Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview and the Challenge of Modernity 501
cerated for their uncompromising stance (like other ahl al-ḥadīth as
for example Ibn Ḥanbal and Ibn Ḥazm).^29 The Ahl-i Ḥadīth in British
India saw themselves confronting a similar hostility when they were
thrown out of mosques because they used to pray with their hands at
their ears during most positions (rafʿ al-yadayn) and dared to speak the
amen aloud (āmīn bil-jahr) or denounced the veneration of saints.^30
However, the theological concepts of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth were
“taymiyyanized” much more slowly. Early representatives like
Nadhīr Ḥusayn Dihlawī (d. 1805–1902) – known as shaykh al-kull
because almost all leading Ahl-i Ḥadīth scholars of the 19th and ear-
ly 20th century had been his students – did not advocate the literal
interpretation of the Koranic statements on God’s attributes.^31 Fur-
thermore he was favourably inclined towards Sufism. He demanded
that his disciples offer him oath of allegiance (bayʿa) and he praised
Ibn ʿArabī, claiming that unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd) under-
stood as unity of divine manifestations (waḥdat al-shuhūd) was
totally in accordance with the doctrines of the ahl al-sunna.^32 In
the last decades of the 19th century, however, most scholars of the
Ahl-i Ḥadīth seem to have agreed that God had corporeal features
and hence a spatial relation (jiha) to all other things. He is localized
above the heavens and the earth (ʿuluww), comes down in the night
(nuzūl) and he sits on the throne (istawā ʿalā al-ʿarsh). Those who
did not subscribe to these positions were denounced as Muʿtazilīs or
even Jahmīs “whose rank and file believes in everything and whose
elite believes in nothing”.^33 The exact course of this development
remains to be analyzed on the basis of respective literature, but it
may be suspected that Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, well known for his mate-
29 On the invented tradition of the Ahl-i al-Ḥadīth in general: Riexinger,
Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 142–154; a fine example for the self-identification
of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth with the persecuted Ibn Taymiyya: Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān,
Muḥammad: Itḥāf al-nubalāʾ al-muttaqīn bi-iḥyāʾ al-fuqahāʾ al-muḥaddithīn,
Kanpur 1282/1865/66, pp. 207–209; idem: Abjad al-ʿulūm, Lahore 1983, vol. 3,
pp. 133–134.
30 Metcalf, Barbara: Islamic Revival in British India. Deoband 1860–1900,
Princeton 1982, pp. 285–289; Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 165–167.
31 Dihlawī, Nadhīr Ḥusayn: Fatāwā-yi nadhīriyya, Gujranwālā n. d., vol. 1, pp. 3–4.
32 Bihārī, al-Ḥayāt baʿd al-mamāt, pp. 123–125.
33 Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, Muḥammad: Bughyat al-rāʾid fī sharḥ al-ʿaqāʾid, Lucknow
n. d., pp. 11, 17, 26 (quotation). On the jahmiyya see van Ess, Josef: Ḍirār b.
ʿAmr und die “Cahmīya”. Die Biographie einer vergessenen Schule, in: Der
Islam 43 (1967), pp. 241–279; 44 (1968), pp. 1–70.
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