Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn al-Alūsī (1836–99), the precursor of the modernist Salafī trend in late Ottoman Iraq, was born into one of the pre-eminent families of ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars) in late Ottoman Baghdad. He was son of Abū l-Thanāʾ Shihāb al-Dīn al-Alūsī (d. 1854), Ḥanafī muftī of the city between 1835 and 1847, who, in his final years, disclosed his inclination towards the Wahhābī-Salafī school. Nuʿmān’s main teachers were his father and the latter’s student and close associate Muḥammad Amīn al-Wāʿīẓ (d. 1858), a distinguished preach…