Syed Nazeer Husain Dehlawi | |
|---|---|
| Title | Muhaddith,Shaykh,Maulana, Miyan Sahib |
| Personal life | |
| Born | 1805 |
| Died | 13 October 1902(1902-10-13) (aged 96–97)[1] |
| Region | India |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Islam |
| Denomination | Sunni |
| Jurisprudence | Salafi |
| Creed | Athari |
| Movement | Ahl-i Hadith |
| Muslim leader | |
Syed Nazeer Husain Dehlawi (1805 – 13 October 1902) was an Islamic scholar and leader of the reformistAhl-i Hadith movement in India. Earning the appellationshaykh al-kull (teacher of all, or the shaykh of all knowledge) for his authority among early Ahl-i Hadith scholars,[2][3] he is regarded, alongsideSiddiq Hasan Khan (1832–1890), as the founder of the movement[4][5][6] and has been described as "perhaps the single most influential figure in the spread of theAhl-i-Ḥadīth".[5]
Husain was born into an aristocratic family in the northern Indian city ofMonghyr,Bihar.[7] He was raised aShi'ite, but later abandoned that faith.[8] He began his studies in Sadiqpur in Bihar where he first came into contact with the revolutionary preacherSayyid Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831) in the 1820s.[9] He later moved toDelhi in 1826 where he studied underShah Abdul Aziz (1746-1824), son of the revivalist theologianShah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762), and then Abdul Aziz's grandson and successorShah Ishaq Al-Dihlawi (1778–1846), the renownedmuhaddith in India.[8] WhenShah Ishaq Al-Dihlawi emigrated to theHijaz, Husain took his place as a teacher.[10] Self-consciously identifying himself with Shah Waliullah, and viewing himself as spiritual heir to his legacy, Husain took on the titlemiyan sahib, a title closely associated with Shah Waliullah's successors.[11] At Delhi's prestigiousMadrasah-i Rahimiyah seminary, which had broken up into a number of interlinked schools followingShah Ishaq Al-Dihlawi's death in 1846, Husain led the mostWahhabi-oriented school.[12]
Nazeer Husain advocated politicalquietism and was among a large number of Muslim scholars from both the Sunni and Shia sects who supported British rule and rejected calls for armedjihad against it.[13][14] He was also among a number of Muslim scholars, including themuftis ofMecca, who declaredBritish India to bedar al-Islam (abode of peace) and notDar al-harb (abode of war).[14] During theIndian Rebellion of 1857, he resisted pressure from the mutineers to call for a jihad and instead declared in favour of British rule, viewing the Muslim-British relationship as a legal contract which could not be broken unless their religious rights were breached.[15] Despite having denied any involvement in the rebellion in its aftermath and having strongly opposed the declaration of jihad as sinful and a faithless breach of covenant,[12] Husain was widely believed to have been among a group of Delhiulema pressured into signing a jihadfatwa.[16] He was arrested in 1868 by the British on suspicion of being the leader of the Wahhabi insurgents in Delhi and detained for six months but was eventually released without charge after it had emerged that he had not supported the rebels.[17][18] Husain consistently denied any links with the Wahhabis as well as any role in the Delhi uprising in 1857.[17]
Because he was seen by theBritish as the only scholar of the Ahl-i Hadith who could allay the conflict between the movement and followers of the prevailingHanafi school of thought, which often resulted in civil disturbances that the Government sought to prevent, and because he also knewEnglish which was very rare among Indian Muslim scholars at the time, Husain's turbulent relations with the British at Delhi had improved.[7] He was granted a letter of recommendation by the government to the British Vice Consul inJeddah when he travelled there in 1883 to perform theHajj pilgrimage. However, he was already denounced as a Wahhabi by Indian Hanafis to theOttoman governor of Jedda who had him arrested and imprisoned before he could present the letter. He was later released with the intervention of the British Vice Consul.[3]
Within a couple of years of his release from prison in 1868, Husain, together withSiddiq Hasan Khan ofBhopal andMuhammad Husain Batalvi (c.1840–1920), two influential fellow alumni of the Madrasah-i Rahimiyah, formally founded the politico-religious organisation known as theJamaat Ahl-i Hadith, the Party of the People of the Hadith.[19] However, their zealous opposition against co-religionists and non-Muslims alike, to the extent of using violence against mosques and shrines, and their strong anti-polytheist, anti-innovation, anti-Shia and anti-Christian message in close resemblance to the followers ofMuhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792), did not stop other Muslim groups from denouncing them as Wahhabis. Neither did the British Government of India cease using this term for them until the Ahl-i Hadith leaders published, in 1885, a book denying any links with Wahhabism and called for the Government to cease employing this term in reference to them.[20]
Husain taughthadith at Delhi for half a century,[21] gaining international renown in this field and attracting students from different parts of India, Afghanistan, Central Asia,[3] theHijaz andNajd.[22][23] Almost all of the major scholars of the early Ahl-i Hadith movement studied under him.[24] Husain held together a network of scholars who aligned themselves to the teachings ofAhmad Sirhindi andShah Waliullah Dehlawi, but were more uncompromising in their rejection of what they believed were blameworthy innovations in the faith and the legitimacy given to the four Sunnischools of law.[8] The solicitude of the British also gained Husain favour among modernist Muslims associated with theAligarh Institute, whoseAligarh Institute Gazette dedicated an obituary praising him when he died in 1902 at the age of ninety-seven.[7]
| Part ofa series on: Salafi movement |
|---|
 |
 Islam portal |
The teachings of Nazeer Husain and Siddiq Hasan Khan were shaped amidst broader reformist developments in South Asia which saw the Muslims of India as having drifted away from 'authentic' Islamic beliefs and practices that compromised the Islamic concept of the indivisible oneness of God and bordered on idolatry. For guidance on religious matters, however, in contrast to other reformist currents in India, they advocated direct use of the central Islamic scriptures: theQuran andhadith – which they interpreted literally and narrowly – rather than looking to the classical lawmakers and the legal traditions of Islam that developed around them.[4] Accordingly, Husain was known for his emphasis on the primacy of the Prophetic traditions as the source of Islamic law over deference (taqlid) given to the Sunni legal schools and for the opposition to popular rituals and folk practices associated with theSufis which were deemed to be illegitimate innovations in the faith.[25] Although Husain himself has been seen as less literalist and more favourably inclined towards Sufism than later exponents of the Ahl-i Hadith, demanding an oath of allegiance (bay'ah) from his disciples, a practice commonly associated with Sufism, and even praisingIbn Arabi, a colossus among Sufis.[26] Nevertheless, overall, these teachings resulted in the development of close ties with Wahhabi scholars but strong controversy between the Ahl-i Hadith and theDeobandis who upheld strict adherence to the Hanafi school.[25]
According to authorCharles Allen, among Syed Nazeer Husain's students wereImdadullah Muhajir Makki,[27]Muhammad Qasim Nanotvi[28] andRashid Ahmad Gangohi,[29] the founding figures of theDeobandi movement; although prominent Deobandi scholars includingMuftiTaqi Usmani have issued fatwas against him.[30] Husain is also considered by some scholars to have had an influence onMirza Ghulam Ahmad,[31] the founder of theAhmadiyya movement, whose second marriage Husain had performed in 1884,[32] though Ghulam Ahmad never studied under him.[33] Prior to pledging his allegiance to Ghulam Ahmad and becoming his foremost disciple,Hakim Nur-ud-Din had also briefly studied under Husain.[34] Other students of Husain included the Afghan-Indian scholarAbdullah Ghaznavi; the two major Ahl-i Hadith proponents in the Punjab:Muhammad Husain Batalvi andSana'ullah Amritsari;[35] and the Indianhadith scholarShams-ul-Haq Azimabadi. The modernist founder of theAligarh Movement andMuslim University,Syed Ahmad Khan, also studied under Husain in the 1850s.[36]
Syed Nazeer Husain'sFatwas were collected posthumously by some of his students into two large volumes calledfatawa Naziriyya. Other written works by him include the following:
Maulana Sayyid Nazir Husain Dehalvi was the most influential of the Ahl-Hadith ulema in Delhi at the time of the revolt. The rebels coerced him into issuing a fatwa declaring a jihad...he ruled out armed jihad in India, on the grounds that the relationship with the British government was a contract that Muslims could not legally break unless their religious rights were infringed.
