Screening Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Library 199
plained about the difficulties and obstacles on his journey.^117 Later, he
seemed to have changed his mind and gave very positive accounts of
his studies in India and his teachers. After his return to Saudi Arabia,
Saʿd b. Ḥamad b. ʿAtīq became kadi of Riyadh. He issued many fatwas
against the “cult at the graves”, in which he frequently quoted Ṣiddīq
Ḥasan Khān. This might also be why his letters and fatwas were even
translated into Urdu.^118
Nevertheless, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān did not write any commentary on
the Nūniyya. One of his network partners, Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā (d. 1909),^119 a
renowned bookseller and defender of the Wahhabiyya, undertook this
task. Aḥmad Ibn ʿĪsā was Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s agent (wakīl) in Mecca.
They were not teacher and student nor did they ever meet personally.
Aḥmad had been only responsible for buying and selling books. After
Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s deposition, their network relationship ended.
6.2. Insistence on ijtihād and Rejection of taqlīdAs demonstrated, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s study of Yemenite literature deeply
influenced him and modified his legal views and religious outlook.
Whereas he had formerly drawn much inspiration from Indian reform-
ist authors like Muḥammad Ḥayāt al-Sindī (d. 1750),^120 Shāh Walī
Allāh Dihlawī, and Thanāʾullāh Pānīpatī (d. 1810),^121 this immediately
changed after his contact with Arab scholars during his pilgrimage to
Mecca. The three Indian authors favoured by him had been educated
in the tradition of the Ḥanafī school of law, but later in their lives came
117 Ismāʿīl b. Sāʿd b. Ḥamad b. ʿAtīq: “Muqaddima” (Introduction) to Ibn ʿAtīq,
al-Shaykh Saʿd b. Ḥamad: al-Majmūʿ (The Beneficial Collection of Letters and
Fatwas of Shaykh Saʿd b. Ḥamad b. ʿAtīq), Riyadh 1415/1995.
118 Published in Lahore (Ibn Taymiyya Akāḍēmī) 1976.
119 Āl al-Shaykh, Mashāhīr ʿulamāʾ al-Najd, pp. 260–264.
120 On him, see Voll, John O.: Muḥammad Ḥayyā al-Sindī and Muḥammad Ibn
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. An Analysis of an Intellectual Group in 18th-century Medina,
in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38 (1975), pp. 32–39.
121 Thanāʾullāh Pānīpatī was a pupil of Shāh Walī Allāh. The Ahl-i Ḥadīth con-
sider him a critic of the taqlīd. Consequently, his biography can be found
in several collections of Ahl-i Ḥadīth members, see e. g. Sayf, Taḥrīk-i Ahl-i
ḥadīth, pp. 178–180. For an English biography and assessment of this works
see Alvi, Sajida: Qāẕī Sanāʾ Allāh Pānīpatī. An Eighteenth-Century ṣufī ʿālim;
a Study of his Writings in their Sociopolitical Context, in: Wael B. Hallaq and
Donald Little (eds.): Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams, Leiden
1991, pp. 11–26.
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