Screening Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Library 165
b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1787). This was mainly because the Wahhabis
held the same (negative) view of the veneration of saints and Sufis. A
second important reproach against the Ahl-i Ḥadīth was that they
propagated jihad against the British. The British authorities took up
this opinion and used the term “Wahhabi” as a synonym for seditious
activities against British rule in 19th-century India.^11 This allegation is
not totally unfounded, because there were actually some Ahl-i Ḥadīth
who, well into the 20th century, tried to wage jihad from the Afghan
border. Whereas the majority of Ahl-i Ḥadīth did not justify a jihad
against the British, a small group of them around Wilāyat ʿAlī (d. 1853)
and his brothers, ʿInāyat ʿAlī ʿAbd Allāh (d. 1908) and Farḥat Ḥusayn
from Ṣādiqpūr, a quarter of Patna, continued their armed struggle. In
their madrasa, which was one of the first Ahl-i Ḥadīth institutions
of higher learning, they taught Hadith, collected money and recruited
mujāhidīn for their active fight. Although Farḥat Ḥusayn visited Bho-
pal several times in the early 1860s, he did not succeed in winning the
Bēgum or other Bhopalese Muslims for their struggle.^12
At the end of the 19th century, the local dynasty of Bhopal (r. ca. 1709–
1949) in particular was closely associated with such allegedly Wahhabi
tendencies. As in other Muslim principalities of India, e. g. Awadh, Ram-
pur or Tonk, the (male) ruler of Bhopal was called Nawwāb. The Arabic
word nawwāb is the plural of nāʾib (deputy). The word “nabob” derives
from this term and came to be used for a prince, a deputy or simply a
governor. The Nawwāb of the Central Indian Muslim principality of
Bhopal^13 – Sayyid Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān al-Qannawjī (1832–1890) – is con-
11 In his famous work Our Indian Muslims, are They Bound in Conscience to
Rebel Against the Queen?, Delhi 1969, the famous British civil servant Sir Wil-
liam W. Hunter (d. 1900) tried to figure out the reasons for the Mutiny of 1857
and claimed that the Indian “Wahhabi movement” could be held responsible
for it. Hunter further listed “seditious works” written by the “Indian Wah-
habis”, among which several Ahl-i Ḥadīth works are found (ibid., pp. 34–36).
The statement that an “Indian Wahhabi movement” existed and was constantly
planning a jihad against the British Government was taken up by Qeyamud-
din Ahmad in the work The Wahhabi Movement in India, Calcutta 1966, esp.
pp. 305–306; Titus, Murray T.: Indian Islam, Delhi 1979, p. 186, also called the
Ahl-i Ḥadīth the “Indian Wahhabis”.
12 Bari, M. A.: A Nineteenth Century Muslim Reform Movement in India, in:
George Makdisi (ed.): Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Hamilton A. R.
Gibb, Leiden 1965, pp. 85–102, here pp. 85–88; Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī,
pp. 138, 442–448.
13 Bhopal ranked second among the principalities with a Muslim ruler after
Hyderabad. The state was renowned neither for its propagation of Islam in all
Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University
Authenticated