Screening Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Library 181
4. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s Rise to Power and Subsequent Fall
During the first years of his stay in Bhopal from 1854–1856, Ṣiddīq
Ḥasan was not yet in a position to promote his religious views or to
support any reformist ideas. It was only due to the adherence of the
Prime Minister Jamāl ul-Dīn Khān to the Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya
that Ṣiddīq Ḥasan received the post of a scribe (Urdu: munshī). One
year later, he was forced to leave Bhopal, following a dispute with the
Ḥanafī Second Prime Minister about the legitimacy of smoking the
water pipe (ḥuqqa).^62
However, the Bēgum of Bhopal personally invited Ṣiddīq Ḥasan to
return to Bhopal and offered him a new job. He arrived in Bhopal for
the second time in 1859. Only a few months later, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan mar-
ried Dhākiyya Bēgum, one of the daughters of Prime Minister Jamāl
al-Dīn Khān. The couple had three children. This marriage brought
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan into closer contact with the Bēgum and her family. In
1865, he decided to leave Bhopal again and to perform the pilgrimage
to Mecca. From the beginning of this journey, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan started
collecting, buying and copying books that were not available in India.^63
Here, Ibn Taymiyya’s al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya^64 (Governance According
to God’s Law) is worth mentioning. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan was able to get a
manuscript of the work, which he kept in his private library. This work
is of interest, because it is widely regarded as a foundation for running
a state with an Islamic trademark according to the laws of the Sharia.^65
This book seems to foreshadow the theoretical framework for Ṣiddīq
62 See Khan, Zafar ul-Islam: Nawwāb Sayyid Ṣiddīḳ Ḥasan Khān, in: EI^2 , vol. 7
(1993), pp. 1048–1049, here p. 1048, where he states about Ṣiddīq Ḥasan that the
Nawwāb was against the use of tobacco and coffee.
63 For a detailed account of his Hajj and the books he studied during his jour-
ney, see Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Muḥammad: Riḥlat al-Ṣiddīq ilā bayt Allāh al-ʿatīq
(Ṣiddīq’s Journey to the Noble House of God), Lucknow 1289/1872. For
instance, he bought some books by Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Shawkānī, namely
Irshād al-fuḥūl fī ʿilm al-uṣūl, Nayl al-awṭār and Fatḥ al-qadīr fī uṣūl al-tafsīr.
We are further informed that Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān combated seasickness by read-
ing and copying Ibn Qudāma al-Maqdisī’s (d. 1283) work al-Ṣārim al-mubkī.
See Saeedullah, Life and Works, pp. 43–44.
64 The complete title being al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya fī iṣlāḥ al-rāʿī wal-raʿiyya (Gov-
ernance According to God’s Law in Reforming Both the Ruler and his Flock).
For an annotated French translation, see Ibn Taymiyya, Le Traité de droit public
d’Ibn Taimīya. translated by Henri Laoust, Damascus 1952.
65 On this issue, see the article by Abdessamad Belhaj in the present volume.
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