Ahlam al-Nasr (Arabic:أحلام النصر) is aSyrianArabic poet, and is known as "thePoetess of theIslamic State".[1] Her first book of poetry,The Blaze of Truth, was published in 2014 and consists of 107 poems written inmonorhyme.[1] She is considered one of the Islamic State's most famous propagandists and gives detailed defenses of terrorist acts.[2]
She comes fromDamascus and is in her early 20s. She was raised inSaudi Arabia where she attended a private school inal-Khobar. Her mother has written that al-Nasr “was born with a dictionary in her mouth.” After theSyrian civil war began, she left Syria to one of theGulf states but returned in 2014, arriving in Raqqa.[1]
On October 11, 2014, she was married in the courthouse ofRaqqa, Syria toMohamed Mahmoud, known as Abu Usama al-Gharib, an Austrian Vienna-born preacher.[3]
According toCole Bunzel, aPh.D. candidate in Near Eastern Studies atPrinceton University, many of her poems are published weekly by the al-Sumud Media Foundation.[4]
Her grandfather isMustafa al-Bugha, the Syrian imam renowned for his public support ofBashar al-Assad. Her mother is Dr.Iman Mustafa al-Bugha, a university professor offiqh at theUniversity of Dammam,Saudi Arabia. She was the one who encouraged her daughter to learn poetry from an early age. Her brother is also believed to be with her in Syria.[5][6]