Gamal Abdel Nasser - Death and Funeral

Death and Funeral

On 28 September 1970, at the conclusion of the summit and hours after escorting Emir Sabah III of Kuwait, the last Arab leader to depart, Nasser suffered a heart attack. He was immediately transported to his house and was pronounced dead soon after. His wife Tahia, Heikal and Sadat were present, the last reading the Qur'an at his deathbed. Following the announcement of Nasser's death, Egypt and the Arab world were in a state of shock. It was not publicly known at the time that he had previously suffered two heart attacks. According to his doctor al-Sawi Habibi, Nasser's likely cause of death was arteriosclerosis, varicose veins, and complications from long standing diabetes. Nasser was a heavy smoker and there was also a history of heart disease in his family; two of his brothers died in their fifties from the same condition.

His funeral procession through Cairo, on 1 October, was attended by at least five million mourners. The 10-kilometre (6.2 mi) procession to his burial site began at the RCC headquarters with MiG-21 jet fighters flying overhead. His flag-draped coffin was attached to a gun carriage pulled by six horses and led by a column of cavalrymen. All Arab heads of state attended. King Hussein of Jordan and PLO leader Yasser Arafat cried openly while Muammar Gaddafi of Libya reportedly fainted twice. Although no major Western dignitaries were present, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin attended. Almost immediately after the procession began, mourners had engulfed Nasser's coffin shouting "There is no God but Allah, and Nasser is God's beloved... Each of us is Nasser." Police unsuccessfully attempted to quell the crowds and as a result, most of the foreign dignitaries surrounding his coffin—including Kosygin, Hussein, French premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas, and Haile Selassie of Ethiopia—were evacuated. The final destination was the Nasr Mosque, which was afterwards renamed Abdel Nasser Mosque, where Nasser was buried.

Because of his ability to motivate nationalistic passions, "men, women and children wept and wailed in the streets" after hearing of his death. The general Arab reaction was one of mourning, with thousands of people pouring onto the streets of major cities throughout the Arab world. Over a dozen people were killed in Beirut as a result of the chaos and in Jerusalem, roughly 75,000 Arabs marched through the Old City chanting "Nasser will never die." As a testament to his unchallenged leadership of the Arab people, following his death, a Beirut-based newspaper stated, "One hundred million human beings—the Arabs—are orphans." Sherrif Hatatta, an Egyptian political activist who was imprisoned by Nasser for four years, claimed that "Nasser's greatest achievement was his funeral. The world will never again see five million people crying together."