Free Officers, Egypt - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Gordon, Joel
Leiden
Brill
(730 words)
The Egyptian Free Officers (al-Ḍubbāṭ al-Aḥrār) was a secret organisation founded by Jamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣir (Gamal Abdel Nasser, 1918-70) and fellow junior officers in late 1949. They seized power in July 1952, setting in motion the abolition of the monarchy and the onset of a political and social revolution, albeit rooted in authoritarian rule. The system they founded, not without dramatic shifts in policy orientation and major domestic challenges, largely remained in place in the early twenty-first century. The future conspirators grew up in the