Abu Nu'aym Ridwan

Abu Nu'aym Ridwan (or Abu al-Nu'aym Ridwan) was a minister and military commander in the Emirate of Granada. Born a Christian with Castilian and Catalan origin, he was captured as a child in Calatrava and brought as a slave to the palace. He converted to Islam and rose through the ranks during the reign of Ismail I (r. 1314–1325), eventually appointed as a tutor to the sultan's son Muhammad. When the latter became Sultan Muhammad IV at the age of ten, Ridwan remained in charge of him and acted as a sort of regent together with the Sultan's grandmother Fatima bint al-Ahmar. Muhammad appointed him as the hajib in 1329, making him the highest-ranking minister at court. He remained in this position during the reign of Muhammad's successor Yusuf I and the first reign (1354–1359) of Muhammad V, except for a brief pause during Yusuf's rule. He was killed during a coup that deposed Muhammad V in 1359.

References

• Arié, Rachel (1973). L'Espagne musulmane au temps des Nasrides (1232–1492) (in French). Paris: E. de Boccard. OCLC 3207329.
• Catlos, Brian A. (July 2018). Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain. London: C. Hurst & Co. ISBN 978-1787380035.
• Fernández-Puertas, Antonio (1997). "The Three Great Sultans of al-Dawla al-Ismā'īliyya al-Naṣriyya Who Built the Fourteenth-Century Alhambra: Ismā'īl I, Yūsuf I, Muḥammad V (713–793/1314–1391)". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Third Series. 7 (1). London: 1–25. doi:10.1017/S1356186300008294. JSTOR 25183293.
• Rubiera Mata, María Jesús (1996). "La princesa Fátima Bint Al-Ahmar, la "María de Molina" de la dinastía Nazarí de Granada". Medievalismo (in Spanish). 6. Murcia and Madrid: Universidad de Murcia and Sociedad Española de Estudios Medievales: 183–189. ISSN 1131-8155. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-07-13.
• Vidal Castro, Francisco. "Ismail II". Diccionario Biográfico electrónico (in Spanish). Real Academia de la Historia.