Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview and the Challenge of Modernity 497
committed to Sufi concepts. Due to this intellectual influence he did
not subscribe to anthropomorphist concepts of God. Instead he dis-
tinguished strictly between the physical world (ʿālam al-ajsād) and
the spiritual world (ʿālam al-arwāḥ) which can not be aptly described
with categories usually applied to the former.^10 After his death his suc-
cessors seem not to have been particularly interested in the teachings
of Ibn Taymiyya. His son ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz even denounced him as an
extremist.^11
Walī Allāh’s grandson Shāh Ismāʿīl founded the Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥam-
madiyya, which called for the purge of “non-Islamic” accretions. He
allied himself with Sayyid Aḥmad Barelwī (1786–1831), a former mer-
cenary in the army of the princely state of Tonk (Rajasthan), which
was disbanded by the British. They and their followers embarked
for the Hajj in 1821.^12 On this occasion they passed through Yemen
where at that time Muḥammad Ibn ʿAlī al-Shawkānī (1760–1834) was
the leading scholar and a figure of considerable political influence.^13
Shāh Ismāʿīl and Sayyid Aḥmad returned to India and migrated from
the territory ruled by the East India Company to the no man’s land
al-Maqbalī saw no problem in studying with Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī; Nafiʿ, Basheer
M.: Taṣawwuf and Reform in Pre-Modern Islamic Culture. In Search of Ibrāhīm
al-Kūrāni, in: Die Welt des Islams 42 (2002), pp. 307–355, here pp. 334–342.
10 Baljon, Religion and Thought, pp. 21–23.
11 Dihlawī, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: Fatāwā-i ʿazīzī, Delhi 1311/1893, vol. 2, pp. 71–72.
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; Pearson, Islamic Reform; Gaborieau, Marc: A
Nineteenth Century Indian “Wahhabi” Tract Against the Cult of Muslim Saints,
in: Troll, Muslim Shrines in India, pp. 198–256; Gaborieau, Marc: Late Persian,
Early Urdu. The Case of “Wahhabi” Literature (1818–1857), in: Françoise Del-
voye (ed.): Confluence of Culture. French Contributions to Indo-Persian Stud-
ies, Delhi 1994, pp. 170–196; Gaborieau, Marc: Criticizing the Sufis. The Debate
in Early Nineteenth Century India, in: Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke
(eds.): Islamic Mysticism Contested. Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and
Polemics, Leiden 1999, pp. 452–467; Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 103–
108; see Preckel in this volume. Various South Asian publications suffer from
major politically motivated distortions. Whereas most pre-World War I texts
aim at dispelling the suspicion that the Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya was “sedi-
tious” most post-World War I publications portray them a forerunners of either
Indian nationalism or Muslim separatism. This trend was initiated in 1940 by
one of the foremost Muslim activists in the Indian National Congress: Sindhī,
ʿUbayd Allāh: Shāh Walī Allāh awr un kī siyāsī taḥrīk, Lahore 1965.
13 Haykel, Bernard: Revival and Reform in Islam. The Legacy of Muhammad
al-Shawkānī, Cambridge 2003.
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