Biography
Born in North Africa, he converted to Isma'ili Islam and began his career in Ifriqiya (modern-day Tunisia, western Libya and eastern Algeria) under the first caliph, al-Mahdi Billah (r. 909-934 CE/ 297-322 AH), quickly rising to become the most prominent judge (qadi) of the Fatimid state. During his lifetime, he served four Fatimid Caliphs:
- al-Mahdi Billah
- Muhammad al-Qa'im Bi-Amrillah
- Ismail al-Mansur
- Al-Muizz Lideenillah
In his fifty years of service to the Fatimids, he wrote a vast number of books under the encouragement of the caliphs on history, biography, jurisprudence (fiqh) and the interpretation of scripture (ta'wil). After the Fatimid conquest of Egypt and Syria, al-Nu'man left Ifriqiya and travelled to the newly-founded city of al-Qahira (Cairo) where he died in 974 CE/ 363 AH.
Read more about this topic: Qadi Al-Nu'man
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“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
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“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
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