170 Claudia Preckel
Muḥammadiyya^23 (The Muḥammadan Path), undertook several mili-
tary actions against the Sikh occupation of the Punjab. Later, the Indian
nationalist movement perceived their fight against the Sikhs as a fight
against the British colonial power. Many Indian Muslims interpreted
the activities of the Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya as harbingers of the
Great Revolt (“Mutiny”) of 1857.^24 The degree to which the reforma-
tive Ḥanbalī thinking of late medieval Damascus scholars influenced
the Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya remains to be analysed.
2.1. The Role of Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī
and the Ṭarīqa-yi MuḥammadiyyaThe Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya leadership network consisted of a net-
work of family members and disciples of the famous reformer and
Hadith scholar Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī (d. 1762).^25 His madrasa,
vanished into the unseen (ghayb). For an Urdu biography, see Mehr, Ghulām
Rasūl: Sayyid Aḥmad Shahīd, Lahore n.d; ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ, Chawharī: Taʿārif-i
Jamāʿat-i mujāhidīn. Lahore n. d. For a biography in Arabic, see Nadwī, Abū
al-Ḥasan ʿAlī: Sīrat Sayyid Aḥmad Shahīd, Lucknow 1986. Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī
Nadwī (d. 1999), Rector of the Islamic university of the Nadwat ul-ʿUlamāʾ in
Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh), claimed to have both family and scholarly relations
to Sayyid Aḥmad. On him, see also n. 65. All the Urdu biographic accounts
mentioned are rather hagiographic.
23 On the role of the Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya movement, see Pearson, Harlan
O.: Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-century India, New Delhi 2008.
24 The “Mutiny” of 1857 is often regarded as a forerunner of the struggle for inde-
pendence against the British. Following a common explanation, the “Mutiny”
was a rebellion of native soldiers of the East India Company, called sepoys (from
Persian: sipāhī, soldier). After rumours spread that the rifles and cartridges of
the East India Company were greased with lard (pig fat), Hindu and Muslim
soldiers started riots. The fights, which concentrated mainly on the plain of
the Ganges, lasted for several months. The city of Lucknow was besieged by
mutineers, and the British had to abandon the Residency, which was ultimately
destroyed. In her book on 19th-century Delhi, Pernau gave several interpreta-
tions by Indian Muslims of the “Mutiny”, see Pernau, Margrit: Bürger mit Tur-
ban, Göttingen 2008, pp. 185–193.
25 Like almost all reformist movements in Indian Islam, the Ahl-i Ḥadīth regard
Shāh Walī Allāh as a forefather of their movement, they even called him “the
proof of God on earth” (ḥujjat allāh fī al-arḍ). For a biography of him from the
Ahl-i Ḥadīth perspective, see Nawshahrawī, Tarājim, pp. 135–154; Siyālkoṯī,
Taʾrīkh-i Ahl-i ḥadīth, pp. 411–416; Sayf, Taḥrīk-i Ahl-i ḥadīth, pp. 181–209;
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Abjad al-ʿulūm, Lahore 1403/1983, here vol. 3, pp. 241–
- For biographies on Shāh Walī Allāh, see Jalbani, Ghulam Husain: Teachings
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