Reconfiguring South Asian Islam
From the 18th to the 19th Century
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.v5i2.247Keywords:
South Asia, Islam, intellectual traditions, philosophy, Deoband, reformism, SufismAbstract
Distinctive shifts in the character of South Asian Islamic culture took place between eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article tracks these changes through two notable examples, Ghulam ‘Ali Azad Bilgrami (d. 1786) and Hajji Imdad Allah Muhajir Makki (d. 1899). Analysis of writings by and about these two figures demonstrates shifting models of what it meant to be a South Asian Muslim intellectual. The confident cosmopolitanism of Bilgrami, on the cusp of the British colonial conquest, yields to a much more defensive posture in Hajji Imdad Allah, who was indeed engaged in resistance against the ultimately victorious British rule. Loss of traditional Muslim patronage coincided with the decline of philosophical traditions and interest in Hindu culture, along with the rise of the scriptural reformism typified by the Deoband school, which addressed a broader Muslim public. The relatively short time during which these changes occurred emphasizes the significant cultural gap between the pre- and post-colonial periods of South Asian Islam.References
Ansari, A. S. Bazmee. “Azad Bilgrami,” Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden: EJ Brill, 1960, I: 808.
———. “Fadl-i Hakk,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, II: 735.
Arkoun, Mohammed. “Locating Civil Society in Islamic Context.” In Civil Society in the Muslim World: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Amyn B. Sajoo, 35–60. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2002.
Beale, Thomas William. An Oriental Biographical Dictionary. Edited by Henry George Keene. London: W.H. Allen 1894.
Bilgrami, Ghulam ‘Ali Azad al-. Ghazalan [sic] al-Hind: Mutala‘a-i Tatbiqi-i Balaghat-i Hindi va Parsi, edited by Sirus Shamisa. Tehran: Sada-yi Mu‘asir, 1382/2004.
———. Subhat al-marjan fi athar Hindustan. Edited by Muhammad Fadl al-Rahman al-Nadwi al-Siwani. 2 vols. Aligarh: Jami‘at ‘Aligarh al-Islamiyya, 1976–1980.
Çelebi, Kâtip. Lexicon bibliographicum et encyclopaedicum ... ad codicum Vindobonensium Parisiensium et Berolinensis fidem primum edidit Latine vertit et commentario indicibusque instruxit Gustavus Fluegel, edited and Latin translations by Gustav Lebrecht Fluegel. 7 vols. Leipzig: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1835–1858.
Chambers, William. “A Short History of The Origin And Progress of the Marratta State, Extracted from the Khazanah e Aamerah.” The Asiatick Miscellany 2 (1786): 86–122
———. “Extracts from the Khazanah e Aamerah.” The Asiatick Miscellany 1 (1785): 494–511.
Colin, G. S. “Hisab al-DJummal,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, III: 468; Dalen, B. van, et al. “Ta’rikh,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, X: 257–302.
Elliot, Sir H. M. The History of India as told by its own Historians, The Muhammadan Period. Edited by John Dowson, 8 vols. London, 1867–1877; reprint ed., Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, n.d.
Enderwitz, S. “Shu‘ubiyya.” Encyclopaedia of Islam IX: 513–516.
Ernst, Carl W. “An Indo-Persian Guide to Sufi Shrine Pilgrimage.” In Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam, edited by Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst, 43–67. Istanbul: The Isis Press, 1993.
———. Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics in the South Asian Sufi Center. Albany. New York: State University of New York Press, 1992.
———. “India as a Sacred Islamic Land.” In Religions of India in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., 556–564. Princeton Readings in Religions 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
———. “Khuldabad: Dargahs of Shaykh Burhanuddin Gharib and Shaykh Zaynuddin Shirazi,” in Dargahs: Abodes of the Saints, edited by Mumtaz Currim and George Michell. Special issue of Marg 56(1), (2004): 104–119.
———. “Muslim Studies of Hinduism? A Reconsideration of Persian and Arabic Translations from Sanskrit.” Iranian Studies 36 (2003): 173–195. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00210860305244
Ernst, Carl W. and Bruce B. Lawrence. Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in South Asia and Beyond. New York: Palgrave Press, 2002.
Friedmann, Yohanan. “The Beginnings of Islamic Learning in Sind—A Reconsideration.” BSOAS 37 (1974): 659–664. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00127545
Fuyuzurrahman, Hafiz Qari. Hazrat Haji Imdadullah Muhajir Makki aur unke khu-lafa’. Karachi : Majlis-i Nashriyat-i Islam, 1984.
Green, Nile. “Auspicious Foundations: The Patronage of Sufi Institutions in the Late Mughal and Early Asaf Jah Deccan.” South Asian Studies 20 (2004): 71–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02666030.2004.9628637
———. “Saints, Rebels and Booksellers: Sufis in the Cosmopolitan Western Indian Ocean, c.1780–1920.” In Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean, edited by Kai Kresse and Edward Simpson, 125–166. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2008.
Kozlowski, Gregory C. Muslim endowments and society in British India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Kugle, Scott A. “The Heart of Ritual is the Body: Anatomy of an Islamic Devotional Manual of the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Ritual Studies 17(1), (2003): 42–60.
Lawrence, Bruce B. “Islamicate Civilization: The View from Asia.” In Teaching Islam, edited by Brannon Wheeler, 61–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Lorenzen, David N. Who Invented Hinduism?: Essays on Religion in History. New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2006.
Mayaram, Shail. “Rethinking Meo Identity: Cultural Faultline, Syncretism, Hybridity or Liminality?” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 17 (1997): 35–44 (http: //www.cssaame.ilstu.edu/issues/V17%2D2/MEO.pdf). http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-17-2-35
Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Contestations: Essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan. New Delhi: Oxford University press, 2006.
———. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband 1860–1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Pellò, Stefano. “Hindu Persian Poets,” Encyclopedia Iranica (http://www.iranica.com/articles/hindu-persian-poets).
Reinhart, A. Kevin. “Fundamentalism and the Transparency of the Arabic Qur’an.” In Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, edited by Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin, 97–113. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010.
Ruswa, Mirza. The Courtesan of Lucknow: Umrao Jan. Translated by Khushwant Singh and M.A. Husaini. New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1961.
Sa‘di, Muslih al-Din. Kulliyyat, ed. Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi. Tehran: Sazman-i Intisharat-i Javidan, n.d.
Skelton, Robert. “Shaykh Phul and the Origins of Bundi Painting.” In Chhavi-2: Rai Krishnadasa Felicitation Volume, 123–129. Benares: Bharat Kala Bhavan, 1981.
Storey, C. A. Persian Literature: A Bio-bibliographical Survey. London: Luzac and Company, 1972.
Tabari, al-. The History of al-Tabari: General Introduction and from the Creation to the Flood. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.
Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad. Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and Historiography. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Thanawi, Ashraf ‘Ali. Karamat-i Imdadiyya, ma‘a izafa: Zamima jadida. Deoband: Kutub Khana Hadi, n.d.
———. Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar. Translated by Barbara Daly Metcalf. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Vadet, J.-C. “al-Ibshihi.” Encyclopaedia of Islam III: 1005–1006.
Vansittart, Henry. “History of Asof Jah.” The Asiatick Miscellany 1 (1785): 327–331.
———. “The History of Ahmed Shah.” The Asiatick Miscellany 1 (1785): 332–342.
Voll, John. “Muhammad Hayyat al-Sindi and Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, an Analysis of an Intellectual Group in 18th-Century Medina.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38 (1975): 32–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X00047017
Weil, G. “Abdjad.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, I: 97.
Zaman, Muhammad Qasim. Ashraf Ali Thanawi: Islam in Modern South Asia, Makers of the Muslim World. Oxford: OneWorld Publications, 2008.
