172 Claudia Preckel
This quotation of al-Ālūsī, which the Ahl-i Ḥadīth often mention,
implies that Abū Ṭāhir shared his father’s critical views of Sufism and
thereby constructed a line of continuity of thought from Ibn Taymiyya
to Shāh Walī Allāh and the Ahl-i Ḥadīth. Abū Ṭāhir’s is also said to
have introduced Shāh Walī Allāh to the literature of Ibn Taymiyya. It
may have been under his influence that Shāh Walī Allāh brought some
manuscripts of Ibn Taymiyya’s works to India, where they were later
extensively commented upon. After his Hajj in 1731, Shāh Walī Allāh
is said to have developed an opposition to some Sufi practices and to
the intermingling of Hindu ceremonies with Muslim rituals. But one
of his most important teachings was the focus on the traditional trans-
mitted sciences (manqūlāt) in the Madrasa-yi Raḥīmiyya in Delhi. The
curriculum of this madrasa changed significantly after Shāh Walī Allāh
inherited the post of director (mudīr) from his father. From that time
(ca. 1733) onwards, disciplines like the recitation and interpretation of
the Koran, Hadith or Islamic jurisprudence were more often taught
than disciplines associated with philosophy (falsafa) or logic (manṭiq).
In his major work, Ḥujjat Allāh al-bāligha (The Conclusive Argument
from God),^30 Shāh Walī Allāh stressed the importance of Hadith stud-
ies, which he considered the most important discipline of all. He con-
sidered exact knowledge of relevant Hadith was indispensable for the
scholar because he was convinced that the disciplines of Hadith and
fiqh were interwoven. Regarding Shāh Walī Allāh’s attitudes on Islamic
jurisprudence, he clearly claimed “making [judgements] according to
the ḥadīth” (ʿamal bil-ḥadīth).^31 He thought that only the most reliable
Ḥasan Khān, although himself initiatied into the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidi-
yya, answered that this concept was an “unlawful innovation” in Islam. For this
fatwa, see Meier, Fritz: Zwei Abhandlungen über die Naqschbandiyya, Stutt-
gart 1994, p. 228; the Arabic text is given in Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Muḥammad:
al-Tāj al-mukallal min jawāhir maʾāthir al-ṭirāz al-ākhir wal-awwal, 2nd ed.,
Bombay 1383/1963, pp. 515–516. For the contact between Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān
and Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn, see al-Atharī, Muḥammad Bahjat: Aʿlām al-ʿIrāq,
Cairo 1345/1926; and Nafi, Basheer M.: Salafism Revived. Nuʿmān al-Ālūsī and
the Trial of Two Ahmads, in: Die Welt des Islams 49 (2009), pp. 49–97. For the
further relations of the Ālūsīs to Bhopalese scholars, see Preckel, Islamische
Bildungsnetzwerke, pp. 229–237.
30 Al-Dihlawī, Shāh Walī Allāh: Ḥujjat Allāh al-bāligha, Cairo 1977, here part 1,
pp. 147–152 (bāb al-farq bayna ahl al-ḥadīth wa-ahl al-raʾy). English transla-
tion by Hermansen, Marcia K.: The Conclusive Argument from God, Leiden
1995.
31 In his paper on the methodology of aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth (adherents of Hadith),
Basheer M. Nafi differentiates between those aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth who apply
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