Title Businessman | ||
Occupation teacher, judge, qadi, sheikh, author, historian, inventor and poet | ||
Sheikh 'Abdurahman Sheikh Nur or also known as Sheikh 'Abdurahman Sh. Nur (Somali: Sheekh Cabdiraxmaan Sheekh Nuur, Arabic: الشيخ عبد الرحمن الشيخ نور) was a Somali Sheikh (religious leader), qādi (judge) of the government at that time and the inventor of the Borama script for the Somali language.
Biography
Sheikh 'Abdurahman Sheikh grew up in Borama, Somalia , he was of the royal lineage (rer ughaz) of the Gadabuursi clan family. Growing up he was a Qur'anic teacher in the British Somaliland protectorate. His father Sheikh Nur was a well-known and notable figure and was a qādi for many years. He was a learned or knowledgeable man, in particular when it came to the history of his own clan, the Gadabuursi. Sheikh 'Abdurahman would later follow in his father's footsteps by also becoming a qādi, albeit of the entire northern British Somaliland region.
In 1933, Nuur devised a quite phonetically accurate new orthography for transcribing the Somali language. While the script enjoyed considerable currency in his hometown, the Sheikh harbored no illusions as to its widespread adoption, writing in a publication of his wherein he employed the script itself that "I publish it here with no intention of attempting to contribute to the already abundant confusion in the choice of a standard orthography for Somali".