Yusuf An-Nabhani - Biography

Biography

Many of Shaykh Yusuf al-Nabahani's poems, books, and teachings have remained, but very little is printed about his personal life, and activities. What is known is that he worked and campaigned against the Wahhabi movement and the reformers in Cairo like Muhammad Abduh and al-Afghani who were changing Sunni Islam. Yusuf was a firm believer in the law, or Shariah in restricting all Sufi activity, being of the Shafi madhab or thought of Sunni Islam holding a similar stance to al-Ghazali in his later years on Sufism.

His father Shaykh Ismail al-Nabhani taught him to memorise the whole Quran at a very young age, taught him the sciences of Islamic jurisprudence and then sent Yusuf to begin study at the university of al-Azhar Cairo on the 16th May 1866 at the age of 17. Yusuf graduated from Al-Azhar in October 1872 at the age of 23 with qualifications from the official cirriculem of al-Azhar and many other qualifications obtained from extra study under multiple Islamic scholars in many of the sciences of the Shariah and its preparatory disciplines.

After he graduated and returned home to Ijzim, he began to hold a number of religious courses in `Akka and his home town of Ijzim. He travelled frequently to Beirut, then Damascus where he met eminent Ulema or Islamic Scholars. Chief among them was the Chief Jurist of Damascus at the time, Shaykh Mahmud Effendi Hamza with whom he studied the beginning of al-Bukhari, after which he gave Yusuf a general certificate Ijaza comprising the rest of the Hadith Collections.

Then he headed for Istanbul the capital of the Ottoman Caliphate twice and worked there for several years. He edited the periodical al-Jawâ'ib until it folded. He also proofread the Arabic books that came out of its press. He left the publishers for a new position with the Ottoman Caliphate's government as a judge or Qadi.

He left Istanbul, the first time, for Iraq, to the province of Mosul, then returned to Constantinople. He left a second time in 1300 Hijri when he was appointed Chief Justice of the al-Jaza court in Latakia on the Syro-Palestinian sea-shore. After living there for five years the Ottoman government transferred him to be the grand Mufti, or Chief Justice of al-Quds or Jerusalem. Then he moved to be Chief Justice of Beirut in 1888, although some records point to 1887.

The son of his daughter, Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, was sent by Yusuf to Yusuf's Islamic colleagues & teachers in Cairo at the Al-Azhar university. Taqiuddin later went on to establish the Islamic political group Hizb ut-Tahrir.