Revival From Below

by Brannon D Ingram

  9. Thus he dismisses ‘Izz al-Din ibn ‘Abd al-Salam’s (d. 1262) temporal conception of bid‘a as that which did not exist in the era of the Prophet, and thus his projection, accordingly, of bid‘a onto to the five Shari‘a ahkam: obligatory (wajib) bid‘a—e.g., the development of Qur’anic grammar; forbidden (muharram) bid‘a—e.g., various “invented practices opposed to the Shari‘a;” recommended (mandub) bid‘a—e.g., the supererogatory prayers prayed during Ramadan (known as tarawih); the reprehensible (makruh) bid‘a—e.g., altering the prescribed number of times “praise God” (subhan Allah) is uttered during Salat; and permissible (mubah) bid‘a—which would subsume anything that did not fall under the other four. Shatibi regards this typology as conceptually flawed, having what came after the Prophet as the sole criterion of its enumeration, completely misunderstanding the nature of bid‘a as an invented matter in religion that emulates religion. See Shatibi, Al-I‘tisam, 246–50. See also Raquel Margalit Ukeles’s discussion of Shatibi’s critique of ‘Izz al-Din in her “Innovation or Deviation: Exploring the Boundaries of Islamic Devotional Law” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2006), 186–90.

  10. Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 146. See also Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri’s similar discussion of bid‘a hasana in Al-Barahin al-qati‘a ‘ala dhalam al-anwar al-sati‘a (Deoband: Kutub Khana-yi Imdadiyya, n.d.), 35. I discuss this text further in the following chapter.

  11. Mufti Muhammad Shafi‘, Sunnat o bid‘at (Lahore: Maktaba-yi Khalil, n.d.), 14.

  12. Shatibi, Al-I‘tisam, 31.

  13. Ukeles, “Innovation or Deviation,” 194.

  14. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Al-Kalam al-hasan, ed. Mufti Muhammad Hasan (Lahore: Al-Maktaba al-Ashrafiyya, n.d.), 61–62.

  15. “Barelvi” signifies Sayyid Ahmad’s place of origin—Rai Bareilly—and has no relation at all with the Barelvi movement, Deoband’s principal competition in the South Asian context.

  16. Some historians have read Sayyid Ahmad’s movement in terms of the social history of early-nineteenth-century India, seeing Sayyid Ahmad as a Sunni sayyid responding to the rise of Awadh-based Shi‘ism, e.g. Juan Cole, Roots of North Indian Shi’ism in Iran and Iraq: Religion and State in Awadh, 1722–1859 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 234–40.

  17. Muhammad Hedayetullah, Sayyid Ahmad: A Study of the Religious Reform Movement of Sayyid Ahmad of Ra’e Bareli (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1970), 44, 115–18.

  18. Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival, 40.

  19. After the defeat at Balakot, some of Sayyid Ahmad’s followers regrouped and continued to fight. The movement largely shifted to Patna, where their activities were the basis of emergent British anxieties about so-called Wahhabis in India. See Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival, 42–43; and Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi: Liberalism and the Muslim Fanatic in Mid-Victorian India,” Modern Asian Studies 47, no. 1 (2013): 22–52.

  20. Marc Gaborieau, “Late Persian, Early Urdu: The Case of ‘Wahhabi’ Literature (1818–1857),” in Confluence of Cultures: French Contributions to Indo-Persian Studies, ed. Françoise “Nalini” Delvoye (New Delhi: Manohar, 1994), 170–91.

  21. Muhammad Isma‘il, Taqwiyyat al-iman ma‘ tazkir al-ikhwan (Deoband: Dar al-Kitab Deoband, 1997), 16.

  22. As late as 1990, Muhammad ‘Ashiq Ilahi’s preface to Mahmud Hasan Gangohi’s Hudud-i ikhtilaf, which will be discussed in subsequent chapters, casts the book as one in “simple and easy language” (zaban-i salis aur sadah) that is “beneficial to elite and commoner alike” (khass o ‘amm ke liye mufid). Mahmud Hasan Gangohi, Hudud-i ikhtilaf, ed. Muhammad Faruq Mirathi (Meerut, India: Maktaba-yi Mahmudiyya, 1991), 14.

  23. Gaborieau, “Late Persian, Early Urdu,” 177.

  24. See, e.g., Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi’s typology of shirk in Ta‘lim al-din: “associating God with any other entity in knowledge” (ishrak fi-l ‘ilm), in other words, ascribing certain forms of superhuman knowledge to any entity other than God; “associating God with any other entity in power” (ishrak fi-l tasarruf), ascribing certain powers (such as the ability to fulfill a wish) to any entity other than God; “associating God with any other entity in worship” (ishrak fi-l ‘ibadat), engaging in any normative actions (such as prostrating, circumambulating, or sacrificing) toward or on behalf of any entity other than God; and, finally, “associating God with any other entity in habit or custom” (ishrak fi-l ‘adah), maintaining customs or habits that acquire such a normativity in and of themselves (such as believing certain dates to be auspicious, or giving children auspicious names, etc.) that they compete with the normativity of the religion. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, “Ta‘lim al-din,” 12–14, an essay compiled in Islahi nisab: Tashih-i ‘aqa’id o a‘mal, tahzib o tamaddun-i Islami (Lahore: Maktaba-yi Rashidiyya, 1977). (Each essay in Islahi nisab has its own separate pagination.) Another comparable typology is found in Muhammad Kifayat Allah’s Ta‘lim al-Islam, which includes shirk in power (qudrat), in knowledge, in “hearing and seeing” (sama‘ o basirat), in sovereignty (hukm), and in worship. See Muhammad Kifayat Allah, Ta‘lim al-Islam (Delhi: Kutub Khana-yi ‘Aziziyya, n. d.), 4:20–21.

  25. Isma‘il, Taqwiyyat al-iman, 19.

  26. Muhammad Manzur Nu‘mani, Din o shari‘at (Lahore: Idara-yi Islamiyat, 1995), 46–47.

  27. Muhammad Isma‘il, Izah al-haqq fi ahkam al-mayyit wa al-darih (Delhi: Kutub Khana-yi Ashrafiyya, 1937), 6.

  28. Ibid., 99 (emphasis added).

  29. Ibid., 13–15.

  30. The distinction is derived from Qur’an 3:7: “It is He that has sent the Book down to you, which contains clear verses [muhkamat], which are the foundation of the Book, and others about which there is doubt [mutashabihat].” For interpretations of this verse, see Stefan Wild, “The Self-Referentiality of the Qur’an: Sura 3:7 as an Exegetical Challenge,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Barry D. Walfish, and Joseph W. Goering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

  31. Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlavi, Shari‘at o tariqat ka talazum (Karachi: Maktaba al-Shaykh, 1993), 9.

  32. On Muhammad Isma‘il and the Ahl-i Hadith, see Martin Riexinger, “Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview and the Challenge of Modernity: A Conflict among the Ahl-i Hadith in British India,” in Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, ed. Birgit Krazietz and Georges Tamer (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 497–99.

  33. Isma‘il, Taqwiyyat al-iman, 42.

  34. Ibid., 43.

  35. This will of course remind many readers of Carl Schmitt’s famous definition of the sovereign. For an excellent use of Schmitt to analyze Muhammad Isma‘il, see SherAli Tareen, “Competing Political Theologies: Intra-Muslim Polemics of the Limits of Prophetic Intercession,” Political Theology 12, no. 3 (2011): 418–43.

  36. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “The Sovereignty of God in Modern Islamic Thought,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 25, no. 3 (2015): 389–418, at 391–95.

  37. Isma‘il, Taqwiyyat al-iman, 55; Zaman, “The Sovereignty of God,” 391.

  38. Isma‘il, Taqwiyyat al-iman, 40.

  39. Ibid., 49. Cf. “O people! Fear this Lord of the Universe [malik al-mulk], a King of Kings [shahanshah] worthy of honor, whose power [taqat] is infinite and immeasurable!” (26).

  40. Khurram ‘Ali Bilhauri, Nasihat al-Muslimin (Lucknow: Dar al-Isha‘at Islamiyya, 1964), 11.

  41. Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 83.

  42. Ibid., 78.

  43. Ibid., 79.

  44. Fazl al-Haqq Khairabadi was, like Sayyid Ahmad and Muhammad Isma‘il, a disciple of Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. Khairabadi defended the notion of saintly intercession against Muhammad Isma‘il’s assertions that believing in intercession was tantamount to shirk. He also vilified Muhammad Isma‘il for his alleged slandering of the Prophet Muhammad. See Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 80–81; as well as Tareen, “Competing
Political Theologies,” 433–43.

  45. Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 113.

  46. Ibid., 61–62, 100–101, 103.

  47. Ibid., 84.

  48. Mirathi, Tazkirat al-Rashid, 1:122. Gangohi also recommended Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri’s Al-Barahin al-qati‘a, discussed below.

  49. Aviva Schussman, “The Legitimacy and Nature of Mawlud Al-Nabi (Analysis of a Fatwa),” Islamic Law and Society 5, no. 2 (1998): 214–34. The Azhar fatwa commended the practice as a natural expression of love for the Prophet Muhammad, provided it remained within a set of legal and performative restraints.

  50. On Internet debates about mawlud, see Jonas Svensson, “ITZ BIDAH BRO!!!! GT ME??—YouTube Mawlid and Voices of Praise and Blame,” in Muslims and the New Information and Communication Technologies, ed. Thomas Hoffmann and Göran Larsson (New York: Springer, 2013), 89–111.

  51. Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society, 74.

  52. Shah Wali Allah, Fuyuz al-haramayn (Deoband: Kutub Khana-yi Rahimiyya, n.d.), 27.

  53. Marion Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 12–15.

  54. Ibid., 5.

  55. Ibid., 76.

  56. Ibid., 130–31.

  57. N.J.G. Kaptein, Muhammad’s Birthday Festival: Early History in the Central Muslim Lands and Development in the Muslim West until the 10th/16th Century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993), 48–67.

  58. Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad, 171.

  59. Gangohi does not specify the “king” to whom he refers, but it is likely the Fatimid ruler al-Mu‘izz li-Din Allah (d. 975), credited with first celebrating the mawlud. Kaptein has some doubts about the historicity of this claim, but there is a general scholarly consensus that the Fatimids were the first to institute the mawlud as a state-sponsored event. Kaptein, Muhammad’s Birthday Festival, 20–21.

  60. Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 114.

  61. Ibid., 130.

  62. Mirathi, Tazkirat al-Rashid, 1:127–28.

  63. In addition, the Begum’s military secretary was one of Khalil Ahmad’s disciples. See Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Muslim Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 56–57. She was also a regular donor to the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband, contributing three thousand rupees annually. Rizvi, Tarikh-i Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband, 1:207.

  64. Qur’an 9:128. The full verse is “Certainly there has come to you a Messenger from among yourselves. Grievous to him is what you suffer. He is concerned for you and is kind and merciful to the believers.”

  65. This is a reference to Mufti Inayat Ahmad’s Tavarikh-i habib Allah (Deoband: Maktaba-yi Thanvi, n.d.). Mufti Inayat Ahmad (d. 1863) studied with Shah Muhammad Ishaq in Delhi and was exiled to the Andaman Islands for activities in the 1857 uprising. He established the Madrasa Faiz-i ‘Amm in Kanpur, where Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi would later teach. Interestingly, the introduction to Inayat Ahmad’s Bayan-i qadr-i shab-i barat identifies Inayat Ahmad as a proto-Barelvi. See Mufti Inayat Ahmad, Bayan-i qadr-i shab-i barat (Lahore: Markaz Isha‘at-i Navadir-i ‘Ulama-yi Ahl al-Sunnat, 2012), 3–4. Tavarikh-i habib Allah is read in Barelvi madrasas, including Jami‘a Ashrafiyya, Mubarakpur, “the leading Ahl-i Sunnat teaching institution in South Asia in the last twenty years,” according to Usha Sanyal. See Usha Sanyal, “Ahl-i Sunnat Madrasas: The Madrasa Manzar-i Islam, Bareilly, and Jamiat Ashrafiyya, Mubarakpur,” in Madrasas in South Asia: Teaching Terror?, ed. Jamal Malik (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008), 39, 42.

  66. Quoted in Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlavi, Tarikh-i mashaikh-i Chisht (Karachi: Maktaba al-Shaykh, 1976), 294–95. The same narrative is in Mirathi, Tazkirat al-Rashid, 2:284.

  67. Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri, ‘Aqa’id-i ‘ulama-yi Deoband aur ‘ulama-yi haramayn ka fatva (Delhi: Khwajah Barqi Press, n.d.), 24–25.

  68. See Moin Ahmad Nizami, Reform and Renewal in South Asian Islam: The Chishti-Sabiris in 18th–19th Century North India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017), 211–12. Al-Barahin al-qati‘a relied substantially on Gangohi’s thought (and incorporated some of Gangohi’s fatwas). Gangohi is therefore sometimes named as coauthor, or even sole author, of Al-Barahin al-qati‘a, but I have not found any evidence of this. Given how close Gangohi and Saharanpuri were, however, it is entirely likely that he advised his disciple in writing it.

  69. Mirathi, Tazkirat al-Rashid, 1:32.

  70. The sole, deliberately elliptical reference to the ‘Illiyun in the Qur’an (83:18–19) is intended as a rhetorical challenge to the Qur’an’s audience: “The record of the pious [abrar] is preserved in the ‘Illiyun. And what can make you know what is the ‘Illiyun?” The word is possibly related etymologically to the Hebrew elyon (“the highest”). Qur’an commentators took ‘Illiyun to denote the seventh and highest level of heaven. See Bearman et al., Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Illiyyun,” 3:1132–33.

  71. Saharanpuri, Al-Barahin al-qati‘a, 56. See also SherAli Tareen, “The Limits of Tradition: Competing Logics of Authenticity in South Asian Islam” (PhD Diss. Duke University, 2012), 222–27.

  72. Ibid., 54–56. Cf. also Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 166.

  73. Ibid., 197.

  74. Ibid., 197–99.

  75. Hajji Muhammad Imdad Allah, Navadir-i Imdadiyya, ed. Nishar Ahmad Faruqi (Gulbarga, India: Sayyid Muhammad Gesudaraz Tahqiqati Academy, 1996), 100–104. I follow, and slightly alter, Nizami’s translation of this letter in Reform and Renewal, 213–14.

  76. Jamil Ahmad Thanvi, Sharh-i faisala-yi haft mas’ala (Lahore: Jami‘a-yi Ziya al-‘Ulum, 1975), 3. Faisala-yi haft mas’ala covers seven “controversies” of Imdad Allah’s day, which he ordered in proportion to the urgency of their need for resolution, with mawlud first, followed by the practice of customary fatiha, transferring merit to the dead; ‘urs and sama‘; calling on something or someone other than God; performing a second congregational salat; and finally, imkan-i nazir and imkan-i kizb—whether God can create additional prophets and whether God can tell a lie, respectively.

  77. For a summary of the relationship between Imdad Allah and the ‘ulama, see Nizami, Reform and Renewal, 197–204.

  78. Numerous sources recount this statement—among them Kandhlavi, Tarikh-i mashaikh-i Chisht, 259; Rizvi, Tarikh-i Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband, 1:35; and Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Kamalat-i Imdadiyya: Jis men pir-i tariqat Hajji Imdad Allah Muhajir Makki ke kamalat ko bayan kiya gaya hai (Lahore: Maktaba al-Furqan, 1976), 10.

  79. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Arvah-i salasa al-ma‘ruf bih hikayat-i awliya’ (Karachi: Dar al-Isha‘at, 1976), 166.

  80. Kandhlavi, Tarikh-i mashaikh-i Chisht, 263.

  81. Nizami, Reform and Renewal, 166–67.

  82. Gangohi, Hudud-i ikhtilaf, 121.

  83. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Irshadat-i Gangohi, ed. ‘Abd al-Rauf Rahimi (Delhi: Farid Book Depot, 2003), 119.

  84. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Al-Ifadat al-yawmiyya min al-ifadat al-qawmiyya (Multan, Pakistan: Idara-yi Ta’lifat-i Ashrafiyya, 2003), statement no. 366, 1:334.

  85. Hajji Muhammad Imdad Allah, Kulliyat-i Imdadiyya (Karachi: Dar al-Isha‘at, 1977), 72.

  86. Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 103.

  87. Mirathi, Tazkirat al-Rashid, 2:184–85.

  88. Ibid., 1:122. Here I am using Muhammad Qasim Zaman’s translation, in Zaman, Ashraf Ali Thanawi, 83.

  89. Imdad Allah, Kulliyat-i Imdadiyya, 78.

  90. Ibid.

  91. Ibid.

  92. Ibid., 79–80.

  93. Ibid. The phrase comes from Rumi’s Masnavi, book 2, line 872: “Don’t burn a new rug for the sake of a flea” (bahr-i kaiki nau galimi sukhtan). See Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi, Masnavi, vol. 2 (Tehran: Kitabfurushi-i Zavvar, 1990), 45.

  94. Imdad Allah, Kulliyat-i Imdadiyya, 80.

  95. Mirathi, Tazkirat al-Rashid, 1:128.

  96. Imdad Allah, Kulliyat-i Imdadiyya, 80.

  97. ‘Aziz
al-Hasan, Ashraf al-savanih (Multan, Pakistan: Idara-yi Ta’lifat-i Ashrafiyya, n.d.), 1:19–27.

  98. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Majalis-i Hakim al-Ummat, ed. Muhammad Shafi‘ (Karachi: Dar al-Isha‘at, n.d.), 160.

  99. Ibid., 161–62. He makes similar judgments numerous places elsewhere—e.g., in rejecting mawlud and ‘urs on the basis that sources of corruption (mafasid) outweigh sources of good (masalih), a principle that applies in all circumstances except those for which there is a legal necessity for the masalih, in which case the mafasid must be expurgated rather than the entire practice being abandoned. See Thanvi, Imdad al-fatawa, 4:69.

  100. Thanvi, Majalis-i Hakim al-Ummat, 161 (emphasis added).

  101. Ibid., 162 (emphasis added).

  102. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Ashraf al-jawab (Deoband: Maktaba-yi Thanvi, 1990), 2:116–17.

  103. Ibid., 2:117–18.

  104. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Al-Takashshuf ‘an muhimmat al-tasawwuf (Deoband: Matba‘-yi Qasimi, 1909), 5:71.

  105. Ibid., 5:79.

  106. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Islah al-rusum (Delhi: Dini Book Depot, 1963), 125.

  107. Ibid., 125–26.

  108. Ibid., 129.

  109. Ibid., 129–30.

  110. Ibid., 130–31.

  111. Ibid., 131.

  112. Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Bid‘at ki haqiqat aur us ke ahkam o masa’il, ed. Muhammad Iqbal Qureshi (Lahore and Karachi: Idara-yi Islamiyya, 2000), 51.

  113. Thanvi, Khutbat-i Hakim al-Ummat, 5:310–11.

  114. Thanvi, Islah al-rusum, 132.

  115. Ibid., 132. This is a point that Thanvi makes repeatedly—e.g., “If there is concern for a permissible [mubah] act corrupting the masses [fasad-i ‘awamm], it is necessary to abandon this act, especially any permissible act that would invert the religion [din]—like supporting a madrasa with the property of a dancing girl.” See Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi, Anfas-i ‘Isa, ifadat-i Hakim al-Ummat Hazrat Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi (Karachi: H. M. Sa‘id Company, 1980), 282. This is a point that Gangohi makes as well in many places—e.g., Mirathi, Tazkirat al-Rashid, 1:170.