Allamah Shibli Nomani ( علامہ– ; 3 June 1857 – 18 November 1914) was an Islamic scholar from the Indian subcontinent during the British Raj. He was born at Bindwal in Azamgarh district of present-day Uttar Pradesh. He is known for the founding of the Shibli National College in 1883 and the Darul Mussanifin (House of Writers) in Azamgarh. As a supporter of the Deobandi school, he favoured the inclusion of English Language and European sciences in the system of education. Nomani was a scholar in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu. He was also a poet. He collected much material on the life of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad, but could write only the first two volumes of the planned work the Sirat-un-Nabi. His disciple, 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. Early life Nomani was born 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 Maulana Muhammad Farooq Chirayakoti, a rationalist scholar who was an outspoken opponent of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. This aspect of Nomani’s background perhaps explains his ambivalent relationship with Aligarh and Sir Syed. The Chirayakot connection is significant. David Lelyveld notes that Chirayakot was the center of ‘a uniquely rationalist and eclectic school of ulema’, who studied Mu’tazalite theology, the early Arab development of Greek science and philosophy, as well as such languages as Sanskrit and Hebrew. 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