Screening Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Library 197
the idea of the unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd) of Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240).
Even scholars who spoke Arabic as their mother tongue seemed to
have difficulties understanding the Nūniyya.^109 Nevertheless, the Indi-
an scholar Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān was requested to write a commentary
on the Nūniyya. The man who asked him to do so was Ḥamad b. ʿAtīq
(d. 1884) from al-Aflāj in the Najd. Ḥamad b. ʿAtīq belonged to one of
the most prolific scholarly families of the Najd, the Āl al-ʿAtīq, who
had been closely connected to the Wahhabiyya.^110 In his letter^111 (writ-
ten ca. 1880), Ḥamad b. ʿAtīq praised Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān for his role as
one of the leading scholars of his time. He stressed that the times were
hard for strict believers of Islam. He complained that sound knowledge
on Islam had vanished and that crime, corruption and polytheism were
prevalent even in the heartlands of Islam. Only the continuous efforts
of persons like the Nawwāb of Bhopal preserved honesty on earth.
He added that Muslims should be glad God had sent someone like
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan to guarantee the proper guidance for all believers. After
these initial lines, Ḥamad b. ʿAtīq changed the tone of his letter and
began to criticise Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān for some “mistakes” in his Tafsīr
Fatḥ al-bayān.^112 He added that this might be because “Ṣiddīq Ḥasan
did not have the time to correct the manuscript.”^113 For whatever rea-
sons Ḥamad claimed that Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s tafsīr contained too many
unfounded speculations, his main criticism was that Ṣiddīq Ḥasan used
inappropriate human characteristics to describe God, e. g. he ascribed
mercy (raḥma) to God, which Ḥamad b. ʿAtīq considered a human
characteristic. The second point of criticism was Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s inter-
pretation of the Koranic verses referring to God sitting on the throne
(thumma istawāʾ ʿalā ʿarsh), for example (Koran 10:3), meaning “then
he (God) sat down on his throne”. There was no discussion between
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan^114 and the Najdis about the question whether istiwāʾ
109 Steinberg, Religion und Staat, pp. 90–91. On the Nūniyya, see also the article
by Livnat Holtzman in this volume.
110 Steinberg, Religion und Staat, pp. 119, 203–206.
111 The text of the letter can be found in Āl al-Shaykh, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf: Mashāhīr ʿulamāʾ Najd wa-ghayrihim, Riyadh 1394/1974, pp. 245–
253.
112 Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Muḥammad: Fatḥ al-bayān fī maqāṣid al-qurʾān, Bulāq
1884–85.
113 Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr ʿulamāʾ Najd, p. 247.
114 Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān wrote his Iḥtiwāʾ fī masʾalat al-istiwāʾ (Contents on the
Question of God Sitting on His Throne), Lahore 1294/1874. It was not avail-
able to me.
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