Ahmad Muhammad Numan

Ahmad Muhammad Numan (أحمد محمد نعمان; 26 April 1909 – 27 September 1996) was a Yemeni educator, propagandist and politician.

He was one of the main progenitors of modern Yemeni nationalism.

Numan was the founder of the Free Yemeni Movement and a propagandist in Cairo for the Yemeni Unionists, and served once as foreign minister and twice as prime minister of the Yemen Arab Republic.

Numan was a descendant of a family of important shaykhs in al-Hujariyya, a province in the southern highlands southeast of the department of Ta'izz.

Numan's uncle, Abd al-Wahhab Numan, was the Ottoman-appointed hakim (governor) of the region.

The Numans were Sunni, specifically Shafi'i.

Numan's father was a farmer.

Numan was educated in the traditional Islamic kuttab elementary school.

He spent seven years at the University of Zabid.

In the mid-1930s, Numan met Muhammad Ahmad al-Haydara, who had studied abroad and had been exposed to subjects beyond Numan's limited Islamic education.

The two began a school in Dubhan, al-Madrassa al-Ahliyya, specifically for young teenage boys.

The school became famous for teaching geography, arithmetic and modern sciences.

The school also soon became a local center for the discussion of current events.

Much of the material came from books and newspapers sdupplied by Numan's Brother Ali, who worked in Aden.

The regulars who attended the discussions came to be known as Nadi a-Islah (the "Reform Group").

Unlike reform-minded intellectuals in the capital of Sana'a, the Dubhan group was made up of peasant farmers.

Numan's school attracted notice.

After his father's death in 1934, Numan assumed the role of head of household, in which capacity he gained the respect of fellow villagers and came into contact with local officials.

Arslan's interest in the Yemen went back to his attempted mediation of the Saudi-Yemen war of 1934.

In 1935, Ahmad al Muta, then an examination inspector for the Ministry of Education, met Numan.

Al-Muta was an outspoken advocate for reform, for which he was removed from the Army and as editor of the Imam's official newspaper.

After the Imam's defeat in the border war with Saudi Arabia al-Muta had formed the secret Hay'at al Nidal (the Committee of the Struggle") to resist a conservative backlash. Al-Muta tried to attach Numan's groups to that organization.

In 1936 the Imam dispatched his son Sayf al-Islam Qasim to visit the school.

Accompanying him were the Governor of Ta'izz Sayyid Ali al-Wazir and the poet Muhammad al-Zubayri.

The report must have pleased the Imam inasmuch as he recommended it to an Egyptian education delegation.

Complaints from conservatives, however, led to the appointment of a traditional instructor to teach Zaidi doctrines.

And when the Imam's secret police discovered the Hay'at al Nidal and arrested al-Muta, Numan was placed under house arrest in Ta'izz.

On release from arrest, Numan travelled to Cairo.

He later said that while under arrest he developed his ambition to be a political leader.

He left Dhjubhan in 1937 and travelled to Cairo by way of Lahej and Aden.

Numan's original goal was to attend King Fuad I University but was refused admission because he lacked qualifications in modern subjects.

Instead Numan reluctantly attended al-Azhar University, which he feared would simply duplicate the Islamic education he received at Zabid.

Instead, he encountered modern Arab political thought.

The university was a center of Muslim Brotherhood activity, who were particularly interested in Yemen, owing to its isolation, as a suitable test for governance according to shari'a.

At al-Azhar Numan made the acquaintance of Ali al-Tahir, a Palestinian newspaper publisher in Cairo.

It was through al-Tahir that Numan met Shakib Arslan.

Arslan soon took Numan under his wing.

His first contribution was an introduction to The Journey of H.H. Prince Sayf al-Islam the Great Crown Prince of Yemen by Sayyid Husayn al-Yamani in 1937.

At the time he was shocked by the backwardness of Yemen, and persuaded the Imam to employ advisers (from the same Lebanese Druze community that he came from. For similar reasons he hired Numan as his secretary in 1939.

While working for Arslan and writing for al-'Alam, Numan also wrote pamphlets.