Screening Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Library 191
students, notably Nāṣir al-Ḥāzimī, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Banārsī, ʿAbd
al-Qayyūm Buḍhānawī and Ḥusayn b. Muḥsin al-Yamanī (living
in Bhopal) finally to Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān.Ṣiddīq Ḥasan considered the second one of these, the Yemenite con-
nection, the most important. This is shown by the fact that he asked
his teacher Ḥusayn b. Muḥsin to write down his chain of transmission
(isnād) and thus could easily link himself with the Yemenite scholars.
The documents of these chains of transmission and of Ḥusayn’s teach-
ing license are still kept in Lucknow.^92
5.2. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān and Al-Shawkānī’s Nayl al-awṭārṢiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s writings hint at his sources of inspiration. In his
book al-Maqāla al-fasīḥa (The Pure Speech), Ṣiddīq Ḥasan stressed
that he received his inspiration from “Aḥāmid wa-Maḥāmid”, i. e.
from some Aḥmads and Muḥammads. In his work on Ṣiddīq Ḥasan
Khān, Saeedullah provides a list of who those people were: [Taqī
al-Dīn] Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya, Aḥmad Shāh Walī Allāh, Aḥmad
Barēlwī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Shawkānī, Muḥammad Ismāʿīl “Shahīd”
(d. 1832) and Muḥammad al-Amīr al-Yamanī (d. 1769).^93 Indeed, works
by all these authors are found in Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s own oeuvre.
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s own compositions focus strongly on al-Shawkānī’s
writings. Ṣiddīq Ḥasan considered al-Shawkānī’s method of basing
legal decisions on the corpus of Hadith as the right one. Thus, he drew
much inspiration from al-Shawkānī’s major work Nayl al-awṭār sharḥ
Muntaqā al-akhbār min aḥādīth Sayyid al-Akhyār (Fulfilment of
Wishes, Commentary on Selection of Messages from the Sayings of the
Lord of the Virtuous Ones, i. e. the Prophet), which Ṣiddīq Ḥasan con-
sidered his most important source of inspiration. Muntaqā al-akhbār^94
had been written by ʿAbd al-Salām Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1254), who was
the grandfather of the more famous Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya and
also a Ḥanbalī scholar. His Muntaqā al-akhbār belongs to a certain
92 Al-Anṣārī, Ḥusayn b. Muḥsin: Asānīd al-Shaykh Ḥusayn Ibn Muḥsin, man-
uscript, Lucknow, Maulana Shibli Library, Nadwat ul-ʿUlama, radīf 607. See
idem: al-Ijāza li-Sayyid Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, manuscript, Lucknow, Maulana
Shibli Library, Nadwat ul-ʿUlama, addition to radīf 401.
93 Quoted by Saeedullah, Life and Works, p. 36.
94 Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, vol. 1, p. 399, suppl. 1, p. 6.
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