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. Possessor 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.