Screening Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Library 171
named Madrasa-yi Raḥīmiyya^26 in the South of the Jama Masjid in
Delhi, became a meeting place for people who cherished a reformist
orientation in the interpretation of Islam. Concerning the reception
of Ḥanbalī literature in India, Shāh Walī Allāh had come across works
of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim during his pilgrimage to Mecca
and Medina. In the wake of his stay in the Hijaz, Shāh Walī Allāh had
met Abū Ṭāhir al-Kurdī al-Madanī (d. 1733).^27 Shāh Walī Allāh studied
Hadith with him and was also initiated into the Naqshbandiyya order.
Later the Ahl-i Ḥadīth considered Abū Ṭāhir to be a fierce defender of
Ibn Taymiyya.^28 For example, the likewise famous Salafi Khayr al-Dīn
al-Ālūsī (d. 1899) of Baghdad wrote on al-Kūrānī:
He was a Salafī who used to be a defender of shaykh al-islām Ibn Taymiyya
by refuting the terminology of the Sufis, who apparently aimed at incar-
nation (ḥulūl), unification (ittiḥād) or consubstantiality (laʿīna) of the
human soul with God.^29of Shāh Walīyullāh of Delhi, Lahore 1967; Baljon, Johannes M. Simon: Religion
and Thought of Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī. 1703–62, Leiden 1986.
26 Named after Shāh Walī Allāh’s father ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (d. 1718). For a biography
of ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, see Ḥasanī, ʿAbd al-Ḥayy: Nuzhat al-khawāṭir wa-bahjat
al-masāmiʿ wal-nawāẓir, Hyderabad 1402/1981, here part 6, p. 146.
27 Abū Ṭāhir was the son of the famous scholar Ibrāhīm al-Kurānī (d. 1690), who
became extremely influential for networks of scholars in South East Asia. On
Kūrānī, see Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Abjad al-ʿulūm, part 3, p. 167; Nafi, Basheer:
Taṣawwuf and Reform in Pre-Modern Islamic Culture. In Search of Ibrāhīm
al-Kurānī, in: Die Welt des Islams 42 (2002), pp. 307–355. On Abū Ṭāhir, see
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Abjad al-ʿulūm, part 3, pp. 168–169. He was a renowned
scholar of the Shāfiʿī school of law.
28 Sayf, Taḥrīk-i Ahl-i ḥadīth, p. 193.
29 Al-Ālūsī, Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn: Jalā al-ʿaynayn fī muḥākamat al-Aḥmadayn
(Clearance of the Eyes on Trying the Two Aḥmads), Cairo 1980, defending Ibn
Taymiyya against his opponents, quoted by Sayf, Taḥrīk-i Ahl-i ḥadīth, p. 193.
Al-Ālūsī and Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān never met personally, but they exchanged sev-
eral letters in which they provided each other with licences to teach (ijāzāt)
several works on Hadith (on such licences, see Vayda, George: Idjāza, in EI^2 ,
vol. 3 (1971), pp. 1020–1030). Further, Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn was allegedly very
fond of Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s publications in general. He asked the Nawwāb to spend
money to publish the tafsīr of his – al-Ālūsī’s – father Abū al-Thanā Shihāb
al-Dīn (d. 1854). Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān indeed financed publication of this work,
titled Rūḥ al-maʿānī (The Soul of Meaning), in India. Later, he also paid for the
publication of Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn’s Jalā al-ʿaynayn in Cairo. Some copies
of the Jalā al-ʿaynayn contain the letters between Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn and
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān. The most important of these was a fatwa that al-Ālūsī had
requested from Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān concerning the “binding the heart” (rābiṭa)
between a Sufi master and his disciple (murīd) of the Naqshbandiyya. Ṣiddīq
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