Screening Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Library 219
The personal networks of Ahl-i Ḥadīth members became a topic of the
Muslim discourse of those days: while the Ahl-i ḥadīth’s opponents
accused them of sedition and fanaticism, some scholars of the move-
ment, like Muḥammad Bashīr Sahsawānī, did not care about this and
supported the Wahhabi’s claims about tawḥīd.
The connection with Wahhabi circles that some modern Ahl-i
Ḥadīth aspired to was not yet a reality in Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s lifetime and
developed only some decades later. The Ahl-i Ḥadīth and the Wahhabis
share a common interest in their curricula, but this does not automati-
cally imply that the Ahl-i Ḥadīth are “Indian Wahhabis”. Although
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan placed a considerable number of Ḥanbalī books in his
library – he is neither a “staunch Ḥanbalī” nor a “committed Wah-
habi”. The lack of Wahhabi literature in the narrow sense in Ṣiddīq
Ḥasan’s library is quite astonishing. His publishing and manuscript-
purchasing strategies provide no evidence for the reproach that he was
“a staunch Wahhabi”. Hence, the most important influence must be
somewhere else. His literary contributions, however, paved the way
for the spread of Ḥanbalī thoughts on the Indian subcontinent. The
most interesting aspect of Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s reception of Ḥanbalī books
is that he introduced the Yemenite tradition of Hadith studies to India
and thus (indirectly) propagated works of Ibn Taymiyya and other
important Ḥanbalī scholars. But this gradually reduced the importance
of the earlier Ahl-i Ḥadīth’s focus on al-Shawkānī and the role of the
descendants of Ḥusayn b. Muḥsin in Bhopal, for the movement at the
end of the 20th century, so that the erroneous impression of a direct
Wahhabi-Ahl-i Ḥadīth alliance could take centre stage. In India the
works of the early scholars of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth are almost completely
neglected. However, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s Arabic titles are often reprinted
in Salafi publishing houses of Beirut or Riyadh. By this means, Ṣiddīq
Ḥasan’s aim to popularize al-Shawkānī’s books, became achieved.
This also means that Ḥanbalī literature reaches an Arabic readership
through the reception of an Indian author of the 19th-century.
The book is preserved in the Central Library/Bhopal until the present day. Also
see Preckel, Islamische Bildungsnetzwerke, pp. 510–526.Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University
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