Hamza Namira

Hamza Namira (born 1980) is an Egyptian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who released three albums with Awakening — 'Dream With Me', 'Insan' and 'Esmaani' — and then 'Hateer Min Tany' and 'Mawlood Sanat 80' on his own label; he has also composed for others, including Maher Zain's 'Ya Nabi Salam Alayka'. ^{1 2}

He was born at Diriyah in Saudi Arabia, as he himself corrected in a post of March 2022, and grew up and went to school in Riyadh. He took up the guitar, keyboard and oud at seventeen, played from 1999 to 2004 in the band of the Alexandrian artist Nabil Bakly, whom he calls his main influence, formed his own band 'Nomaira', and graduated in commerce from Alexandria University in 2003. ¹

His songs mostly address broad human themes — hope, alienation, generational change and oppression — and he is drawn to reviving heritage; after his first album one critic called him 'the new Sayed Darwish'. His second album, 'Insan', came out in July 2011 in the Arab Spring, when he was dubbed 'the voice of the revolution', and 'Dari Ya Alby' topped the SoundCloud chart for almost a month. ¹

His religious pieces include 'Ya Rabb', 'Ala Bab Allah' and the 2015 EP 'El Mesaharaty', with 'Nabina', 'Taraweeh', 'Khatma', 'Istighfar' and 'Leilet al-Qadr'. In 2016 he launched 'Remix' on Al Araby, a weekly series that traces a folk or popular work to its origin and then performs it as a fusion; one episode reworks the Tunisian Sufi Burda. ¹

In November 2014 Egyptian state radio banned his songs, according to the BBC for 'criticising the authorities'; he said he expresses his opinions under rights the constitution guarantees and does not see himself as an activist or a politician, and in an interview with Youm7 denied belonging to any organisation. He returned to Egypt and resumed concerts in September 2022. ¹

He has taken part in charity work, including a UK tour with Human Appeal to fund medical equipment for Egypt and the 2019 song 'Hekayet Tefl' with United Muslim Relief for the children of Syrian refugees in Jordan. ¹

Wikidata listed articles on him in nineteen Wikipedia editions on 6 November 2026, among them Arabic, English, Indonesian, Malay, Turkish, Persian, Bengali, Swahili and Italian. ²

• English Wikipedia article, revision of 1 May 2026. ¹

• Wikidata item Q1103528. ²