Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law

(Ron) #1

210 Claudia Preckel


Khān was convinced that women were more susceptible to commit
bid ʿa than men were, as the examples of bid ʿa concerning immod-
esty showed). Ṣiddīq Ḥasan reminded the Muslim community that
the general process of the end of the world could not be completely
stopped and that it was only a question of time when it would occur.
He said that he himself wanted to warn the people, so that the process
might be slowed down.^152 A close look at his works shows that Ṣiddīq
Ḥasan considered himself a “renewer of the faith”, a mujaddid.
In his works, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan supported also the Yemenite author
Ibrāhīm al-Wazīr’s and al-Shawkānī’s claims to be renewers. The works
of Ibn Taymiyya and other Ḥanbalīs were not relevant to Ṣiddīq Ḥasan
in respect to the end of time. Again, he extensively quoted authors
from the Yemenite tradition. Following these Yemenite authors, Ṣiddīq
Ḥasan was one of the few Indian scholars of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth interested
in apocalyptic theories. After the advent of the Islamic year 1300, the
interest of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth in eschatological subjects decreased, but
never completely disappeared. For example, in 2003, the Ahl-i Ḥadīth
publishing house Markazī Jamʿiyyat-i Ahl-i Ḥadīth-i Hind published
an Urdu translation of Yūsuf al-Wābil’s famous Arabic work Ashrāṭ
al-sāʿa (The Signs of the Hour).^153 Ḥanbalī scholars, on the other hand,
were of great importance for Ṣiddīq Ḥasan’s list of bidaʿ. For some


see Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Ḥujaj al-kirāma, p. 227. The more recent Ahl-i Ḥadīth
scholar Abū al-Barakāt Aḥmadī did not explicitely forbid reciting, reading and
touching the Koran during the menstruation, but also did not allow it. See
Aḥmadī, Abū al-Barakāt: Fatāwā-yi Ahl-i ḥadīth al-maʿrūf bihi Fatāwā Bara-
katiyya, Delhi 1992, p. 301. See also Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 162–


  1. In Ḥujaj al-kirāma, Ṣiddīq Ḥasan did not refer to these claims. He only
    stressed that it was forbidden for women to visit the public bath (ḥammām)
    during menstruation. Here, he might have known of Ibn Taymiyya’s Risāla
    fī Ḥukm ḥammām al-nisāʾ (Treatise on the Rulings Concerning Public Baths
    for Women), which was part of his library. See Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Silsilat
    al-ʿasjad, p. 94, no. 363.
    152 Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Muḥammad: Iqtirāb al-sāʿa (Approaching of the Hour),
    n. p. n. d., pp.  221–222. None of his works contains an explicit statement on
    how the process of the apocalypse could be stopped. According Ṣiddīq Ḥasan
    Khān, following authors like al-Barzanjī, the process of the apocalypse fol-
    lowed a process, which was fixed by Allah and is unstoppable. For an overview
    of Muslim apocalyptic theories see Cook, David: Studies in Muslim Apocalyp-
    tic, Princeton 2002. For a detailed account of the Sunni view of the apocalypse
    according to the Indian sources see Preckel, Islamische Bildungsnetzwerke,
    pp. 370–391.
    153 Al-Wābil (d.  2001), who was born in Indonesia, studied and lived in Medi-
    na for a long time. See al-Wābil, Yūsuf b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Yūsuf: Qiyāmat kī


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