Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview and the Challenge of Modernity 499
ertheless they were definitely not influenced by the Najdīs. Their
undeniable common traits were due to the inspiration from the same
sources. Whereas leading figures of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth like Ṣiddīq Ḥasan
Khān (1832–1890), Muḥammad Ḥusayn Batʾālwī (1840–1920) and
Thanāʾ Allāh Amritsarī (1867–1948) denied any relationship between
their movement and the followers of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
until the 1920s,^20 members of the movement who were less eager to
please the British showed no reluctance to stress the affinity: ʿAbd
al-Wāḥid and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ghaznawī from an outstanding family of
Ahl-i Ḥadīth scholars of Afghan origin in Amritsar and Delhi were the
first to print works of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb^21 whereas Bashīr
Aḥmad Sahaswānī (d. 1908), a scholar from the Eastern Gangetic plain
published an apology of the Wahhabis in 1908.^22 In addition a number
of young Wahhabis studied at madrasas of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth.^23
Quite early the Ahl-i Ḥadīth made use of the printing press and it
seems that their share in the Muslim printing activities continued to
exceed their percentage of the population by far.^24 This was at least in
part due to the fact that many of the early Ahl-i Ḥadīth came from the
urban upper classes of North Indian Muslim society, and therefore the
rate of literacy among them was above average. In areas where their
followers hailed from a more modest, sometimes rural, background
their emphasis on religious learning had a positive influence on the
20 Ibid., pp. 523–524.
21 Ghaznawī, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm: Majmūʿat al-tawḥīd, Delhi
n. d., title page (reproduced in Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, p. 644); Bhaṭī,
Muḥammad Isḥāq: Nuqūsh-i ʿaẓmat-i rafta, Lahore 1996, p. 67.
22 Al-Sahaswānī, Muḥammad Bashīr: Ṣiyānat al-insān ʿan waswasat al-shaykh
Daḥlān, Riyadh 1975. In Arabic sources the nisba is usually vocalized as
al-Sahsuwānī, but the Uttar Pradesh town (qaṣba) it refers to is called Sahaswān.
For an explanation of the importance of these Mulism towns, see Preckel in this
volume.
23 Bihārī, al-Ḥayāt baʿd al-mamāt, p. 265; Salafī, Munīr Aḥmad: Ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd
al-Mannān Wāzīrābādī, Lahore 1994, p. 27; Schulze, Reinhard: Islamischer
Internationalismus im 20. Jahrhundert. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der
Islamischen Weltliga, Leiden 1990, p. 133, n. 416; Wasella, Jürgen: Vom Fun-
damentalisten zum Atheisten. Die Dissidentenkarriere des ʿAbdallāh al-Qaṣīmī
(1907–1996), Gotha 1997, pp. 34–35.
24 Churchill, Edward: Printed Literature of the Punjabi Muslims. 1860–1900, in:
W. Eric Gustafson and Kenneth W. Jones (eds.): Sources on Punjab History,
Delhi 1975, pp. 276–282; in this respect they continued what the Ṭarīqa-yi
Muḥammadiyya had begun: Pearson, Islamic Reform, pp. 101–112, 117–126;
Gaborieau, Late Persian, Early Urdu.
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