216 Claudia Preckel
lic debates (munāẓara) with almost all the other religious movements
of his time.
Muḥammad Bashīr Sahsawānī wrote a refutation of the theories
of the Shāfiʿī Meccan mufti Aḥmad Zaynī Daḥlān (d. 1886)^172 called
Ṣiyānat al-insān ʿan waswasat Shaykh Daḥlān (Preserving the People
from the Evil Suggestions of Shaykh Daḥlān). Daḥlān had gained
prominence in the whole Islamic world by attacking the Wahhabiy-
ya for their “fanaticism” concerning the veneration of Sufis and their
destruction of several tombs – even of some Companions of the Proph-
et – in Mecca and Medina. Daḥlān’s Fitnat al-Wahhābiyya (Dangerous
Temptation of the Wahhabiyya) and his al-Durar al-saniyya fī al-radd
ʿalā al-Wahhābiyya (The Shining Pearls against the Wahhabiyya) criti-
cised the Wahhabiyya for declaring their fellow Muslims to be infi-
dels (kuffār, sg. kāfir). He also accused the Wahhabiyya of extremism
(ghuluww) for killing their (Muslim) opponents.^173 Muḥammad Bashīr
Sahsawānī started an exchange of letters (and even whole books) with
Aḥmad Zaynī Daḥlān. The subjects of these works were the venera-
tion of the saints and the correct behaviour when visiting the grave of
the Prophet Muḥammad during the Hajj. The controversy was con-
ducted very harshly and ended only when Aḥmad Zaynī Daḥlān died
in 1887. Muḥammad Bashīr’s wrote and published Ṣiyānat al-insān in
Bhopal in 1890; it contained the material of several letters and books
mentioned above. The third edition from 1958 deserves great inter-
est, because it was published in Cairo (by al-Maṭbaʿa al-Salafiyya) and
contains a foreword by the famous Salafī Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā
(d. 1935).^174 Rashīd Riḍā had travelled to India in 1912 and had deliv-
ered two speeches in the Nadwat ul-ʿulamāʾ in Lucknow.^175 On this
172 On Aḥmad Zaynī Daḥlān see Freitag, Ulrike: Der Orientalist und der Muf-
ti. Kulturkontakt im Mekka des 19. Jahrhunderts, in: Die Welt des Islam 43
(2003), pp. 37–60.
173 Steinberg, Religion und Staat, p. 105.
174 On the Arab Salafiyya, see e. g. Weismann, Itzchak: Taste of Modernity. Sufism,
Salafiyya, and Arabism in late Ottoman Damascus, Leiden 2001; Commins,
David D.: Islamic Reform. Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria,
Oxford 1990. On Rashīd Riḍā see Ende, Werner: Rashīd Riḍā, Muḥammad, in:
EI^2 , vol. 8, pp. 446–448 and Jomier, Jacques: al-Manār, in: EI^2 , vol. 6, pp. 360–
361.
175 On his journey to India, see Rashīd Riḍā, Muḥammad: Riḥlat ṣāḥib al-Manār
ilā al-Hind (Journey of the Owner of al-Manār to India), in: al-Manār
15 (1315/1898–9), pp. 225–226, 331–333, 799; and ibid., in: al-Manār 16
(1316/1899–1900), pp. 18, 104, 396.
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