498 Martin Riexinger
between the Sikh empire in the Punjab and Afghanistan.^14 They finally
fell in their ill-fated jihad against the Sikhs in the battle at Balakot in
- Some of their followers, however, had stayed behind in Sanaa
to study under al-Shawkānī. After returning to India they propagated
his legal theories and his anti-Sufi stance which both betray the influ-
ence of Ibn Taymiyya. But in the fields of theology and exegesis of the
Koran al-Shawkānī was not a follower of the Damascene rigorist as his
non-literal interpretation of verse 7:54 testifies (see below).
After their return from Yemen the Indian scholars installed them-
selves in their hometowns in the Eastern Gangetic plain where they
began to propagate their new religious ideas.^15 Soon they also gained
a following in Delhi among those who were influenced by the school
of Shāh Walī Allāh.^16 In the next decades the newly emerged school
of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth spread to various parts of India, especially the
princely state of Bhopal,^17 and to the Punjab, where Amritsar became
its second most important centre after Delhi.^18 Already the Ṭarīqa-
yi Muḥammadiyya was denounced by its Sufi and Shia opponents as
“Wahhābī”, a designation which the British rulers adopted.^19 Nev-
14 See the article by Claudia Preckel in this volume.
15 ʿAẓīmābādī, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm: al-Durr al-manthūr fī tarājim ahl al-Ṣādiqfūr,
Delhi 1927.
16 Bihārī, Faḍl-i Ḥusayn: al-Ḥayāt baʿd al-mamāt, Delhi 1908 (reprint Sangla Hil
1982).
17 Saeedullah: The Life and Works of Siddiq Hasan Khan, Nawwab of Bhopal
(1248–1307/1832–1890), Lahore 1973; see also Preckel, Claudia: Islamische
Bildungsnetzwerke und Gelehrtenkultur im Indien des 19. Jahrhunderts.
Muḥammad Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Ḫān (st. 1890) und die Entstehung der Ahl-e Ḥadīṯ-
Bewegung in Bhopal, Dissertation (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) 2005, online:
http://www-brs.ub.ruhr-unibochum.de/netahtml/HSS/Diss/PreckelClaudia/
diss.pdf, accessed April 2008; and her article in this volume.
18 Preckel, Islamische Bildungsnetzwerke, pp. 179–221; this is primarily due to
the activities of ʿAbd Allāh Ghaznawī (1811–1881). He had to flee Afghanistan
because he objected to the taqlīd of the Ḥanafī madhhab and settled in Amritsar
where he founded a madrasa that was continued by his family until the expul-
sion of the Muslims from the city in 1947. He corresponded with Ṣiddīq Ḥasan
Khān and tried to propagate the ideas of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth in Afghanistan and
Central Asia: Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 181–183; Preckel, Islamische
Bildungsnetzwerke, pp. 307–308.
19 Hunter, William: Our Indian Musalmans. Are they Bound in Conscience to
Rebel against the Queen?, London 1876; protests of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth led by
Muḥammad Ḥusayn Batʾālwī resulted in the ban of the term from official cor-
respondence in 1890. Nevertheless it was used in secret correspondence like
police files until the 1920s, Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 218–219.
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