190 Claudia Preckel
In the same work, Nadwī suggests that there was a “successive chain
of reformers and revivalists from Shaikh ul-Islam Ibn Taimiyah to
Hakīm-ul-Islām Shāh Waliullah” and from Shāh Walī Allāh down to the
Ahl-i Ḥadīth. Indeed, there is a transmission of Ḥanbalī literature that
was prevalent in certain scholarly circles. Scholars belonging to these
networks increasingly produced literature containing Ḥanbalī ideas
or referring to Hadith texts from Ḥanbalī collections or from collec-
tions that were composed by some cherished individual representatives
of other schools of law. These networks often used the same (Ḥanbalī
and Hadith) books. Sometimes, as in the case of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth, the
scholarly networks even became institutionalised in new madrasas
and organisations. Scholars with a strong focus on Hadith studies who
were critical of taqlīd founded their own religious schools (Arab. pl.
madāris). In these madrasas, students shared their teacher’s attitude that
all transmitted sciences (manqūlāt) were important. Clearly, the great-
est number of teaching permits were issued in the field of Hadith, link-
ing the Indian strands of transmission with the Yemenite ones. Thus,
the number of Hadith teachers and students grew constantly. Likewise,
many new schools that can be called Ahl-i ḥadīth madāris were estab-
lished, most of them in Delhi, Benares or Bhopal.
We have some information on Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s teaching permits. Here
we can see two lines of transmission of Ḥanbalī literature relevant for
the early Ahl-i Ḥadīth:^91
i. The Indian strand of transmission beginning with Abū Ṭāhir Shāh
Walī Allāh; scholars of the Madrasa-yi Raḥīmiyya in Delhi; Shāh
Walī Allāh’s grandson Muḥammad Ismāʿīl Shahīd; Ṣiddīq Ḥasan
Khān’s father, Sayyid Awlād Ḥasan, up to Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān.
ii. The Arab/Yemenite strand of transmission from the scholars
Muḥammad al-Amīr al-Yamanī; Muḥammad al-Shawkānī; his
this famous international organization. Nadwi’s personal networks also link him
to Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān and Ḥasan Khān’s sons Sayyid Nūr al-Ḥasan Khān and
ʿAlī Ḥasan Khān. After their father’s death, they settled in Lucknow (in a palace
that is called “Bhopal House” to the present day) and held important positions at
the Nadwat al-ʿulamāʾ. They donated Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s library to the Shibli Library
in the Nadwa in Lucknow, where it is preserved to this day. For more intersec-
tions between Nadwi’s networks, those of the Wahhabiyya, and the Ahl-i Ḥadīth,
see Hartung, Viele Wege und ein Ziel, pp. 337–360. For a general account of the
Nadwat al-ʿulamāʾ, see Malik, Jamal: Islamische Gelehrtenkultur in Nordindien.
Entwicklungsgeschichte und Tendenzen am Beispiel von Lucknow, Leiden 1997.
91 Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Silsilat al-ʿasjad, pp. 2–88.
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