500 Martin Riexinger
rate of literacy among the respective groups, as the various “Ahl-i
Ḥadīth-villages” in the Punjab testify.^25 The importance of print for
the Ahl-i Ḥadīth motivated some of their scholars to choose a different
career path than that of a teacher in a madrasa: they became religious
publishers instead. In 1874 Muḥammad Ḥusayn Batʾālwī started the
monthly Ishāʿat ul-sunnat (Propagation of the Sunna) one of the very
first Islamic magazines worldwide.^26 It was followed in 1904 by the
weekly Ahl-i Ḥadīth published by his former student Thanāʾ Allāh
Amritsarī.^27
Right from the beginning the Ahl-i Ḥadīth accepted Ibn Taymiyya’s
objections against Sufi rituals, many of his legal rulings like the rejection
of the ṭalāq al-bidʿa (i. e. the validity of the repudiation if expressed on
one occasion)^28 and his insistence on the demand that any legal ruling
has to be based on one of the primary sources Koran and Hadith and
not on ijmāʾ or taqlīd. In one further respect he served as an important
role model for them. The vision of Islamic history the Ahl-i Ḥadīth
propagated consisted of the constant struggle of the ahl al-ḥadīth
renouncing taqlīd and the madhāhib against the ahl al-bidʿa who place
humans like jurists (fuqahāʾ) and Sufi leaders (pīrs) in a position of
authority that ought to be exclusively occupied by God and his mes-
senger. Constantly the ahl al-ḥadīth suffered persecution at the hands
of the innovators (bidʿatīs). Hence Ibn Taymiyya was exiled and incar-
25 Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 189–195.
26 Ibid., pp. 13, 213. The magazine was published until 1920, however, quite irreg-
ularly. The content was primarily polemic, first directed against Mirzā Ghulām
Aḥmad, after 1904 primarily against Thanāʾ Allāh Amritsarī.
27 Unlike Muḥammad Ḥusayn Batʾālwī, Thanāʾ Allāh Amritsarī was able to
secure the continuous regular publication of this weekly until his expulsion
from Amritsar in August 1947. In addition to religious subjects he and his con-
tributors frequently commented on politics especially after World War I when
Thanāʾ Allāh supported for some time the Indian National Congress and the
Khilafat Movement.
28 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn: Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā lil-shaykh Taqī al-Dīn Ibn
Taymiyya, Beirut 1978, vol. 32, pp. 131–135, vol. 33, pp. 12–13, 30–33; on his
views also Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques, pp. 429, 614; both
Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī, Ḥujjat Allāh al-bāligha, Cairo 1977, vol. 2, p. 139,
and Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Shawkānī, Nayl al-awṭār, Cairo 1993, vol. 6, pp. 274–
276, agree with Ibn Taymiyya in this respect; Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Muḥammad:
Ḥusn al-uswa bi-mā thabata min Allāh wa-rasūlihi fī al-niswa, Constantinople
1301/1883/84, pp. 16–17. Amritsarī, Thanāʾ Allāh: Fatāwā-i thanāʾiyya, Sar-
godha 1972, vol. 2, pp. 214–225, with quotations of earlier Ahl-i Ḥadīth schol-
ars, idem: Ahl-i Ḥadīth kā madhhab, Sargodha 1986, pp. 115–117.
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