of his early education and which in many ways set the pattern and tone of
his intellectual development. This was the situation for the first twelve
years of Nasrs life.

Nasrs arrival in America at the young age of twelve marked the beginning
of a new period in his life which was totally different and therefore,
discontinuous from his early life in Iran. He attended The Peddie School in
Highstown, New Jersey and in 1950 graduated as the valedictorian of his
class and also winner of the Wyclifte Award which was the schools highest
honor given to the most outstanding all-round student. It was during the
four years at Peddie that Nasr acquired his knowledge of the English
language, as well as studying the sciences, American