Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī b. Muḥammad Muʿīn
Naqvī Naṣīrābādī (1753-1820), better known after his death as Ghufrān-maʾāb and as the progenitor of a
leading family of Shiʿi ʿulamāʾ of Lucknow known as the khāndān-i ijtihād, was a leading figure in the Shiʿi learned
culture of North India in the post-Mughal period. As the new Shiʿi state in
Avadh developed a distinct identity of its own, Naṣīrābādī was responsible for
the production of a new religious dispensation, a theology to rival that of the
prevalent Sunnī, rationalist culture of the dars-i
niẓāmī in which he had been trained. Coming from a family of prominent
Naqvī sayyids in the qaṣbah of Naṣīrābād,
he studied in Faizabad and in Shahjahanpur (then still in the control of the
Rohillas ruled by Ḥāfiẓ Raḥmat Khān until his defeat by Avadh and the British
in April 1774) with prominent (mainly Sunnī) teachers of the scriptural and
intellectual humanities such as:
i)
Tafażżul Ḥusayn Khān (d. 1800), a leading Shiʿi intellectual
and scientist whose forbears came from Iṣfahān though he himself was born in
Sialkot and later studied in Benaras with the great literary figure Ḥazīn
Lāhījī
ii)
Sayyid Ghulām Ḥusayn Dakkanī Ilāhābādī;
iii)
Shaykh Bābullāh Jawnpūrī;
iv)
Mullā Ḥaydar ʿAlī Sandīlvī (Sunni son of the Shiʿi philosopher
Mullā Ḥamdullāh);
v) and Mullā ʿAbd ʿAlī Baḥr al-ʿUlūm of Farangī-Maḥall (d.
1801), son of the famous Mullā Niẓāmuddīn who established the curriculum
balancing the scriptural and intellectual humanities named after him.
He later moved to Lucknow in 1775 where
he found a generous patron in the person of Ḥasan Riżā Khān (served 1776-98),
the vizier of Āṣaf al-dawla (r. 1775-97). He sent him to study in the shrine
cities of Iraq (1779-82) where he gained licenses from leading uṣūlī jurists of
the time including:
i)
Sayyid Muḥammad Mahdī b. Murtaḍā Ṭabāṭabāʾī Baḥr
al-ʿUlūm (1155-1212/1742-1797),
ii)
Sayyid Mahdī Shahristānī (1130-1216/1718-1801)
iii)
Mīrzā Mahdī Iṣfahānī (1152-1218/1739-1803)
iv) and Āqā Bāqir Bihbahānī (1116-1205/1704-1790), the
person most responsible for eradicating the Akhbārī presence from the shrine
cities.
Although it is often said that Akhbārīs
dominated Shiʿi India and that Naṣīrābādi was himself Akhbārī before he
returned to India as the first mujtahid of a new uṣūlī era and helped to
establish uṣūlī hegemony in India through his actions and his writings, there
is little actual evidence for Akhbārī thought in North India (unlike the Deccan
where the Quṭb-Shāhīs seemed to patronise figures such as the famous ‘reviver’
of the Akhbārī school, Muḥammad Amīn Astarābādī (d. 1626) who wrote the Dānishnāma-yi Shāhī for his patrons). His
contribution in theology lay in three areas of dispute:
i)
displacing the theology of the shaykhzādas in the
qaṣbahs which was rational, Sufi and Sunni – ultimately the Farangī Maḥall
family of scholars in Lucknow (ʿAbd ʿAlī Muḥammad Baḥr al-ʿUlūm and Mullā Ḥasan)
and the school of Shāh Walīallāh in Delhi (Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz) epitomised their
approach and hence he disputed with them, debated and wrote refutations of
their works;
ii)
displacing the akhbārī tendency of traditionalists –
which to a large extent concerned the import of a dispute from the shrine
cities of Iraq into North India;
iii)
and moving from a Shiʿi theology of the margins to
the heart of empire – establishing a Shiʿi kingship through building
institutions of judiciary, establishing the Friday and Eid congregational
prayers, centres of learning, an office of religious, jurisprudential guidance
and dissemination through the network of his students not least his sons.
He established
the new theological dispensation by advocating these methods:
First, importing
a controversy from the shrine cities of Iraq, he argued for establishing the uṣūlī
method and the use of reason in law and theology. He wrote a number of works
attacking Akhbārīs including the main text Asās
al-uṣūl and was pivotal in inaugurating the institution of congregational
Friday prayers, which were not the norm among the Shiʿa in North India before
him. The first such congregation took place in 1200/1786 and a collection of
his sermons from that first year was published as an expression of the new
public theology entitled Favāʾid-i Āṣafīya.
Further such congregations were established in the realm eventually reaching
his hometown of Naṣīrābād where a Friday mosque was inaugurated in 1812. He
also wrote a Risāla dar vujūb-i namāz-i
jumʿa. In Asās al-uṣūl, a work
written in Arabic for a scholarly audience (it was lithographed twice in the
1890s and 1900s in Lucknow), his main target was al-Fawāʾid al-madanīya of Muḥammad Amīn Astarābādī (d. 1626);
however, he did not rely on the ad
hominem and weak arguments deployed by Nūr al-Din al-ʿĀmilī or Bihbahānī in
his al-Fawāʾid al-Makkīya. The work
is divided into four sections (maqāṣid):
the first on the probative force of Qurʾanic verses, the second (and the
longest section) on the probative force (ḥujjīya)
of ḥadīth – this is in fact the
longest section of the text - , the third section on scholarly consensus (ijmāʿ) which was a major point of
contention with Akhbārīs, and the fourth on rational instruments for discerning
jurisprudence. This last section reveals the theological origins of some
debates in uṣūl and includes sections
on the status of acts before revelation and on the rational ability to discern
good and evil independently. An office was opened in Lucknow to deal with
questions of the faithful and a gradual process of Shiʿification of the
judiciary initiated. His own informal circle of learning became a formal
institution under his son with the name of Madrasa-yi Sulṭānīya, which is a
later iteration became the Sulṭān al-madāris established after the annexation
much later in 1892.
Second, and most
importantly given the rivalry at court, he opened an attack on Sufis to
discredit the possibility of considering Shiʿism and Sufism as compatible. He
wrote a scholarly work in Arabic al-Shihāb
al-thāqib and a more accessible risāla
in Persian (Risāla-yi radd-i madhhab-i ṣūfīya),
both written for his patron Sarfarāz al-Dawla Ḥasan Riżā Khān, the vizier of Āṣaf
al-Dawla, and the patron also of two major Sufi figures Shāh ʿAlī Akbar Mawdūdī
Chishtī (d. 1795) who led own jumʿa
and Shāh Khayrullāh Naqshbandī. Unlike other anti-Sufi tracts, his polemics did
not concern practices on the whole (expect for the use of music in ritual), but
rather given the dominance of the Ibn ʿArabī school and the ḥadīth-based
scholarship of the rational Sunnī dars-i niẓāmī tradition in Avadh, his attack
centred upon the idea of waḥdat al-wujūd
and the proofs often adduced from the Qurʾan and from ḥadīth in its favour. This
monism dominated Sufism in Avadh through figures at court (and Mawdūdī’s own al-Fawāʾid al-Mawdūdīya – there is a
manuscript copy in the British Library – demonstrates his adherence to this
tendency), the tradition of Shāh ʿAbd al-Razzāq (d. 1724) of Bānsa patronised
by the Sunni theologians of Farangī-Maḥall, and the tradition associated with
Shah Mīna (d. 1467) and his shrine in Lucknow – a leading figure of this
tradition was Dildār ʿAlī’s contemporary Irtiżā ʿAlī Khān Gopāmāwī (d. 1836), a
Sufi and philosopher of the school of Mullā Ṣadrā, who wrote a prominent
devotional work Favāʾid-i Saʿdīya.
Third, he
defended Shiʿi theology against the famous polemic of Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, the Tuḥfa-yi isnāʿasharīya, and took on the
Sunni rational tradition in a major work of theology entitled Mirʾāt al-ʿuqūl fī ʿilm al-uṣūl better
known as ʿImād al-Islām, a scholarly
work in Arabic that was lithographed at the turn of the 20th century
through the efforts of his descendent Sayyid Āqā Ḥasan who also arranged for an
Urdu translation which was also published. His responses to Shāh ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz’s Tuḥfa-yi isnāʿasharīya
included Ṣawārim-i ilāhīyāt
on chapter 5 on philosophical theology, Ḥusām
al-islām on chapter 6 on prophecy, Iḥyāʾ-yi
sunnat on chapter 8 on resurrection, Risāla-yi
Dhū-l-fiqār on chapter 12 on tabarra
and walāya, Khātima-yi ṣawārim on imāma
and ghaybat. His son Sulṭān
al-ʿUlamāʾ later added Bawāriq-i mūbaqa
on chapter 7 on imāma, Ṭaʿn al-rimāḥ
and Bāriqa-yi dayghamīya on chapter
10 on indictments, Ṭard al-muʿānidīn
on chapter 12 on walāya and tabarra. Although the polemics set off a
chain of refutations and counter-refutations, these were the best Shiʿi
reponses alongside Sayyid Ḥāmid Ḥusayn’s more voluminous ʿAbaqāt al-anwār. ʿImād
al-Islām was an altogether more ambitious work taking as its target Nihāyat al-ʿuqūl, the mature work of
philosophical theology of the great medieval Sunni theologian Fakhr al-Dīn
al-Rāzī (d. 1209). It is perhaps the greatest achievement in kalām of the Shiʿi scholarly tradition
of India.
Sayyid Dildār ʿAlī’s
legacy lay primarily in the network of his students and his sons and descendants
who dominated the intellectual scene in Avadh prior to the annexation and
continued to do so in the present. He had five sons:
1) Sayyid Muḥammad who was born
1199/1784 in Lucknow. He became known as mujtahid
al-ʿaṣr, a quasi-official post of the leading cleric (title of ṣadr al-ṣudūr), and was given the title
of Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ. He died in 1284/1867, and was posthumously known as
Riżvān-maʾāb. He wrote works against Akhbārīs and also al-ʿUjāla al-nāfiʿa on Shiʿi kalām. He formalised his father’s
teaching circle, establishing the Madrasa-yi Sulṭānīya whose post-annexation
avatar became the Sulṭān al-madāris, which still exists and was founded in
1892.
2) Sayyid ʿAlī was born in Lucknow in
1200/1786. He travelled to Karbalāʾ often, lived and studied and died there in
1259/1843. There is evidence that he associated with Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī (d.
1843) in Karbalāʾ which accounts for a primary link between the Shaykhīs and
Avadh [although for obvious reasons the family biographers omit this]. He wrote
a two volume exegesis entitled Tawḍīḥ
al-majīd fī kalām allāh al-ḥamīd and hence was given the title of Sayyid
al-mufassirīn.
3) Sayyid Ḥasan was born in
1205/1791 and died 1260/1844, having written some theological works.
4) Sayyid Mahdī was born Lucknow
1208/1793 and died young in 1231/1816. His son Sayyid Muḥammad Hādī 1813-1858
was a significant jurist of the family.
5) Sayyid Ḥusayn was born in
1211/1796. He was important and became a mujtahid
and died in 1273/1856. He was known as Sayyid al-ʿulamāʾ and posthumously
titled ʿIllīyīn-maʾāb. His sons were an
important branch of the family: Sayyid ʿAlī Naqī d. 1893, titled Zubdat al-ʿulamāʾ; Sayyid Muḥammad Taqī known
as Mumtāz al-ʿulamāʾ 1818-72, and
Sayyid ʿAlī. The recent famous scholar Sayyid ʿAlī Naqī Naqqan ṣāḥab, who was
Dean of the Department of Shia Theology at Aligarh University, was a scion of
this branch.
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