Screening Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Library 169
Ḥasan Khān explicitly noted every book, whether he bought a print-
ed copy or a manuscript. He also mentioned the place of publication.
Thus, it is easy to assess which books the Nawwāb possessed. After
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s death in 1890, his sons transferred the complete
library from Bhopal to Lucknow, where it is kept in a room of its own.
So far, only parts of the library could be compared to the list in Silsilat
al-ʿasjad, which, however, gives a detailed account of Ḥanbalī literature
in 19th-century India.
2. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Ascent to Power
and Indian Influences
Sayyid Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, the most famous of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth
founders and its most prominent figurehead, was born into a family
with a strong Sunni reformist orientation. His father Sayyid Awlād
Ḥasan Khān (d. 1837)^21 had converted from Shiism to Sunnism and
later became a supporter of the reformist movement of Sayyid Aḥmad
Barēlwī and Shāh Muḥammad Ismāʿīl “Shahīd” (both martyred in
1831).^22 The latter movement, commonly known as the Ṭarīqa-yi
21 For a biography of Sayyid Awlād Ḥasan as a supporter of the Ṭarīqa-yi
Muḥammadiyya, see Nawshahrawī, Abū Yaḥyā Imām: Tarājim-i ʿulamāʾ-i
ḥadīth-i Hind, Lahore 1992, pp. 277–311.
22 The two leaders shared a reformist orientation before they started their so-
called jihad. They belonged to the inner circle of students of the family of the
famous reformer Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī (d. 1762, see below). In 1816, they
started a journey through the cities of Benares, Lucknow, Rampur and Bareilly,
preaching and teaching. In common accounts of the movement, Sayyid Aḥmad
and Muḥammad Ismāʿīl are reported to have met some Afghan scholars in Ram-
pur, who told them about the atrocities of the Sikhs against the Muslims in
the Sikh-dominated areas of the Punjab. Hearing about this, Sayyid Aḥmad
and Muḥammad Ismāʿīl decided to call for a jihad. First they travelled to Mec-
ca, where their idea for a jihad is reported to have received further impetus
through contacts to Arabian Wahhabi scholars. After their return to India, they
started another preaching and missionary tour throughout India, where they
received financial and military support. Finally, 7,000 fighters calling them-
selves mujāhidūn set out for military actions against the Sikh. They had to go
to Afghanistan first and later reached Peshawar through the Khyber Pass. After
initial military successes in Akora (1826) and other cities of the Punjab, their
troops were defeated in Balakot in 1832. Sayyid Aḥmad and Muḥammad Ismāʿīl
were both killed, but their corpses were never found. This nourished the theo-
ries that Sayyid Aḥmad might have been the mahdī (the rightly guided one) who
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