Who Was the Researcher of the Desert?
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Welcome. In the early twentieth century, readers in Egypt began to notice articles signed with a mysterious name. Bahithat al-Badiyah. The Researcher of the Desert.
The articles were sharp, thoughtful, and brave. They spoke about marriage, about education, about the lives of women, about the duties of men. And they were written with deep respect for Islam.
The writer behind the pen-name was a young woman named Malak Hifni Nasif.
She was born in Cairo in 1886. Her father, Hifni Nasif, was a respected scholar, a judge, and a poet, who believed in educating his daughter. She became one of the first Egyptian girls to complete a teacher’s diploma, and she worked as a teacher before she married.
After her marriage, she moved to the desert region near Fayyum, where her husband lived. That is where her pen-name came from. Far from the city, living among the Bedouin, she observed, reflected, and wrote.
Her essays were collected in a book called al-Nisa’iyyat. Women’s Essays. And in it, a Muslim woman speaks about her society with honesty, courage, and faith.
