| Sheikh Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur الشيخ عبد الرحمن نور |
|
|---|---|
| Born | Borama, Somalia |
| Nationality | Somali |
| Ethnicity | Somali |
| Occupation | Teacher, judge |
| Children | Six sons, four daughters |
Sheikh Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur (Somali: Abduuraxmaan Sheekh Nuur, Arabic: الشيخ عبد الرحمن نور) was a Somali religious leader and the inventor of the Borama script for the Somali language.
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Nuur was born in Borama, Somalia to a Gadabuursi Dir family. He had six sons and four daughters who live throughout the world, mainly in the UK but also in Norway, Sweden, Canada and Somalia. He was a Qur'anic teacher in the British Somaliland protectorate, and the son of the local qadi (judge) of Borama. Sheikh Nuur would later follow in his father's footsteps by also becoming a qadi of the entire northern British Somaliland region, after having worked as a religions teacher at the Education Department for a number of years.
In 1933, Sheikh 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".