504 Martin Riexinger
ing food in a normal way (bil-ʿāda).^40 Similarly Thanāʾ Allāh shuns to
project Hadith based eschatological or cosmological content into cer-
tain verses as in the case of (6:158) where he considered yawma yaʾtī
baʿḍu āyāti rabbika as a reference to every human’s individual death
and not a hint at the sunrise from the West on the Day of Judgment,^41
or in the case of the bayt maʿmūr (Koran 52:4) which Thanāʾ Allāh
understands as the totality of the mosques on Earth not as a building
in one of the seven heavens from which according to reports from the
ascent to heavens (miʿrāj) every day angels do descend who will not
return until the day of Judgment.^42 When the Ghaznawīs presented
their complaints in writing, istiwāʾ, the initial and foremost bone of
contention, was excluded, since they sought the support of Deobandīs,
a group of Ḥanafīs critical of Sufi practices, which was named after the
town (qaṣba) Deoband north of Delhi where they had founded their
Dār al-ʿUlūm in 1867. They shared the ideas of the majority of Ahl-i
Ḥadīth scholars with regard to miracles and eschatology, but who as
Ḥanafīs and Māturīdīs rejected their corporeal concept of God.^43
For Thanāʾ Allāh the fact that he deviated from the exegesis of
the salaf posed no major problem. He insisted that it was permis-
sible to pass over what the first generations had to say. According to
him the excellence of the salaf was exclusively due to their loyalty to
the prophet not to their superior knowledge, hence everybody with
a sound knowledge of Arabic is entitled to interpret the Koran.^44
This idea is also the reason for the title of his Arabic commentary
Tafsīr al-qurʾān bi-kalām al-raḥmān (Interpretation of the Koran
With the Words of the Compassionate (God)), suggesting that his
interpretation is based on the general linguistic conventions of the
Holy Book. Furthermore he defended his understanding of istiwāʾ
with extensive references to leading figures from various branches
of Islamic thought. Did the imams of the four schools of law as well
as al-Juwaynī (1028–1085), al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) and Ibn Taymiy-
40 Amritsarī, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi-kalām al-Raḥmān (1st ed.), Amritsar 1902, p. 56,
ll. 14–15. In this case he is again at odds even with al-Rāzī, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr,
vol. 8, p. 30, l. 5 - p. 32, l. 10.
41 Amritsarī, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi-kalām al-Raḥmān (2nd ed.), p. 120, ll. 17–19;
Amritsarī, Tafsīr-i Thanāʾi, vol. 3, pp. 104–106.
42 Amritsarī, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi-kalām al-Raḥmān (1st ed.), p. 436, l. 13.
43 Ghaznawī, Kitāb al-Arbaʿīn, pp. 29, 31 and especially 54–55: signatures of
Rashīd Aḥmad Gangohī and Maḥmūd al-Ḥasan.
44 Amritsarī, Thanāʾ Allāh: Āyāt-i mutashābihāt?, Amritsar 1904, pp. 30–31.
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