Early life Nomani was born on 4 June 1857 in Bindwal near Azamgarh into a
Muslim Rajput family, his ancestor Sheoraj Singh being a
Bais who accepted Islam many generations ago, to Habibullah and Moqeema Khatoon. He was named after
Abu Bakr al-Shibli who was a
Sufi saint and a disciple of
Junayd Baghdadi. Later in life, he added "Nomani" to his name. Although his younger brothers went to
London,
England for education (and later returned, one as a barrister employed at
Allahabad High Court), Nomani received a traditional Islamic education. His teacher was Muhammad Farooq Chirayakoti, a rationalist scholar. Nomani therefore had reasons to be both attracted and repelled by Aligarh. Even after he had secured a post as a teacher of Persian and Arabic at Aligarh, he always found the intellectual atmosphere at the college disappointing, and eventually left Aligarh because he found it uncongenial, although he did not officially resign from the college until after Sir Syed’s death in 1898.
In the Middle East He taught Persian and Arabic languages at Aligarh for sixteen years, where he met
Thomas Arnold and other British scholars from whom he learned first-hand modern Western ideas and thoughts. He travelled with
Thomas Arnold in 1892 to the
Ottoman Empire including
Syria, Turkey and
Egypt and other locations in the Middle East and got direct and practical experience of their societies. In Istanbul, he received a medal from
Sultan Abdul Hamid II. His scholarship influenced Thomas Arnold on one hand, and on the other he was influenced by Arnold to a great extent, and this explains the modern touch in his ideas. In
Cairo, he met noted Islamic scholar
Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905).
In Hyderabad and Lucknow After the death of Sir Syed Ahmed in 1898, he left
Aligarh University and became an advisor in the Education Department of
Hyderabad State. He initiated many reforms in the Hyderabad education system. From his policy, the
Osmania University of Hyderabad adopted
Urdu as the medium of instruction. Before that, no other university of India had adopted any vernacular language as the medium of instruction in higher studies. In 1905, he left
Hyderabad and went to
Lucknow as principal and driving force of the
Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama, a madrasa founded by the
Nadwatul Ulama. He introduced reforms in the school's teaching and curriculum. He stayed at the school for five years, but the orthodox class of scholars became hostile towards him, and he had to leave Lucknow to settle in the area around his hometown,
Azamgarh in 1913.
Death In August 1914 he went to
Allahabad on the news of his elder brother's illness. Two weeks later his brother died. He then moved to
Azamgarh. There he developed the basic concept of Darul Musannifin. He died on 18 November 1914. == Ideology==