phd1 sanyal

MAKERS of the MUSLIM WORLDAhmad RizaKhan Barelwi

SELECTION OF TITLES IN THE MAKERS OF THE MUSLIM WORLD SERIES Series editor: Patricia Crone, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton ‘Abd al-Malik, Chase F. Robinson Abd al-Rahman III, Maribel Fierro Abu Nuwas, Philip Kennedy Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Christopher Melchert Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi, Usha Sanyal Al-Ma’mun, Michael Cooperson Al-Mutanabbi, Margaret Larkin Amir Khusraw, Sunil Sharma El Hajj Beshir Agha, Jane Hathaway Fazlallah Astarabadi and the Hurufis, Shazad Bashir Ibn‘Arabi,William C. Chittick Ibn Fudi,Ahmad Dallal Ikhwan al-Safa, Godefroid de Callatay Shaykh Mufid,Tamima Bayhom-DaouFor current information and details of other books in the series, please visit www.oneworld-publications.com/ subjects/makers-of-muslim-world.htm

MAKERS of the MUSLIM WORLD Ahmad RizaKhan BarelwiIn the Path of the Prophet USHA SANYAL

AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWI Oneworld Publications (Sales and Editorial) 185 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7AR England www.oneworld-publications.com © Usha Sanyal 2005 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 1–85168–359–3 Typeset by Jayvee, India Cover and text designed by Design DeluxePrinted and bound in India byThomson Press Ltd NL08

TO WILLIAM R. ROFF, MY USTAD



CONTENTSPreface xAcknowledgments xii1 THE EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH- CENTURY BACKGROUND 1 The Mughal Empire 1 The North Indian Successor States 4 The History of Rohilkhand 5 British India under the East India Company 72 THE MUSLIM RESPONSE 19 ShahWali Ullah 22 Farangi Mahall:Training Employees for the Muslim States 26 Nineteenth-century Reform Movements 283 AHMAD RIZA KHAN: LIFE OF A MUSLIM SCHOLAR 51 Rampur State 53 Ahmad Riza’s Education and Scholarly Training 55 Scholarly Imprint of his Father 56 Exemplary Stories 57 Sufi Discipleship to Shah Al-e Rasul of Marehra 61 The Importance of Dreams 61 Sayyids of the Qadiri Order of Sufis 62 Going on Pilgrimage, 1878 63 Ahmad Riza as Mujaddid 64 FatwaWriting 66

viii AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWI Hidden Cues in a Fatwa, or what a Fatwa may not tell us 68 Ahmad Riza’s Fatawa 70 Two FatawaWritten during Ahmad Riza’s Second Pilgrimage to Mecca 73 Political Issues in the Early Teens and Twenties 77 Hijrat Movement 81 Ahmad Riza’s Popularity among Core Followers 83 Passing on the Leadership 844 AHMAD RIZA KHAN’S BELIEF SYSTEM AND WORLDVIEW 87 Ahmad Riza as a Sufi 89 The Perfect Pir 90 Controversy about Sufi Intercession 91 The Three Circles of Discipleship 92 Shaikh‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani and the Importance of the Qadiri Order 94 Love of the Prophet 96 Sufi Rituals 100 Relations with other Muslims 102 The Accusations of Unbelief 107 Relations with Non-Muslims: Hindus and the British 1095 AHL-E SUNNAT INSTITUTIONS AND SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT BEYOND BAREILLY 111 Seminaries (Madrasas) 111 Printing Presses and Publications 113 Voluntary Associations and Oral Debates 115 Generational Fissures in the Movement 118 Assessment of the Importance of the Movement in Relation to other Movements 122

CONTENTS ix6 AHMAD RIZA’S LEGACY 127 Ahmad Riza’s ‘Urs in India and Pakistan 129 Ahl-e Sunnat/Barelwis in the Diaspora 131Glossary 133Major landmarks in South Asian history from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries 135Bibliography 138Index 143



P R E FA C EThe subject of this book is an Indian Muslim scholar of the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries, Ahmad RizaKhan Barelwi (1856–1921). His writings and the interpret-ation of Islam they espouse laid the foundation for a movementknown to its followers as the Ahl-e Sunnat wa Jama‘at (“thedevotees of the Prophet’s practice and the broad community”)and to all others as “Barelwi,” an adjective derived fromBareilly, the town where Ahmad Riza was born and where helived. It also forms the last part of his name.The movement wasone of several reformist groups to have emerged in British Indiaduring the late nineteenth century. Like their rivals, theBarelwis today have a large following in South Asia, as well as inBritain and other parts of the world where South AsianMuslims have migrated. What distinguishes the Barelwis from the other reformistgroups (Deobandis, the Ahl-e Hadith, and others) is their atti-tude to the relationship of the transcendant to this world.Whilethe other groups reject sufism or Islamic mysticism either whollyor in part, and deny the importance of saintly mediators, mir-acles, and other manifestations of the holy in the here and now,the Barelwis embrace everything associated with sufism as anintrinsic part of their identity. But they share with the otherreformists a strong focus on the Prophet Muhammad as a modelof correct behavior and an example of the virtues that everyMuslim should strive to cultivate and that he or she should live by. Unlike some of the other Muslim reformist groups,AhmadRiza defined religious community in cultural rather thanpolitical terms. When Indian Muslims began to engage in xi

xii AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWInational politics in the early twentieth century, he advised hisfollowers against it, arguing that the classical Islamic sourcesdid not support political action against British rule in India, asthe British had not interfered in the Muslims’ internal affairs orreligious institutions.This led to a split in the movement, withsome Barelwi leaders following his advice and others rebelling. In some respects,Ahmad Riza and the Barelwi movement ingeneral seem paradoxical.Thus, whileAhmad Riza’s interpret-ation of Islam was deeply rooted in South Asian culture, hebased his arguments on the classical Islamic sources and lookedto the religious leaders of Mecca and Medina for validationand approval. And while he was a reformist in the sense ofdemanding that his followers be personally responsible fortheir own salvation, the kind of model Muslim person hevisualized was one who embraced rather than shunned ritualintermediaries and a ritualistic style of worshiping God. Onemight say that he wanted his followers to use reformist reli-gious methods so as to be better, and more individually driven,traditionalists.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSBill Roff, to whom I dedicate the book, guided the original Ph.D. dissertation on which this book is based, and has lentme his sage advice over many years even after he retired andreturned to his home in Scotland. David Gilmartin has helpedme think about the material in new ways which have foundtheir way into this book. And Patricia Crone asked difficultquestions and showed me that writing a little book can beharder than writing a big one. I would also like to thank theanonymous reviewer of the manuscript for making a number ofsuggestions which I have incorporated here. I owe a great debt of gratitude to members of my family: mydear friend (and sister-in-law), Rupa Bose, who was my firstreader and urged me to try and make the material both inter-esting and relevant to as wide an audience as possible. GautamBose, my husband, gave me time to write on weekends andholidays, while keeping our two boys, Girish and Arun (whoare eight and six, respectively) entertained and out of mischief.And to my mother, Vina Sanyal, who has supported my aca-demic endeavors in myriad ways over the years from far-awayNew Delhi, a heartfelt thank you. xiii

Centers of Ahl-e Sunnat (Barelwi) Influence in thelate 19th and early 20th centuries in North India Lahore DELHI UNITED Karachi PROVINCES Patna Jabalpur Calcutta250 miles500km UNITED Muradabad RampurDELHI Pilibhit Bareilly Badayun Marahra Sitapur Bilgram Khairabad PROVINCES Kachhochha Patna Jabalpur

1 THE EIGHTEENTH- AND N I N E T E E N T H - C E N T U RY BACKGROUNDIn India, strong Muslim rule under the Mughal empire gave way in the course of the eighteenth century to weak centralcontrol and the establishment of a number of regional king-doms which were independent of the Mughals in all but name.They in turn soon became indebted to the East India Company,which had started out as a trading company in 1600 but by theearly nineteenth century had assumed a number of importantpolitical functions, the most important of which was the col-lection of land taxes. In 1858, after a failed Indian revolt againstthe East India Company, the British Crown assumed formalcontrol of India and the East India Company was dissolved.THE MUGHAL EMPIREFor three centuries (1526 to 1857), India was ruled by theMughals, who were Sunni Muslims of Central Asian descent.The founder of the empire was Babur (r. 1526–30), who sweptinto India from present-day Afghanistan, but whose brief reignleft him no time to consolidate his gains in north India. It washis grandson Akbar (r. 1556–1605) who made a lasting 1

2 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIimpression on India and gave the empire a firm foundation.From their capital in the north (Delhi for the most part, thoughAkbar chose Agra and other cities as well), the Mughal emper-ors expanded the border in all directions. Starting from thenorthwest, including what are today Afghanistan and Pakistan,the empire expanded eastward to the Gangetic plain duringAkbar’s reign, going as far as what is today Bangladesh.To thenorth, the Himalayan mountains constituted a natural border,preventing further conquest in that direction. Central andsouthern India were ruled by independent kings, some Hindu,some Muslim, until well into Akbar’s reign. In fact, the southwas not incorporated into the Mughal empire until about a cen-tury later, during Aurangzeb’s long reign (r. 1658–1707), andeven then the very southern tip of India remained independent. It was an agrarian empire, centered around the person andauthority of the king. Land taxes constituted its main source ofrevenue. Since the majority of the Indian population wasHindu, during his fifty-year rule Akbar set about winninghearts and minds by including Hindu princes in all branches ofgovernment and even by marrying Hindu princesses. Hiseldest son,Salim (later Emperor Jahangir) had a Hindu mother,as did his grandson, Emperor Shah Jahan.At the same time, heshowed his respect for popular Muslim religious figures. Hepaid homage to a particular lineage of Muslim mystics, or sufis,whose hospice was in the western Indian city of Ajmer.A storyis told of how in 1570 he walked from his capital Fatehpur Sikri(near Agra), in the north, to Ajmer in the west, a distance ofabout two hundred miles, in a gesture of thanksgiving after thebirth of his son Salim. Ajmer was the burial place of a thir-teenth-century sufi whose intercession with God, the emperorbelieved, had been instrumental in his son’s birth. In the firsthalf of his reign, he also sponsored pilgrim ships from India’swest coast to Mecca, sending generous gifts to that city. Insum, Akbar’s religious eclecticism and inclusiveness helped

EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND 3Indianize the foreign Mughals and strengthened and stabilizedthe empire. (In the second half of his reign,Akbar encouraged apersonality cult around himself, inventing a new “religion”with elements of different faiths, alienating a number ofMuslims as a result.) Mughal decline began in the late 1600s during the reign ofAkbar’s great-grandson Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) and accel-erated throughout the eighteenth century.Although historiansargue about what caused the decline, a number of factors wereat work:Aurangzeb’s reversal ofAkbar’s religious policy is heldby some to have been crucial, for he alienated a number ofHindu princely families by excluding them from positions ofpower and imposing on them a tax which Akbar had abolished(the jizya). In fact, the second half of Aurangzeb’s reign wasspent in incessant and, in the end, futile warfare against a minorHindu chieftain, Shivaji (d. 1680), who eventually carved out asmall kingdom along India’s west coast and expanded it by war-fare and diplomatic alliances with other Hindu rulers. In time,he and his successors (collectively known as the Marathas)were even able to challenge the Mughals in the north, the cen-ter of Mughal power.The financial drain of Aurangzeb’s mili-tary campaigns on the empire’s resources contributed to thecollapse. AfterAurangzeb’s death in 1707, the eighteenth century sawa succession of weak rulers. This encouraged foreigners toinvade or try to take over. In 1739 the military general-turned-emperor Nadir Shah invaded north India from Persia in thewest.Taking Lahore (now in Pakistan) in January of that year,heproceeded to march into Delhi a few months later. Accordingto Juan Cole,“the savage looting of the capital later perpetratedby his troops constitut[ed] one of the century’s great disasters”(1989:41).The next major attack was launched by theAfghans,also from the northwest. In 1761, Ahmad Shah Abdali (laterstyled “Durrani”) fought the Marathas at Panipat, fifty miles

4 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWInorthwest of Delhi, where two important battles fought inearlier centuries had given the Mughals control over India.This, theThird Battle of Panipat, was won by Ahmad Shah, andcould have led to Afghan rule over India had Ahmad Shah’stroops not been weary of war and anxious to return home.Thepower vacuum in Delhi was soon to be filled by yet anotherforeign power, the British East India Company.THE NORTH INDIAN SUCCESSOR STATESApart from the foreign threats to the Mughal empire in theeighteenth century, it was also subject to internal fissures. Innorth India, one of the most significant new developments wasthe rise of Shi‘ism as the state religion in two of the largestMuslim successor states, Bengal and Awadh (known as “Oudh”in British sources). The kingdom of Awadh was founded byBurhan ul-Mulk in 1722 and was centered in Lucknow in theGangetic plain. It grew in power under the first three gover-nors or nawabs (Burhan ul-Mulk, Safdar Jang, and Shuja ud-Dawla) over the next fifty years.After Nadir Shah’s invasion in1739, the Mughal emperors were probably less powerful thanthe nawabs ofAwadh.Although Shuja ud-Dawla, the third gov-ernor, stopped short of proclaiming Awadh’s total independ-ence from Mughal rule, continuing to mint coins in theemperor’s name and having the Friday sermon read in hisname, for all practical purposes the state operated independ-ently. State affairs (diplomacy, economic policy, the appoint-ment of officials and successors to the governorship) wereconducted without reference to the Mughal emperor. As both Cole and Francis Robinson (2001) explain, the cul-ture of the Bengal and Awadh courts was fed by a constantinflux of Shi‘i Muslims from Iran and Iraq. Indeed, the govern-ors of Awadh were themselves of Iranian (Nishapuri) origin.

EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND 5This was a time of political instability in Iran as well, andIranians and Iraqis of all professions were eager to seek theirfortunes in either Bengal or Awadh. Spear speculates that hadthe British East India Company not intervened in India in themid-1700s, the governors of both states would probably havetried to consolidate their power at the expense of the Mughalsand/or each other, but would then have had to deal with theMarathas (Spear, 1981: 76–77). But British intervention pre-vented the playing out of this rather dismal scenario. Despite Awadh’s fairly rapid political decline in the latterpart of the eighteenth century, Shi‘ism continued to influencethe political and cultural landscape of the eastern Gangeticplain throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Indeed, at the end of the nineteenth century Ahmad Riza Khanwrote frequently about the negative influence of Shi‘ism inhis home territory of Rohilkhand, west of Lucknow, urging hisfollowers to refrain from participating in Shi‘i rituals andpractices.THE HISTORY OF ROHILKHANDCloser to home for Ahmad Riza Khan and his family is the his-tory of the Rohilla Afghans, after whom the region earned itsname, Rohilkhand. The region around Bareilly, Ahmad RizaKhan’s birthplace, was (and is) known as Rohilkhand, havingbeen settled by the RohillaAfghans in the seventeenth and eight-eenth centuries. In the mid-eighteenth century Rohilkhandcame under the authority of Hafiz Rahmat Khan (d. 1774) whowas a forceful and strong leader who might have succeeded inmaking Rohilkhand a lasting regional power had there beenfewer players vying for control over north India. But this was not to be. Instead, the constant state of warfarefinally forced the Rohillas to seekAwadh’s help in order to beat

6 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIback the Marathas. This in turn gave Awadh, under Shujaud-Dawla, an excuse to take over in 1774 after Hafiz RahmatKhan was killed in battle. Rohilkhand was thus absorbed intothe state of Awadh. But by this time Awadh had becomefinancially dependent on the East India Company (indeed, thelatter had helped Awadh in its annexation of Rohilkhand).Consequently, in 1801 Awadh had to cede Rohilkhand to theEast India Company as part repayment of its debt. It was toremain under Company rule until 1858, when India became apart of the British Empire and Rohilkhand became part of thenew state known as the Northwest Provinces. Economically, it is important to note, Rohilkhand hadenjoyed considerable prosperity in the early period of its his-tory under Afghan Rohilla rule. A rich alluvial plain in thefoothills of the Himalayas, it was deemed one of the most fer-tile regions in the subcontinent in the early eighteenth century.But after it came under Awadh’s rule, heavy revenue demands– made by Awadh in order to pay off its own debts to the EastIndia Company – impoverished its people. Subsequently, simi-lar demands by the East India Company led to indebtedness andrackrenting in the countryside. Meanwhile, another facet of the political situation in the lateeighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is of interest to us aspart ofAhmad Riza Khan’s family background, namely, the cre-ation and growth of the independent state of Rampur, north-west of Bareilly. Rampur was the only Rohilla principality tosurvive the vicissitudes of the times and to continue to enjoyindependence as a princely state under British rule. Rampurstate was created by Faizullah Khan, who had fought by HafizRahmat’s side for over twenty years when the latter was killedin 1774, and had a reputation for bravery and leadership.Thusthe mantle of leadership naturally fell to him. However, as Rohilkhand had just been absorbed intoAwadh,he had no territorial base of his own.Warren Hastings, then the

EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND 7Governor of Bengal, concluded a treaty with him, granting himthe small estate of Rampur (about 900 square miles) situatednorth of the city of Bareilly.Faizullah Khan thus became the firstnawab of Rampur. Interestingly, although the Rampur nawabs’ancestors were Afghans – and Sunni Muslims – after the 1840smost of the Rampur nawabs were followers of Shi‘ism. By around 1800, the Marathas were no longer a threat innorth India, having retreated to western India and split up intofour separate confederate states, each of whom owed alle-giance to the confederate chief or Peshwa in Pune. Bengal andAwadh had by now both come under the political and eco-nomic control of the East India Company:Bengal succumbed atthe Battle of Plassey, thereby setting in motion East IndiaCompany rule over much of India for the next hundred years.Awadh, itself formally under Mughal rule, became increasinglyindebted to the Company, and gradually, from 1775 to1801, ceded parts of its territory to the British after Shujaud-Dawla’s death in 1774. Indirect rule over Awadh by theBritish was to continue until its formal annexation in 1856, ayear before the Revolt.BRITISH INDIA UNDER THEEAST INDIA COMPANYIf in the eighteenth century the British were one of several con-tenders for power in the wake of Aurangzeb’s death and theweak rule of his successors, in the nineteenth they wereunquestionably the most important power holders in India.Thiswas not at all what they had intended, for the British had cometo India as traders rather than as conquerers. The East IndiaCompany, formed in 1600, was but one of several Europeantrading companies to come to India in search of “exotic” itemsof trade – chiefly spices, but also silks, fine handspun cottons,

8 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIsaltpetre (which had military uses), and other items.The othercompanies were Portuguese, Dutch, and French. The weak-ening of the Mughal empire in the first half of the eighteenthcentury coincided with European rivalries at home (during theNapoleonic wars, theWar of Austrian Succession in the 1740s,and the SevenYears’War in the 1750s and 1760s) between theBritish and French, leading them into proxy wars in Bengal andsouth India. In the 1760s Robert Clive of the East IndiaCompany secured the diwani or revenue-collection rights tolarge parts of Bengal and Bihar, after driving the French out ofsouth India. Gaining the right to the diwani was a milestone, forit allowed the British to pay for their purchases with Bengal’stax revenue, thereby making the annual export of bullion fromBritain to India unnecessary. Despite safeguards against abuse (for Clive and his menmade small personal fortunes after their victories at Plasseyand Buxar in the 1750s and 1760s) put in place by the Board ofDirectors in London, Company officials continued to enrichthemselves personally until forbidden to engage in privatetrade in the 1790s. In 1813 missionaries and private traderswere allowed into the country by an Act of Parliament, and in1833 the Company lost its monopoly on trade in everythingbut opium and salt. Conquest of further territory, some directand some indirect, followed swiftly during the first half of thenineteenth century. Under the pattern of indirect rule set inplace by Clive, local rulers were allowed to retain their thronesbut forced to concede to certain vital annual demands forrevenue, which ultimately drove them into crippling debt tothe Company.This in turn led, in due course, to the East IndiaCompany’s assumption of political power. A few dates will suffice to illustrate the pace of Britishannexation of territory, for these events are well known: in1801 Madras Presidency was formed in the south, in 1803 theBritish defeated the Mughal emperor in Delhi and made him a

EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND 9pensioner, in 1818 parts of the Maratha confederacy weretaken over to form the bulk of Bombay Presidency, in 1848 thePanjab was annexed, in the 1840s seven princely states weretaken over in as many years under the Doctrine of Lapse (whichforbade a ruler from choosing an adopted son as successor inthe absence of a natural-born son and held that such a kingdomcame under Company rule by default), and in 1856 theNawab ofAwadh was forced to give up his throne on grounds ofincompetence. In 1857–58, parts of the country rose in the anti-Britishrebellion known (in British accounts) as the Mutiny, thoughit was in fact much more broad-based than a mutiny, for itincluded peasants and landlords as well as soldiers.When theRevolt was finally put down in 1858, the anomaly of East IndiaCompany rule was replaced by the more normal mode ofgovernment called Crown rule, and the East India Companywas dissolved.The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar,was banished to Rangoon, Burma, where he lived out the restof his days, after the British had murdered his sons to make surethere would be no heirs. (In an interesting parallel to this sadepisode, in 1885 the ruler of Burma was banished to westernIndia for the rest of his life after the British takeover of thatkingdom.)Economic Consequences of British RuleAlongside the sweeping political changes indicated by theseevents were profound changes taking place in the areas underBritish control in the economic, legal, educational, and otherspheres.The economic sphere was of course central to Britishconcerns, and changes here began with the PermanentSettlement of Bengal in 1793. The British attempt to under-stand local land tenure systems was motivated by the desire toincrease productivity and hence annual tax revenues – this

10 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIbeing the raison d’être for the acquisition of territory by theCompany. Seeing private property as the key to creating a classof “improving” landlords on the British model and hence toensuring future agricultural productivity, in 1793 LordCornwallis, as Governor-General of Bengal, conferred privateownership rights in perpetuity on a number of Bengalzamindars or landlords, who were required in return to meet a“high and inflexible” annual revenue demand (Metcalf andMetcalf, 2002: 77). However, the experiment failed. Under the indigenous sys-tem, the zamindar could “sell or transfer only his own revenuecollecting rights, not the land itself, for that did not belong tohim.” If the peasants on his land felt overburdened, they couldmove to another part of the country where conditions werebetter. However, under the new system, all the zamindars, nowowners of the land and liable to high taxes in good and badyears, were under an onerous burden themselves. Many wereunable to pay the taxes and had no choice but to put theirestates up for sale. Far from being improving landlords, a num-ber of them sold their land to city-dwelling magnates who hadthe money to treat their estates as an investment (though with-out any incentive to “improve” them) at the tenants’ expense.As for the tenants, they were reduced to the status of “tenantswith no rights” (Metcalf and Metcalf, 2002: 77) and fewoptions. Squeezed by the tax burden from above and unable tofind better terms elsewhere (as all the landlords now enforcedthe same high revenue demand), in time they became a class oflandless bonded labor.A third of the estates are believed to havechanged hands in the first twenty years following theSettlement of 1793. In the years ahead, various alternatives were tried in otherparts of India, ranging from assessments being revised everytwenty or thirty years to ownership being fixed on the tenants(ryots) rather than the landlords, in south India. Meanwhile,

EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND 11new crops were introduced in Bengal and elsewhere. A highlyprofitable trade in opium was started in Bengal in the 1820s forexport to China.This complicated three-way trade allowed theCompany to pay for its exports from China with the proceedsof opium sales in China, once again making unnecessarythe export of bullion from Britain. Opium “provided up to15 per cent of the Indian Government’s total revenue” in the1830s (Metcalf and Metcalf, 2002: 75). Another important economic change in India in the early1800s was the substitution of factory-made British textiles forhandmade Indian cloth, which put Indian weavers in Bengalout of work and increased pressure on the land.The destruc-tion of the textile industry followed – British-made textilesbeing cheaper to buy than the local product – initiating “thedevelopment of a classically ‘colonial’ economy, importingmanufactures and exporting raw materials, [in a pattern]that was to last for a century, until the 1920s.” The Metcalfsconclude,“Overall, ... the East India Company during the earlydecades of the nineteenth century did little to set Indiaon a path of economic growth” (Metcalf and Metcalf, 2002:75, 76).Improvements in InfrastructureWhile the economy was dramatically affected in these andother ways during the early nineteenth century, infrastructuraldevelopments had a lasting impact on Indians of all classes andcommunities. Railroads and the telegraph were introducedduring Lord Dalhousie’s governor-generalship in the1850s,and a postal system and print technology were introduced,making newspapers and periodicals available relatively cheaply.To give but one example of how significant a change the “pennypost” represented, “[i]n the 1830s an exchange of lettersbetween Britain and India could take two years; by 1870, with

12 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIthe opening of the Suez Canal [in the 1860s], a letter couldreach Bombay in only one month” (Metcalf and Metcalf, 2002:97). Print technology, as we will see in subsequent chapters,greatly facilitated the growth of Islamic (as well as otherreligious) reform movements in the latter half of the nineteenthcentury. Change was occurring in almost every area of life at thistime. From the point of view of the north Indian ‘ulama,two areas were particularly significant, namely, education andthe law.A British Model for IndiaHaving become the colonial masters of India, the British had todecide what direction they wanted the country to take.Whatwas the British purpose in being in India, what did it hope toachieve other than the economic and imperial goals of hegem-ony?Answering this question also involved assessing the Indianpast. Did those who now governed India see anything of valuein India’s linguistic and literary heritage, its educational trad-itions, its legal texts, and so on, or should Britain set in place awholly Western system, a wholly new set of institutions thathad no local roots whatsoever? This debate played out most famously in the fields of law andeducation.Among those who spoke for the liberal position (theterm meant something different in the 1800s than it does in USpolitics in the early twenty-first century) were Lord WilliamBentinck, Governor-General of India in the late 1820s and early1830s, and John Stuart Mill who worked for the East IndiaCompany from 1823 until 1858. Mill argued that differentpeoples were at different stages in the “ladder” of “progress” butcould be advanced along the way by means of education and goodgovernment. Charles Trevelyan, who served in India in the

EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND 131830s,was also among this group.He believed that British learn-ing and institutions would put India on the path to “moral andpolitical improvement” (Metcalf, 2001: 28–33). Thomas B.Macaulay is perhaps the best-known example of this position. Ina well-known statement in 1835, he said he wanted to put inplace a system of education which would “create not just a classof Indians educated in the English language, who might assist theBritish in ruling India, but one ‘English in taste, in opinions, inmorals and in intellect’” (Metcalf, 2001: 34). As Thomas Metcalf points out, this view was based on thebelief that all “races” were inherently educable and none had toremain perpetually on the lowest rung of the ladder of “civ-ilization.” But it was also based on a negative assessment of non-European cultures and their traditions of learning. ThusMacaulay is famous for his dismissal of the “entire literature ofIndia and Arabia ... [as worth less than] a single shelf of a goodEuropean library” (Metcalf, 2001: 34). This negative assess-ment of India stood in contrast with the views of an earlier gen-eration of officials and scholars such as Governor-GeneralWarren Hastings and SirWilliam Jones,a judge in the East IndiaCompany (d. 1794), who believed that India’s rich textualtradition was worthy of study by Europeans (which in turnrequired the study of languages, chiefly Sanskrit, but alsoArabic for an understanding of Muslim texts), and that theBritish could best rule by basing their laws on those of thecountry itself. “The outcome of British study of the ancient texts, in Jones’sview,” Metcalf writes, “was to be a ‘complete digest’ of theHindu and Muslim law, which could be enforced in theCompany’s courts, and would preserve‘inviolate’ the rights ofthe Indian people” (Metcalf, 2001: 12). It was in this spirit – aswell as a desire to be independent of Brahmin interpreters heconsidered unreliable – that Jones worked on his Digest(Metcalf, 2001: 24). It was published in 1798 by his successor

14 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIH.T. Colebrooke.To be sure, Jones also graded European and“Oriental” learning and their laws on a hierarchical scale inwhich the European was superior to the Indian. Furthermore,in his view of things, India’s glorious past or “golden age” hadgiven way to a state of decline in the present. Nevertheless, hediffered fundamentally from Macaulay and others of like mindwho devalued and belittled the Sanskritic and Arabo-Persianliterary traditions altogether, and who sought to base Britishlaws and education in India onWestern traditions alone. In the end, Macaulay and Mill carried the day, though with-out totally rejecting Hastings’ and Jones’ vision. Since 1772civil law had been based on religious affiliation, for Hindus andMuslims were governed by their own personal laws – Hindulaw for the former, and “Anglo-Mohammadan” law forMuslims. In practice, the manner in which Islamic law wasimplemented was much altered under the East India Company.As Zaman shows, certain medieval texts deemed authoritativeby the British were “invested with almost exclusive authority asthe basis of judicial practice in British courts, as far as Muslimpersonal law was concerned” (Zaman, 2002: 22). Moreover,the manner of their application was more rigid than it had beenin Mughal times, in keeping with the British desire to imposeuniformity and predictability in the law. (Zaman points out thatthe British were inconsistent in their application of the law too,but this was described as exercising “discretion” rather thanbeing “arbitrary.”) Macaulay was instrumental, in the 1860s, in drafting a newpenal code which replaced what the British saw as despotic“Oriental” rule with “predictable rules and regulations for theadjudication of disputes.” Based on Jeremy Bentham’s prin-ciples of utilitarianism, the new laws also sought to promote“unity, precision, and simplicity” (Metcalf, 2001: 37, 38).Islamic criminal law ceased to be applied in the courts after thistime. Moreover, the muftis (and Brahmin pandits) who had

EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND 15been employed to help British judges on matters of personalreligious law were no longer deemed necessary, and the pos-ition of “native law officer” was abolished in 1864. Qadis (judgeswho applied Islamic law) were frequently not appointed toBritish Indian courts either. Thus the application of Anglo-Muhammadan law in British Indian courts was often in thehands of non-Muslim judges. This made even simple matterssuch as the dissolution of a marriage, for example, impossible,as such a decision was invalid in Muslim eyes if made by a non-Muslim judge (Zaman, 2002: 25, 27). In the nineteenth cen-tury the Deobandi ‘ulama tried unsuccessfully to create analternative court of their own, but for a variety of reasons manyMuslims continued to use the British Indian courts (Metcalf,1982: 147).As we shall see throughout this book, the primaryresponse of the‘ulama to the loss of access to the courts underBritish rule was to issue responsa (fatawa).The other alterna-tive was to take the issue under dispute to a Muslim princelystate where British laws were not in place and where a qadicould be found. Education was also a significant issue for the ‘ulama duringBritish rule. During the late eighteenth century, Orientalistscholars such as William Jones had promoted schools for theeducation of maulwis and pandits who could assist Companyofficials in the interpretation of Hindu and Muslim law, respect-ively. Among the best-known schools of this period were theCalcutta Madrasa (founded in 1781), the Sanskrit College inBenares (founded in 1792),and Delhi College,which had origin-ated as a madrasa during Aurangzeb’s reign. Although thefocus in all these schools was on “Oriental” learning, DelhiCollege also taught its students Western sciences and mathe-matics through works translated from English into Urdu. Inaddition, Lord Wellesley, Governor-General from 1798 to1805, established the College of Fort William in Calcutta in1800 to teach young British recruits to the Company Indian

16 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIlanguages and Hindu and Muslim law, as well as Western sub-jects, before sending them out into the countryside as adminis-trators. Less well known is the College at Fort St. George,Madras, founded in 1812 by Francis Ellis, which trained theBritish in Indian languages and Indians in Hindu and Muslimlaw simultaneously (Cohn, 1996: 47–53). When this Orientalist approach gave way, from the 1820s,to the supporters of “reform” and “liberalism,” the purpose ofeducation became to instil British values. In 1835 Macaulaywrote in his policy statement or “Minute on Education” that thegoal of British education in India should be to create a class ofIndians who would be “English in taste, in opinions, in moralsand in intellect.” If this meant that down the road they wouldalso want self-rule – as he thought they must – this was to bewelcomed, for the new political order would be one thatrepresented “an imperishable empire of our arts and ourmorals, our literature and our laws” (Metcalf and Metcalf,2002: 81). In any event, this was a distant prospect, notsomething that British policy makers needed to worry aboutthere and then. The immediate consequences of Macaulay’s educationalblueprint included, in 1835, the substitution of English forPersian as the language of government. Under the reform-minded Governor-General, Lord Bentinck (1828–35), severalcolleges were founded, though no effort was made to set upelementary schools. In Britain at this time, schools were run byparochial (religious) bodies, not by government. Among theuniversities that date to this period are Patna College.Elphinstone College was founded in the 1820s in Bombay.Hindu College in Calcutta had been established in 1819, withprivate British and Indian financial support. By the 1830sEnglish was being avidly studied by “several thousand Indians”in Calcutta alone (Metcalf and Metcalf, 2002: 82). The firstthree Indian universities were inaugurated in 1857.

EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND 17 This embrace of Western learning was but an aspect of awider reform movement under Raja Ram Mohan Roy, founderof the Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta, who sought to reform theHinduism of his day in the light of a perceived golden ageaccessed through the study of ancient Sanskrit texts. Thatearlier form of Hinduism, for Roy, was characterized byrationalism and simplicity rather than the idol worship of con-temporary times. David Kopf has characterized this era as the“Bengal Renaissance” on account of its spirit of enquiry and itsopenness to reinterpretation of received tradition (Kopf,1969).



2 THE MUSLIM RESPONSEIndians of all religions were keenly aware of Western criti- cisms of their religious customs and traditions. The Hindureformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy had responded by rejectingmany aspects of contemporary ritual practice, arguing that the“pure” Hinduism of India’s “golden age” was rational, simple,and devoid of practices which the British described as barbaric(such as idol worship, caste, widow immolation, child mar-riage, and other social practices deemed detrimental towomen). He also considered certain Sanskritic texts authorita-tive, and advocated their study as a means of reforming reli-gious and social practices. In the Muslim case, religious leaders in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries promoted internal reform as a response toBritain’s rule of India. They reasoned that if Muslims had lostpolitical power after so many centuries of rule,it was because theyhad been religiously negligent. Had they been “good” Muslims,they would have been strong and the British would never havebeen able to take over. Specifically, Muslim reformers advocatedgreater individual adherence to religious precepts as set out in theshari‘a,greater knowledge of the religious texts by the‘ulama and,to some degree, by ordinary believers, and a focus on theProphet as a model of behavior in one’s daily life.A related con-cern was with preaching (dawa), mainly to other Muslims, toencourage greater religiosity. Their attitudes toward two other 19

20 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIquestions – sufism (Islamic mysticism) and British rule – variedwidely. On both issues we find everything from completeacceptance to total rejection. The reformers’ emphasis on authoritative texts, namely, theQur’an which Muslims regard as the literal word of God, andsecondarily the traditions of the Prophet (hadith), led to thefirst translations of the Qur’an. The Qur’an is learned andmemorized in the original Arabic, but in India Muslims spokePersian in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, orUrdu starting in the mid-nineteenth century, or a regionalIndian language such as Bengali or Tamil. Because Arabic wasnot spoken by Indian Muslims, the Qur’an was poorly under-stood. Muslim reformers in the late eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies translated the Qur’an into Persian, and much laterinto Urdu and other Indian languages. The Indian reform movements also highlighted the hadith lit-erature. The hadith are narratives (literally, stories or newsreports) about the Prophet (d. 632), relating to something hedid or said, or which tell about his appearance, comportment,and so on.These narratives were orally transmitted by his fol-lowers to successive generations of Muslims before being writ-ten down about a century after his death.A laborious process ofevaluation over two centuries eventually resulted in six collec-tions of hadiths,named after the jurists who had collected them.The collection regarded as the most reliable is that of al-Bukhari(d. 870), with that of Muslim (d. 875) the next most reliable. The focus of the hadith literature is the Prophet, and all theIndian Muslim reform movements of the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries were united in their strong emphasis on thepersonality and biography of the Prophet. They saw in him amodel for how they could, and should, live their own lives.Thismade him an example one could hope to emulate. Togetherwith the Qur’an becoming a subject of scholarly discussion andinterpretation, the view of the Prophet as a model Muslim

THE MUSLIM RESPONSE 21meant that the ‘ulama, and through their leadership otherMuslims, were individually responsible for fulfilling their reli-gious obligations as Muslims and relying much less than beforeon intermediaries and socially accepted, customary ways ofbehavior.This characteristic unites all the reform movements,despite their great diversity in other ways. While the political dominance of the British in India,and theirdebates about the intrinsic value or lack thereof of “Oriental”learning, were a powerful impetus for reform among IndianMuslims, there was also another source which came from theIslamic world itself, namely, the Wahhabi movement in eight-eenth- and nineteenth-century Arabia. The influence of thismovement on Indian reform movements was felt through theannual pilgrimage to Mecca, through extensive periods ofstudy by a small number of Indian Muslims at Mecca andMedina, and by the general improvement in communicationswhich occurred in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.The founder of the Wahhabi movement was Muhammad ibn‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703–87). His message was an insistence onthe unity of God (tawhid), which meant that all forms of super-stition (the veneration of saints’ tombs, holy objects, and thelike) were contrary to the worship of the one God. He believedthat the first generation of Muslims, namely, the Prophet andhis companions, were the models of true Islamic practice. Hetherefore rejected later developments in the history of Islam,particularly sufism and what he viewed as its excesses. AlbertHourani (1983: 37) describes his ideas as follows: The true Islam, stated Ibn‘Abd al-Wahhab, was that of the first generation, the pious forerunners, and in their name he protested against all those later innovations which had in fact brought other gods into Islam: against the later development of mystical thought, with its monist doctrines, its ascetic renunciation of the goods of the world, its organization into brotherhoods, its rituals other than those prescribed by the

22 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWI Quran; against the excessive cult of Muhammad as perfect man and intercessor with God (although great reverence was paid to him as Prophet); against the worship of saints and reverence for their shrines; and against the return into Islam of the customs and practices of the [pre-Islamic age].Although the precise influence of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab onIndian Muslim reformers of the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies is a matter of scholarly debate, there is no doubt thathis ideas were well known and that they played a major role inthe thought of some religious thinkers in India.SHAH WALI ULLAHIn the eighteenth century, the figure of ShahWali Ullah Dehlawi(1703–62) stands out as preeminent.The progressive collapseof central authority in Delhi caused him to plead with Muslimleaders in Rohilkhand and in south India to do something torestore order. In his anxiety to see a strong Muslim ruler, ShahWali Ullah even invited Ahmad Shah Abdali of Afghanistan toinvade and take over. He must have been pleased with the out-come of the Battle of Panipat in 1761, which resulted inAhmadShah’s victory over the Marathas and held out the hope of stablecentral government from Delhi. But he died the next year, andas we know, that battle did nothing to settle the question of cen-tral rule asAbdali returned toAfghanistan, leaving a power vac-uum in his wake. However, ShahWali Ullah is remembered chiefly for his con-tribution to religious rather than political matters. His father,Shaikh ‘Abd ur-Rahim (1644–1718), had established a sem-inary or madrasa, the Madrasa-i Rahimiyya, in Delhi, and thiswas where he spent his lifetime – as director of the school, asteacher, and as thinker and writer. His chief contribution toIslamic studies was to insist on the importance of the study of

THE MUSLIM RESPONSE 23hadith (pronounced hadis in Urdu), the traditions of theProphet, and to argue that the‘ulama had an obligation to studythe original sources (the Qur’an and hadith) and draw on allfour Sunni schools of law (madhhab, pl. madhahib) eclecticallyto make legal judgments. The four Sunni law schools (Shi‘i Muslims have three of theirown) came into being around the late tenth century. Namedafter their founders, they are geographically based, such thatdifferent parts of the Muslim world have come over time to beassociated with one or other of the four. In India, the predom-inant school is the Hanafi, named after Abu Hanifa of Iraq(d. 767).The schools are distinguished by minor differences ofjudgment between them. In this book, for example, we will seethe case of a scholar combining the judgments of two differentschools of law in a case relating to apostasy and marriage.However, most Indian Muslim scholars (including AhmadRiza), frowned upon such practice. The founding of the four law schools had the general effectof making it unnecessary for jurists to go directly to the sources(the Qur’an and the prophetic traditions), allowing themto rely instead on the judgments of the founding jurists onmajor issues. Muslim scholars metaphorically refer to thisdevelopment as the “closing of the gate of ijtihad,” or inde-pendent reasoning. Thus, once the medieval jurists hadjudged something to be forbidden or permitted, based on theguidance of the Qur’an and prophetic traditions, all that latergenerations of scholars had to do was to follow in theirfootsteps. They no longer had to consult the original sourcesthemselves. But while this was generally the case, in fact independentreasoning never ceased as new issues constantly arose, needingfresh interpretation and judgment by the ‘ulama. Shah WaliUllah contributed to Islamic reform in eighteenth-centuryIndia by reminding the Indian ‘ulama of their obligation to

24 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWImake legal judgments in light of the original sources, choosingbetween the judgments of the four schools when theydeemed this to be necessary, rather than following the one thatwas customary in their part of the world. “His espousal ofjurisprudential eclecticism combined with consultation ofQur’an and hadis clearly enhanced the responsibility of the‘ulama for interpreting the Law to their followers” (Metcalf,1982: 38). It is important to note, however, that this obliga-tion was limited to the learned, the khawass, to the exclusionof the ordinary (‘amm) believer. Most Muslims, includingmost‘ulama, were urged to follow Hanafi law exclusively; onlya few were encouraged to engage in ijtihad along the linesindicated. In Islamic terms, the study of hadith is part of the branch ofstudy known as manqulat, or the traditional sciences (from theArabic root nql, to transmit, hand down), in contrast with thema‘qulat or the “rational” sciences (cf.Arabic ‘aql, meaning rea-son, rationality) which include subjects such as philosophy.ShahWali Ullah’s espousal of the traditional sciences stands incontrast to other schools of religious scholars (includingAhmad Riza Khan) to be discussed shortly. In his view, therational sciences were a source of confusion and should beavoided.The study of hadith, on the other hand, would bringMuslims closer to the sources of their tradition and therebystrengthen and unite the community. Likewise, he encouragedthe ‘ulama to study the Qur’an directly as well, and to thisend he translated it from Arabic into Persian.At the time, thiswas an act of great courage which elicited much criticism fromthe ‘ulama. Shah Wali Ullah is also known for his contributions to amajor issue in sufism, namely, the theory of the unity of being(wahdat al-wujud) versus the unity of witness (wahdatal-shuhud).This debate had been ongoing among sufis in Indiasince the seventeenth century.The wujudi position is identified

THE MUSLIM RESPONSE 25with Ibn al-‘Arabi (d.1240), the famous Andalusian sufi of thethirteenth century. Ibn al-‘Arabi had argued that creation hasno empirical existence in and of itself, that it is but an aspect ofGod Himself. It follows logically from this positionthat human beings themselves are but an emanation of God,notindependent of Him. Critics of this theory, of which there weremany, argued that this position denies tawhid, the Oneness ofGod, for it makes humans the partners of God. Shah WaliUllah’s view on this subject was to argue that the two positionswere less at variance with one another than is commonlybelieved.“The whole universe is pervaded by a common exist-ence, he argued, an existence both immanent and transcen-dent, but beyond that existence is the Original Existence ofGod” (Metcalf, 1982: 40). However, ShahWali Ullah believedthat the subject was too subtle to be discussed publicly, and heurged caution in the matter.According to Metcalf, his espousalof the wujudi position led to its wide acceptance by later gener-ations of Indian sufis. Shah Wali Ullah also sought to reconcile Sunni and Shi‘iMuslims, at a time of increased Shi‘a influence in the regionalcourts atAwadh and Bengal. He venerated‘Ali, as did the Shi‘i,but held that the first two caliphates (those of Abu Bakr and‘Umar) were superior to the last two (those of ‘Uthman and‘Ali), because the Muslims had been politically united duringtheir rule. Although this attempt at bridge-building was notvery successful, Shah Wali Ullah’s achievements in otherrespects – his emphasis on hadith studies, his scholarlyoutput as an ‘alim, and his high attainments as a sufi – wereremarkable. Particularly important was his role in renewal ofthe law, as demonstrated by his emphasis on ijtihad. In the fol-lowing century, his work was continued by his four sons, espe-cially Shah ‘Abd ul-Aziz, whom the Ahl-e Sunnat regarded asthe Renewer of the thirteenth Islamic century.

26 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIFARANGI MAHALL: TRAINING EMPLOYEESFOR THE MUSLIM STATESWhile Shah Wali Ullah taught and wrote from his Madrasa-iRahimiyya in Delhi, another group of Sunni ‘ulama, known asthe Farangi Mahallis, were making their mark in Lucknow atthe same time. Their residence in Lucknow began when, in1695, EmperorAurangzeb granted the four sons of Mulla Qutbud-Din (d. 1692) the house of a European merchant (hence thename “Farangi Mahall,” or foreigner’s house) in recompense fortheir father’s murder and loss of the family’s library to arson. Inthe eighteenth century the third son, Mulla Nizam ud-Din,devised a new madrasa curriculum which came to be known asthe Dars-i Nizami. Madrasas all over India gradually adoptedthis syllabus. The madrasa at Farangi Mahall became a centerfor learning on a par with the Madrasa-i Rahimiyya. Unlike the latter, the Farangi Mahall madrasa focused onma‘qulat or rational studies. Francis Robinson, who has madean exhaustive study of the Farangi Mahall ‘ulama, shows indetail the differences between the curricula followed by thetwo madrasas. Where the Madrasa-i Rahimiyya emphasizedhadith, the Farangi Mahall curriculum emphasized grammar,logic, and philosophy (Robinson, 2001: 46–53). The FarangiMahall ‘ulama believed that knowledge of these sciences was“crucial to the study of legal theory and jurisprudence (usulal-fiqh) and of theology (‘ilm al-kalam), and expertise in themhelped make many ... other disciplines accessible” (Zaman,2002: 76). They also de-emphasized the study of sufism. Thereason, Robinson explains, was that the ‘ulama at FarangiMahall were seeking to train future lawyers, judges and administrators ... [whose] skills were in demand from the increasingly sophisticated and complex bureaucratic systems of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century India. ...The emphasis of the [curriculum] on training

THE MUSLIM RESPONSE 27 capable administrators for Muslim states rather than specialists in “religion” per se may explain the dropping of mysticism from the course. Knowledge of Sufism was not what trainee administrators wanted. (Robinson, 2001: 53)In practice, the curriculum was flexible within the overallframework initially set out by Mulla Nizam ud-Din. Zamanwrites, Only in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and ... possibly in response to a certain measure of influence exercised byWestern styles and institutions of education in British India, did the Dars-i Nizami acquire a more or less standardized form that was widely adopted as a “curriculum” by madrasas of the Indian subcontinent. Madrasas have continued, however, to differ in their versions of this curriculum, which has scarcely been impervious to change even after its standardization in the late nineteenth century. (Zaman, 2002: 68)The point that the curriculum of the Dars-i Nizami was morerather than less flexible before British influence made itself felt isinteresting and worth noting. (It also accords with what histor-ians know of a host of other Indian institutions, such as casteitself, which became relatively “fixed” and inflexible in practicein the later nineteenth century.) However, if the purpose of the Dars-i Nizami was to trainMuslim bureaucrats to work in the Indian Muslim states in thelate eighteenth century, the political instability of the Muslimsuccessor states made the princes rather undependable aspatrons for prospective qadis ( judges in Islamic law courts) ormuftis (‘ulama qualified to issue fatawa [sing. fatwa], juridicalresponses).The same may be said for those whose skills lay inwriting poetry, in the musical arts, or even in the military, for

28 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIthat matter. Metcalf writes as follows about the difficultiesFarangi Mahallis encountered at this time: Wherever there was a prince, the Farangi Mahallis sought positions under him.Thus in the mid-eighteenth century ... three members of the family joined princely armies.The travels, the varieties of employment, the violent deaths of at least one member in each of the first four generations of the family – all this suggests the difficulties facing the family in maintaining the pattern of dependence on princes. (Metcalf, 1982: 32)NINETEENTH-CENTURY REFORMMOVEMENTSThe nineteenth-century reformists, of which there were manygroups, shared in the broad set of goals indicated earlier,namely, better knowledge of the textual sources of Islam(mainly through the creation of new seminaries for the trainingof scholars), greater adherence to religious precepts by indi-vidual believers, and a close modeling of their lives on that ofthe Prophet. However, they differed in significant ways. Basedon their attitude toward British rule, we can distinguish threebroad groups: the vast majority (Shah ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz, theDeobandis, the Ahl-e Hadith, the Nadwat al-‘Ulama, theAhmadis) were relatively uninterested in participating in theopportunities being opened up by British rule, although mostof them accepted it without active protest. Of this group, theAhl-e Hadith were the least accommodating toward the Britishwhile the Nadwa and the Ahmadis were the most so. Thejihadists (Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi and his followers), on theother hand, were actively opposed not only to British rule butto all forms of non-Muslim rule.They sought to restore Muslim

THE MUSLIM RESPONSE 29rule through political means, fighing the Sikhs in the Panjab,and the British in northwest India generally.The Faraizi move-ment in Bengal falls in between the two, in that although theFaraizis did not declare a jihad against the British, they boy-cotted British-run institutions and refused to pay land taxes.Finally, the accommodationists (Sayyid Ahmad Khan)embraced British rule as a positive good from which IndianMuslims stood to benefit. Ahmad Riza belongs to the first group, though his story isnot addressed until the following chapter.Shah‘Abd ul-‘AzizAfter ShahWali Ullah’s death in 1762, his eldest son Shah‘Abdul-‘Aziz (d. 1824) took over the management of the Madrasa-iRahimiyya. Shah ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz followed in the footsteps of hisillustrious father by studying and promoting hadith scholar-ship, but widened the circle of those he addressed through thenumber of fatawa he wrote for individual Muslims who soughthis advice.The subject matter of the fatawa ranged widely fromdetails regarding the proper way to perform the ritual prayer torelations with Shi‘i Muslims, and to whether it was legitimateto seek employment under the British.The increased import-ance of fatwa writing was a direct result of the loss of politicalpower by Muslims, which led to a greater need for personalguidance by the ‘ulama, now that they no longer had state-based shari‘a courts. One fatwa by Shah‘Abd ul-‘Aziz has been particularly com-mented upon by later historians on account of its politicalimplications. In 1803, he was asked whether it was permissiblefor a Muslim to give and take interest under British rule.Thedate is important, for Delhi had been occupied by the East IndiaCompany that year.Would he take foreign occupation and thesuspension of religious law in parts of the country to mean that

30 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIthe normal rules of conduct in other spheres of Muslim life nolonger applied either? His answer to this question was equivo-cal. In a land ruled by Muslims (termed dar ul-Islam in Islamiclaw), interest (sud, or, in Arabic, riba) is prohibited. However,in the troubled circumstances of the early nineteenth century,many Muslims had fallen on hard times and were deeply indebt. If Shah ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz were to judge on the basis of theIslamic sources of law (Qur’an, hadith, and the principles ofanalogy [qiyas], and community consensus or ijma) that thelegal status of British-controlled territory had changed (or, inIslamic terms, that it was dar ul-harb rather than dar ul-Islam),the prohibition on taking and receiving interest could be tem-porarily suspended. Shah ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz’s response to the question was that inDelhi at that time, “the Imam al-Muslimin [the leader of theMuslims, perhaps a reference to the Mughal emperor] wieldsno authority, while the decrees of the Christian leaders areobeyed without fear [of retribution]. ... From here to Calcuttathe Christians are in complete control” (Metcalf, 1982: 46; myinterpolation in square brackets).While he did not directly saythat the legal status of Delhi had changed from the abode ofIslam to that of war, he implied that it had, so that he could beunderstood as tacitly permitting the questioner to engage ininterest-bearing transactions without incurring sin (Mushirul-Haqq, 1969). Or, to put it another way,“‘Abdu’l-‘Aziz thusappears to have wanted Muslims to behave politically as if thesituation were daru’l-islam, for he gave no call to militaryaction [against the British], yet he wanted them to recognizethat the organization of the state was no longer in Muslimhands” (Metcalf, 1982: 51). This fatwa is particularly interesting because of the way ithas been interpreted by Muslims in the twentieth century. Ithas been read – by Muslim nationalists as well as Muslimnationalist historians – as an endorsement of jihad (holy war)

THE MUSLIM RESPONSE 31against the British.Their reasoning is that if it was no longer asin to take on interest-bearing debt, it could only mean that thecountry was under non-Muslim rule, which in turn meant thatholy war was justified against it.However,Metcalf suggests thatShah ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz may even have opposed the jihad that waslaunched shortly before his death. At any rate, he is known tohave encouraged his nephew and son-in-law ‘Abd ul-Hayy toaccept a job offered to him by the East India Company – furtherevidence, it would seem, that he did not endorse jihad.However that may be, a jihad movement was launched in 1830by Sayyid Ahmad of Rae Bareli (a town in Awadh).To him wemay now turn.Sayyid Ahmad BarelwiSayyid Ahmad Barelwi (not to be confused with Ahmad RizaKhan Barelwi, the subject of this book) was born in 1786 to afamily that claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad.Among Muslims, such families (known by the title “Sayyids”)enjoy high status by virtue of their ancestry. He traveled as ayoung man from his hometown to Lucknow in search of work,and then to Delhi, where he studied under Shah‘Abd ul-Qadir(Shah ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz’s brother) of the Madrasa-i Rahimiyyafrom 1805 to 1811.Thereafter he left for central India, wherehe served as a cavalryman for one Amir Khan who worked forthe Marathas. In 1818, this Amir Khan was “forced to come toterms with the British who [awarded] him the principality ofTonk and styled him a nawwab” (Metcalf, 1982: 54). Sayyid Ahmad then returned to Delhi the second time, nowas a religious reformer determined to bring about greaterobservance of the shari‘a. Some prominent younger membersof the Shah Wali Ullah family accepted him as their spiritualleader (sufi shaikh). His ideas are set out in two influentialbooks by his close associate Muhammad Isma‘il (d. 1831).

32 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIEntitled Taqwiyat al-Iman (Strengthening the Faith) and Siratal-Mustaqim (The Straight Path), the first was published inPersian, but soon translated into Urdu, while the second wasactually written in Urdu. The central theme of the Taqwiyatal-Iman is the claim that the Muslims of the time had deviatedfrom the principle of tawhid, strict monotheism, by a numberof objectionable practices representing a form of shirk (associa-tionism or polytheism, the opposite of tawhid). He dividesthem into three main groups, associating some with God’sknowledge (ishrak fi’l‘ilm), others with God’s power (ishrak fi’ltasarruf ), and others with God’s worship (ishrak fi’l ‘ibada),giving examples illustrating each type. Thus, belief in inter-cession is cited as an example of association of others withGod’s power. A host of popular practices, such as prostrationbefore a tomb, going on pilgrimage to a holy person’s tomb andmaking food offerings in honor of the deceased, and the like arecited as examples of the third kind of shirk. However, SayyidAhmad did not condemn sufism per se, only its perceivedexcesses. In addition, he also promoted practices which hedeemed Islamic, such as the remarriage of widows (the upper-caste Hindu prohibition on the remarriage of widows had noscriptural sanction in the Qur’an). He even helped to bringabout the remarriage of women he knew. The second phase of Sayyid Ahmad’s career was overtlypolitical, for he decided in the early 1820s to wage a jihadagainst the new non-Muslim rulers of India (first the Sikhs inPanjab, then the British). He and his associates planned for itcarefully. First SayyidAhmad went on the pilgrimage to Mecca,gathering followers along the way from his hometown in RaeBareli to Calcutta, where a number of them boarded a ship forthe long journey.After his arrival in Arabia, he had his follow-ers swear to follow him in the jihad to come.The model in theseand other activities was the Prophet, who had led his followersto victory against the pagan Meccans from their base in Medina

THE MUSLIM RESPONSE 33many centuries before. The oath of loyalty had a doublesignificance: at once a spiritual tie between master and disciple(and a promise to abide by certain principles of behaviorwhich distinguished the devotee from the larger societyaround him), it was also a political act, presaging the comingjihad. His followers regarded him as the mujaddid (Renewer)of the new (thirteenth) Islamic century. As we shall see insubsequent chapters, the Ahl-e Sunnat movement disputedthis claim. After his return to India in 1823, Sayyid Ahmad touredthe north for two years, organizing and making preparations.He proceeded in a westerly direction, intending to wagejihad from what is today Afghanistan. The shari‘a stipulates(following the Prophet’s example) that jihad be waged from aMuslim-ruled territory adjacent to a non-Muslim one.Accordingly, the target of the jihad movement was the Panjab,then ruled by the Sikh leader Ranjit Singh rather than theBritish. In 1831, after a series of military successes, SayyidAhmad was killed along with six hundred others as a result ofskirmishes with local Afghans who resented the reforms(and taxes) sought to be imposed on them. Leaderless, themovement lingered on for many years in northwestern Indiabut finally petered out in the 1860s.The Fara’izi MovementA very different Islamic reform movement, that of the Fara’izisin Bengal, unfolded during the 1820s through to the 1860s.Thename derives from the word farz (Arabic fard; plural fara’iz orfara’id), or duties of Islam. The leader of this movementwas Haji Shari‘at Ullah (d. 1840), who returned to Bengal in1821 after living in the Hijaz in western Arabia for manyyears. Dismayed by what he saw as the laxity of practice

34 AHMAD RIZA KHAN BARELWIamong Bengali weavers and peasants, he preached renewedcommitment to the duties of Islam (daily prayer, the Ramadanfast, and the pilgrimage, among other things). Shari‘at Ullahalso believed that sufism should be limited to the few, for itsesoteric teachings were likely to be misunderstood by ordinarybelievers. His teachings have been compared to those of theWahhabis, whose ideas were familiar to Shari‘at Ullah from hislong stay in Arabia. Rural Bengal at this time was in the midst of a severe eco-nomic depression brought about by the Permanent Settlementof 1793, which changed landholding patterns and renderedmany peasants landless. The introduction of British factory-made cloth at low prices was also driving Indian weavers out ofbusiness and forcing them on to the land.These circumstanceshelp us understand the anti-British aspects of the movement,for Shari‘at Ullah ruled that in the absence of functioning qazisand given the non-implementation of shari‘a law, Bengal wasdar ul-harb (as some interpreted Delhi to have become after itsoccupation by the British in 1803), and that the congregationalnoontime prayer on Fridays was therefore not permissible. Forhim the suspension of religious law in lands under British con-trol meant that the normal rules of conduct in other spheres oflife no longer applied either. Under the leadership of his son,Dudhu Miyan, Fara’izis were urged to refuse to pay British landtaxes.They also boycotted the British courts, settling their dif-ferences themselves. The movement was highly successful inforging a sense of unity and self-help among poor BengaliMuslims for a while. However, British reprisals, and the lack ofstrong leadership after Dudhu Miyan’s death in the 1860s led tothe movement’s decline (Metcalf, 1982: 68–70;Ahmad Khan,1965).

THE MUSLIM RESPONSE 35The Deobandi‘UlamaIn 1867, a new seminary (madrasa) called the Dar al-‘Ulumwas founded in the small town of Deoband, about eighty milesnorth of Delhi. It was a new kind of madrasa: Its founders, emulating the British bureaucratic style for educational institutions, ... acquired classrooms and a central library. It was run by a professional staff, and its students were admitted for a fixed course of study and required to take examinations for which prizes were awarded at a yearly convocation. Gradually an informal system of affiliated colleges emerged. ...The school was, in fact, so unusual that the annual printed report, itself an innovation, made continuing efforts to explain the organization of the novel system. (Metcalf, 1982: 93–94)While this may sound fairly unremarkable to the modernreader, it has to be seen in the context of madrasa education atthe time.Traditional madrasas consisted of a building attachedto a mosque.The students did not have separate classrooms orlibraries, and they studied individual texts taught one-to-one,or in a small group, by a single teacher. The texts taughtdepended on the capacity of the student.When the student hadmastered the texts, he received a certificate (sanad) from histeacher and could go on to study more advanced books if he sowished from the same or a different teacher. There were noexaminations. The funding of the madrasa at Deoband was different aswell. It was financed by private contributions from the resi-dents of Deoband and other well-wishers, not by an endow-ment (waqf ), as was customary. Nor was it supported by thepatronage of princely courts (as was the Madrasa-i ‘Aliyya atRampur, for instance). Intellectually, the ‘ulama at Deoband had much the sameperspective as the Madrasa-i Rahimiyya in Delhi and Shah‘Abd