Shibli Nomani

Shibli Nomani
Born	(1857-06-04)4 June 1857
Died	18 November 1914(1914-11-18) (aged 57)
Era	Modern era
Region	British India
School	Sunni Hanafi (Deobandi)
Main interests	Muslim scholar and writer
Notable ideas	Sirat-un-Nabi
Influences Shah Waliullah, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Thomas Arnold
Influenced Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, Maulana Abdus Salam Nadvi , Hameeduddin Farahi, Amin Ahsan Islahi, Sajjad Ahmad Yeldram, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jauhar

Shibli Nomani (Urdu: علامہ شبلی نعمانی‎ – ʿAllāmah Šiblī Noʿmānī; 3 June 1857 – 18 November 1914, Azamgarh district) was an Islamic scholar from the Indian subcontinent during British Raj. He was born at Bindwal in Azamgarh district of present-day Uttar Pradesh. He is known for the founding the Shibli National College in 1883 and the Darul Mussanifin (House of Writers) in Azamgarh. Shibli was a versatile scholar in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu. He was also a poet. He collected much material on the life of the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad but could write only first two volumes of the planned work the Sirat-un-Nabi. His disciple, Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, made use of this material and added to it and also wrote remaining five volumes of the work, the Sirat-un-Nabi after the death of his mentor.

He was born to Shaikh Habibullah and Moqeema Khatoon. Although his younger brothers went to London, England for education and later returned as barristers, employed at Allahabad High Court, Shibli received a traditional Islamic education. Shibli Nomani was a 'Muslim Rajput' from the Azamgarh district in the then United Provinces province of British India, now called Uttar Pradesh in modern India. "This aspect of Shibli's background perhaps explains his ambivalent relationship with Aligarh and Sir Syed." His teacher, in his early life, was Maulana Muhammad Farooq Chirayakoti, a rationalist scholar. Shibli went to Makkah for the Hajj and there, he devoted his time to furthering his studies in Islamic theology, history, philosophy and Sufism from different scholars in Arabia. Due to these two opposite influences in the younger years of his life, "Shibli, therefore, had reasons to be both attracted and repelled by Aligarh."