Firangi mahal
Encyclopedia
Firangi Mahal also spelled Farangi Mahal (Hindi: फ़रंगी महल, Urdu: ) is a Religious Higher education school
in Lucknow
, Uttar Pradesh
, India
.
who later achieved great renown as the Firangi Mahal family or the Ulama-e-Farangi Mahal, is recorded in a book titled, Tazkira
-e-Ulama-e-Firangi Mahal.
The ancestors arrived in India from Herat
, Afghanistan
, and settled mainly in and around Panipat
. In the mid-sixteenth century, they further spread to the Oudh province, during the reign of the great Mughal
Emperor, Akbar the Great. They made their way to, and settled in a small village, Sehali, District Barabanki
, Uttar Pradesh
, India.
While the Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan
was still alive, a war of succession to the Mughal throne ensued. The Emperor's youngest son, and the governor of Deccan, Abu Muzaffar Muhiuddin Aurangzeb
, was amongst the protagonists, and was the ultimate victor in this war and deposed his father. The Ansari family of Sehali is said to have professed loyalty to, and supported Aurangzeb
Alamgeer during his campaigns in the war of succession as well as during his reign as the Mughal Emperor.
After the assassination
of Mullah Qutab uddin Shaheed, (d. 1692) the family leader was Mullah Saeed bin Mullah Qutab Uddin who still saw the hostility of his relatives and decided that he is was going to depart from Sehali and find a home somewhere else. He went to Hyderabad, India
to visit Emperor Aurangzeb.
, India's most eminent historian and scholar
In Hyderabad, Mullah Asad bin Qutab Shaheed was at the court of Emperor Aurangzeb
, who consulted him on Islamic matters. With the help of his brother, Mullah Asad who was living in Deccan at that time got a royal decree issued for the Governor of Lucknow
to search of a desirable place to live in Lucknow. Mullah Saeed took this decree to Sehali. He met the Governor of Lucknow and chose two houses which were in the Mohallah “Ihatah Chiragh Baig”, these houses belonged to a French
trader named Neal and after his departure, according to the law of the time, had come under the control of the government.
After a while this house and the area around it was given to Mullah Saeed bin Qutab uddin Shaheed and his brother Mullah Asad bin Qutab uddin Shaheed by the order of the Emperor. This royal decree is in the possession of Jamal Mian bin Maulana Abdul Bari and it clearly states the names of only Mullah Saeed and Mullah Asad. Mullah Nizam Uddin bin Mullah Qutab Uddin Shaheed and Mullah Raza bin Mullah Qutab Uddin Shaheed were young and their names could not be listed on this Royal Decree.
Along with the house, some land, in raich]] and Barabanki was awarded specifically to Mullah Saeed. No exact account is available but all this land was lost by his decedents and now except for a small orchard in Sehali, none of this land belongs to the family. Mullah Saeed moved his whole family from Sehali to this house.
This eventually became the school today and its name Firangi Mahal is related to its former ownership by the Frenchman Neal. Firangi in Urdu
now means "foreigner", but at this time Firangi was Arabic for a Frank
.
The Mughal empire cannot be divorced from the “Mughlea” edification and the “Mughlea” culture. Growing this culture involved creating and supporting institutions that would functions as green houses for Muslim intellectual growth. Guardians of the nurseries of this culture were individuals and families whose entire purpose of existence was research into Islamic ideas. They wrote the curriculums for the schools, and took Islam to the nooks and corners of South Asia. During the height of the Mughal empire they assisted in guiding imperial religious thought (giving religious advice to Akbar, and assisting the emperor Aurunzeb Alleger in writing the Fatwa e Alamgiri). During the decline of the Mughal empire, they carefully guarded and revived Islamic thinking in South Asia. During the British rule some of these families carefully created a vision for the youth of South Asia.
The members of Farangi Mahal exercised great influence over the development of Muslim
religious thought in India between the 17th century and 20th century. This was the period when the world was changing and the peoples of India were exposed to the rising colonial powers of Europe. The European colonial powers were expanding their influence through their capabilities at sea, trade and exploration, and later they projected their economic and military power because of the Industrial Revolution
. During this period, the great Mughal Empire
had shrunk and disintegrated, and gradually India became subject to British
influence and later rule.
The Muslims in India, in particular, faced the trauma of seeing their influence and power wane and also had to face, and learn to handle the challenges of a new era that acutely affected their culture and way of life. The Ulama (Heads of the religious school) of Firangi Mahal helped the Muslims of India understand the nature of this challenge, and helped them preserve their culture, way of life, and to deal with the very significant changes taking place in their surroundings.
"The learned and holy men of Farangi Mahall were the consolidators in the subcontinent of the rationalist traditions of Islamic scholarship derived from Iran. These were encapsulated in a renowned and widely-used syllabus which they created and which became the dominant system of Indian Islamic education from the eighteenth century.
These traditions represented a confident and flexible Islamic understanding which, the Farangi Mahallis felt, had the capacity to preserve Islam even while selectively adopting social, cultural and technological changes from the West. Between 1780 and 1820 these traditions were arguably poised to bring forth some form of Islamic enlightenment. But over the course of nineteenth century they were overcome by the twin forces of Islamic reformism and Western education." (2)
It was in Lucknow that a family of Muslim leaders was so strong that even the mighty Jauhar brothers could not make a decision without the consent of the Muslim Sufis 6 leaders.
Nurtured by Akbar, Jehangir and Aurenzeb these Muslim leaders were in the forefront in the preservation of the Muslim culture in Northern India. Long before Quaid-e-Azam and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan appeared on the scene it was these Muslim leaders who kept the flame of independence alive. It was because of institutions like the Farangi Mahall led Nizamiyya that created the need for Aligarh.
This is what Francis Robinson says about the learned Sufi Family. Here’s a brief intro extracted from his article3
“Ah, Lucknow, where I first met Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi. But let’s talk about another institution there. The Farangi Mahallis of Lucknow were a family of prominent Islamic scholars and mystics.
Over the past twenty years learned and holy men ‘ulema and Sufis, have emerged as a subject for serious study. The ‘ulema of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent have come to share in this development, although perhaps a lttle tardily…
It is no surprise that little, which is informed with modern academic concerns, has been published as yet, either in English or in Urdu, on the learned and holy men of Lucknow’s Farangi Mahall family, a family that played a considerable part in Indian Islamic life for nearly three hundred years, and came to stand for a distinctive style of Indian Islam…
The Farangi Mahall family trace their ancestry through the great scholar and mystic, ‘Abd Allah Ansari of Herat (1006-88), to Ayub Ansari, the Prophet’s friend and standard bearer, whose tomb is the focus of the great Ottoman shrine center at Eyup
on the Golden Horn
just outside the land walls of Istanbul
. We do not know when the family migrated to India but, according to the family biographers, in the fourteenth century one ‘Ala al-Din settled at Sihali in Awadh. His descendant, Mulla Hafiz, was acknowledged as a distinguished scholar by the emperor Akbar who made a generous ”madad-i ma’ash” grant in his favor in 1559.
In 1692 the great-great-grandson of Mulla Hafiz, Mulla Qutb al-Din, was murdered in a squabble over land and his library burned [and the Mulla killed]…The emperor Awrangzeb recompensed the Mulla’s four sons by assigning them a European [Farangi] indigo merchant’s house in Lucknow and by making grants to support their work. Around 1695 the family moved Sihali to that house, which was known as Farangi Mahall [the European’s Palace].
This is what Barbara Metcalf says about the Farangi Mahallis:
At the turn of the eighteenth century a family of men famed for their religious and long supported by the Mughal court, settled in Lucknow. Its patriarch, Mulla Qutub’u-Din (d. 1691), had retained close ties with the Delhi court and, with his sons, had participated in the collection of the Fatwa-yi ‘Alamgiri. When Qutub’ud-Din was killed in a land dispute with a family of rival shaiks, the emperor punished his opponents and generously compensated his sons, two of whom had accompanied him on his campaign to the Deccan. His award included land in Bahraich district of Oudh, given as jagir; and the quarter of Lucknow where a French adventurer had once built a mansion known as Farangi mahall, given a revenue-free tenure. It was to be the name of Farangi Mahall that eh family was subsequently known.
The shift to Lucknow was significant, for as we have noted, as the century progresses the locus of artistic and intellectual vitality was to be increasingly in the regional kingdoms. In Lucknow, the Nawab, although a Shi’i patronized the school because it offered training for bureaucrats. He required newly arrived Iranis to present a certificate from Farangi Mahall before they could receive court patronage. Preparing qazis and muftis, the legal officials required by Muslim courts, was the specialty of Farangi Mahall, which now filled a void left by the disruption of scholarly centers in the capital.
This is what Francis Robinson says about the guardians of freedom:
Once established in Lucknow, the descendants of Mulla Qutb al-Din built up a reputation for scholarship, indeed they have good claim to be the leading learned family of the past three centuries. Teaching was their first occupation; they made Farangi Mahall into a center of learning which attracted scholars not only from all parts of India but also from places as far away as Arabia, Central Asia and China. In the early eighteenth century it must have been one of the largest centers of learning in India. Students from outside Lucknow stayed with the family or were boarded at the city’s Tila Mosque, which had room for seven hundred, and their expenses were met in part from the Mughal treasury.
At this time, it seems, there was no “madrassa” or school in Farangi Mahall, no central organizing institution; members of the family simply taught those who came to them in the porches and front rooms of their homes. There was a “madrassa” for a few years in the late nineteenth century. But it was only in 1905 that the efforts of the family were finally co-coordinated in an institutional framework, the “Madrassa-i ‘Aliya Nizamiyya”, which continued the work of teaching until 1969.
The atmosphere of the Farangi Mahall quarter, wedged in between Lucknow’s Chowk and Victoria Road, was evidently striking: “This is the very Cambridge of our India” declared Shibli Nomani after a visit in 1896.
This is what Ishtiaq Azhar says (Hasrat Mohani: a man of courage, Dawn, May 13th, 1996)
Maulana Hasrat Mohani, the fourteenth president of the former All-India Muslim League which created Pakistan under the leadership of the Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah died in Farangi Mahall on May 13, 1951, and was buried in the historic graveyard of Ulema-e-Farangi-Mahall, usually called “Maulvi Anwaar Ka Bagh”. Perhaps he had an intuition about his burial place because in “Kuliyat-e-Hasrat” he wrote a special poem on the Bagh.
When anything is written about Maulana Hasrat Mohani, one must remember this famous and historic bagh where the spiritual guide of Ali brothers, Maulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahalli, and his own peer, Maulana Abdul Wahab Farangi Mahalli, lie buried and where the son of Mulla Saeed, Mulla Ahmad Abdul Haq, is also buried.
Nobody can forget the father of Mulla Ahmad Abdul Haq, Mulla Saeed, for his contribution as the compiler of Fatwa-e-Alamgiri since this compilation alone is described by many ulema as the cornerstone of Islam. Maulana Hasrat Mohani had perhaps, chosen this historic graveyard as his last resting place because during his fatal illness he shifted to Lucknow from Kanpur and died in Farangi Mahall so that he may be buried in the historic Farangi graveyard.
It is quite relevant here to throw some light on the historic Farangi Mahall as will. Initially he head of the Farangi Mahall dynasty used to reside in Sahalla and was called “Mulla Qutub”. He had a Maktab in this village located a few miles from Lucknow and was related to another family residing in the same village. This family had a feud with another family which resided in Sahala. In revenge, as is usually the practice amongst feudals, Mulla Qutub was also assassinated although he was not involved in this feud.
When the news of this brutal murder reached Mulla Saeed, who was compiling the above mentioned historic religious document and was in constant company of Aurenzeb Alamgir, he conveyed this information to the Mughal Emperor, who ordered the Subedar of Awadh to completely destroy Sahala and provided two bungalows constructed by the French in Lucknow for residence to the descendants of Farangi Mahall. Thus the name Farangi Mahall became part of our religious history.
Maulvi Abdus Rehman the compiler of “Tazkir-e- Ulema-e-Hind” has mentioned 150 ulema who belonged to Farangi Mahall and the gifting of the two huge bungalows to the descendants of Mulla Qutub is still available with Maulana Jamal Mian Farangi Mahalli, the joint Secretary of the All India Muslim League at the time of the partition of the Subcontinent. I have seen with my own eyes, this Farmaan.
This is what Barbara Metcalf says about the Farangi Mahallis:
The scholarly efforts of these ‘ulema, however went far beyond the simple training of officials. The career of one of the most famous of the family in the eighteenth century, maulana ‘Abdu’l-’Ali (1731-1810) suggests the scope of their scholarship. After he had completed his studies, ‘Abdu’l-’Ali took service under a succession of different princes. But despite official responsibilities and frequent shifts from place to place, he demonstrated a prodigious scholarly capacity. Committed to the metaphysical doctrine of wahdut’l-wujjud, he wrote commentaries on the “fusus” of Ibnu’l-’Arabi (1165-1240) and on the “Masnawi” of Jalalu’din Rumi 9d.1273). His main fields of scholarship, however were jurisprudence, theology, and philosophy. He wrote in excellent classical Arabic and Persian. A recent scholar has judged his works to be “according to the fashion of his time, commentaries, glosses, and super-glosses on most of the usual text-books.” But his contemporaries called his “bahru’l-Ulum”, the “Ocean of Sciences.” and “mailu’l-Ulama,” the “chief of the ‘ulema.” and judged his contributions to be of great value and significance.[1]
The following addition to the article is also taken from Francis Robinson History of Farangi Mahall
Farangi Mahallis also traveled as teachers. Some like Maylana Abd al Baqi (born 1869-70) taught in Medina, others taught and set up madras’s in India. Notable amongst these were the great eighteen-century logician, Mulla Hasan (died 1794) who left a reputation in Rampur which inspired its Shia Nawab to support the Farangi Mahall madarsa in the 1920s; the extremely successful Malik al-ulama Mullaa Haider (died 1840), who established the Hydrabad branch of the family and brought Farangi Mahall a continuing association with India’s most powerful Muslim state; Mawlana Shifi (died 1979), who taught at Lucknow, Calcutta, Dacca and Aligarh, maintaining his family style and purpose to the end; and most important of all, Mulla Abd-al-Bari Bahar-al-ulum, who in the sixty years before his death in 1810 taught in Lucknow, Shah-Jahanpur, Rampur, Buhur and finally in Madras where his presence in the Madrasa-e-kalan, funding by Nawab Walajah is said to have inspired a revival of learning in South India.10
In Lucknow, and wherever they traveled, the Farangi Mahall family pioneered a new curriculum, the Dars-e-Nizamiayya. This has come to form the basis of most madrasa courses in India, including that of the Dar al-ulum in Deoband. The new Curriculum seems to have grown on the one hand out of increased interest in the development of practical skills which would enable the ulema to discharge their duties competently in state service as judges and administrators, and, on the other hand, out of interest in the traditions of philosophical and theological learning which Mir Fazal Allah Shirazi (died 1589) helped to stimulate in Mughal India and which flourished most vigorously in Awadh and eastern UP. Consolidated by Mulla Nizam-al-Din (died 1748), the third of Mulla Qutub al-Din’s four sons, the tendency of the curriculum was to focus attention on the meaning of scripture and the classical sources rather than their literal content, because it took much less time than the established systems of learning, a really able student could complete his studies by the time he was sixteen or seventeen. Thus minds were sharpened, intellectual activity quickened, and a new scholastic style was spread amongst the learned Muslims of India.
The most important measure of the intellectual contribution of the Farangi Mahalli ‘ulema was their systemization of a new curriculum which, with modifications, has dominated religious teaching in South Asia to the present. The Farangi Mahallis, under the direction of a son of Qutub Sahib, Mulla Nizamu’d-din 9d 1748), expanded the existing corpus of works typically studied to include a number of books on each of the various subjects of ma’qualt: Arabic grammar, logic, philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, fiqh, and theology. Quran and hadis were only marginally studied, the former through two commentaries, the latter through abridgement30. The emphasis was to be reversed, as discussed below, by other groups of ‘ulema, but even they were influenced by the scholarly standard set by his school. The Farangi Mahallis were respected for their desire to guard and foster the intellectual tradition in a period of political instability. This concern was widely shared by the ‘ulema, as evidenced by the extent to which the new syllabus, subsequently known as the das-i-nizami, was adopted. Students came to Farangi Mahall from a wide geographic area, and they carried this syllabus with them to their homes. When, for example, the madrasay-yi ‘Aliyah in Calcutta was established under the British auspices in 1780, its first principal was a graduate who instituted the nizami curriculum there.31 To the extent that an important dimension of modern transformation of the ‘ulema rested in closer ties among themselves, this contribution of Farangi Mahall was an important one.
The school’s policy of preparing family member and students for careers in princely service was increasingly fraught with difficulties. Nonetheless, the family clung to the style of religious occupation. Wherever there was a prince, the Farangi Mahallis sought positions under him. Thus in the mid-eighteenth century one family member was appointed as qazi in Delhi. ‘Abdul’l-’Ali whose scholarship from Shahjahanpur to Rampur to Muhur to Madras and finally to Carnatic, where the nawwab, who was from Gopamau to Oudh, granted him both a large stipend and a madrasah in perpetuity. Another family member of the family was patronized by Hafiz Rahmat Khan (1708-1174), the ruler of Rohilkahnd; then as conditions deteriorated, he first fled to Delhi, then to Rampur32 . One family member was appointed mufti by the government of Oudh-only the first of many of the family to hold that post. Three members of the family joined princely armies. The travels, the varieties of employment, the violent deaths of at of at least one member in each of the first four generations of the family-all this suggests the difficulties facing the family in maintaining the pattern of dependence on princes.
Still this pattern continued without change well in to the nineteenth century. In each generation there would be some to uphold the family tradition of teaching and serious scholarship. There would be pious mystics, one of whom in each generation held the imamship of the Farangi Mahall mosque. Hazrat Muhammad ‘Abdul-Wali was one such ‘alim, a man who had thousands of disciples in the period before 1857. But most of the family, in any generation, would seek a livelihood in official employment. After completing their education they would turn to princes or the British government as source of jobs and support. Their motive was in part financial, for many who lacked jobs lived very impecuniously; but they were simply following the pattern of occupation hat had continued from Mughal days.
Shah Waliyu’llah
Like the Farangi Mahallis, Shah Waliyu’llah hoped for a restoration of stable Muslim rule in which the ‘ulema would play an important role34 . Unlike them, he explicitly analyzed the basis of the arrangement between ruler and ‘ulema and argued the necessity of their complementary functions and the need for proper balance between the two.
This is what Francis Robinson says about the Farangi Mahallis:
Like most but not all teachers, Farangi Mahallis were also scholars. Their scholarship is to be distinguished from that of another great family of Indian learned met, that of Shah Wali Ullah of Delhi (1703-62), whose contribution helped to pave the way toward the founding of the most important Indian madrasa of the present, that of Deoband. Those in the Wali-Allah-Deobandi tradition, which was to develop as scrotulist and reforming one, came to place much emphasis on the Quran and the Hadith, what were known as traditional sciences, while the concern of the Farangi Mahallis was primarily with LOGIC and JURISPRUDENCE, what were known as the rational sciences. Nevertheless, the family, as a family down the ages, covered most aspects of Muslim learning and their achievements are expressed in over seven hundred books. Amongst the most prolific were Mulla Mobin (died 1810-11) and Mawlana Abd al-Bari (1878-1926) who wrote 111 books. Of course, many of their books were glosses and super-glosses on the classical texts they taught, but there were also works on mysticism and collections of poetry; there were biographies like Maylana ‘Inyat Allah’s Tazkira-i-’Ulema-i-Farangi Mahall which is the major source of family history; and then there was a variety of work form versatile scholars like Wali Allah (1768-1853) who ranged from a commentary on the Quran in five volumes to treatise on government, Adab-al-Slatin.11 Works which should be noted in particular are: Mulla Hasan’s text on logic which has been popular for nearly 200 years amongst those teaching the Dars-i-Nizamiyya, Bahr-al’Ulum’s study of Rumi’s mathnawi, and Mulla Nizam al Din’s work on the life and the deeds of this friend and Sayyed ‘Abd al-Razaq of Bansa, Manaqib-i-Razzaqiyya. The works of one prolific scholar, who wrote almost entirely in Arabic, stand before all. Mawlana ‘Abd al-Hayy’s (1848-86) al Si’aya which is an introduction to the fiqh text Sharh Wiqaya, his al-Ta’liq al-Mumajajd which is an introduction to Imam Muhammad’s Mu’tta—-a text on Hadith in the light of jurisprudence of Abu Hanifa, and his Zafar al-Amani which is his commentary on Sayyid Shirif Jurjani’s text on the fundamentals of Hadith, established his as one of the greatest scholars of recent times. These books, together with his collection of fatawa, are still much used by Muslims both inside and outside India and have led to Lucknow being known as the ‘city of Abd-al-Hayy’.
This is what Barbara Metclaf says aboot the Farangi Mahallis:
The Farangi Mahallis also fostered the tradition of combining scholarly and mystic learning. Like other religious people in this period, they increasingly came to be initiated in more than one mystic order, and greatly valued mystic experience. Sufi bonds strengthened the family, for members would often be bound by common fealty to a pir, in the early eighteenth century to Sayyidu’s-sadat ‘Adu’r Razzaq Banswi; and family ties were often reinforced by the passing of ijazat, the permission to make one’s own disciples, from one generation to another. It is significant that the Farangi Mahallis did not eschew Sufi experience. As we have seen, the Punjabi Chistis in the same period came to be known for their teaching of the Law, the subject par excellence of the ‘ulema. Increasingly in post-Mughal India, the pattern of religious leadership was to become one in which the institutional distinction of ‘alim and Sufi mystic was substantially blurred.
The Farangi Mahallis, however, were not just scholars, but like many learned men throughout the Islamic world, were also mystics: they strove to balance their command of formal Islamic knowledge with spiritual development. Even ‘Abd al Hayy, whose grave is one of bare earth open to the skies, stressed the benefits of visiting the shrine at Bansa and in his will urged his relatives to study Imam al-Ghazalli’s Ihya ‘ulum al-din. As in their scholarship, the mysticism of the Farangi Mahallis with its heavy concentration of the saint’s tomb and the celebration of ‘urs, the anniversary of the saints death., contrasted strikingly with the later Wali-Deobandi tradition, which eschewed such practices. Moderate supporters of the doctrine of what al-waged, they continued to study and to teach the works of Ibn al-Arabi up to the twentieth century. Sayyid ‘Abd al-Razzaq (died 1724), the illiterate pir of the Qadiri order, was the saint to whom all members of this learned Farangi Mahall family looked. They registered their associates with Abd-al-Razzak as crucial to their spiritual well being, while the sajjadas of his shrine at Bansa some thirty miles from Lucknow were careful to pay the scholars of Farangi Mahall especial respect. There are also three important centers of devotion within the family.
· The shrine of Mulla Nizam-al-Din in Lucknow, which is renowned for the benefit it can bring the mentally disturbed and scholars in difficulty
· The shrine of Shah Anwar al Haqq, and his successors and followers, which is also in Lucknow and
· The shrine of Mawlana ‘Abd al-Bahr al’Ulum which is the Walihjahi mosques in Madras
There are furthermore three important lineages which run through the family:
· The Qadiri following from Sayyid ‘Abd al Razzaq of bansa
· The Chisti-Nizami from shah Qudrat Allah Nizami of Safipur and the
· Chisti-Sabiri which goes back through Mulla Qutub al-Din to Shaikh Muhibb Allah of Allahbad, the great proponent of Ibn al-Arabi to Shah Ahmad ‘Abd al-Haqq of Radawli
This is what Barbara Metcalf says about the Farangi Mahallis:
The princes encouraged this arrangement. The Muslim courts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century prided themselves on their cultural attainments, among which religious learning held an important place. In Rohilkhand a Pathan kingdom flourished; at its height under Hafizu’lMulk as many as five thousand scholars were said to be supported by the rulers and other patrons. Hafizu’l-Mulk himself presided over a board of the learned who supervised education, and he honored those who completed their studies with lavish court ceremonial. But hafiz’l-Mulk’s kingdom, like that of many princes, did not last long.
The Farangi Mahalli ‘ulema, however, even though demand for their skills declined and the availability of princely patronage was increasingly scarce, did not consciously seek a more independent position for themselves by addressing a more widely based audience. Rather they continued to focus, as had the ‘ulema of Mughal days, on obtuse and technical kinds of scholarship. They did not as a group have the interest in popular reform characteristic of some other ‘ulema. This was evident in their continued emphasis on ma’qulat and in the fact that they taught Shi’i as well as Sunni students, cooperating as they did with the Oudh court. The Farangi Mahallis thus represented in attenuated form the style of religious leadership that had flourished under the Mughals. Yet in their independent efforts to maintain a high intellectual standard for the ‘ulema, their success in drawing students from a wide area, and their integration of the bookish and mystic traditions, they exemplified increasingly important characteristics of he ‘ulema in the post-Mughal period. It was, above all, their erudition what won them respect and support from Muslims anxious to guard their intellectual heritage. When the Farangi Mahallis found themselves, wily nilly, without a role at the Muslim courts, the distinction remained.33
This is what Francis Robinson says about the Farangi Mahallis:
By the present century the springs of Indian mysticism were failing, but where they still flowed, the Farangi Mahall family were often prominent. They had connections with many of the major shrines in north India. They taught the sons of many sajjadda at Madrasa-’Aliya Nizamiyya, whose register reads like a roll call of the high families of the region. Consequently, the Farangi Mahallis were given much respect. The last important pir of the family was ‘Abd al-Bari. His influence ramified throughout North Indian society, where his disciples ranged from the cadres of great landed families to politicians such as Muhammad and Swat Ali and to relatives of the sajjadas of the most important shirine in India, that of Moin al-Dill Chisti at Ajmere. His influence, and that of Farangi Mahall was demonstrated when at the ‘urs of Mu’in ak-Din Chisti in 1916 he played the leading role in founding the Bazm-i-Sufiyya-i Hindm which aimed to revive and to reform Indian mysticism.
Such was the pattern of Farangi Mahalli achievement. Such too was the pattern of their lives, and one followed by 100 of the 150 or so male descendants of Mulla Qutub al-Din born before 1900, about whose activities we have some evidence. Then, from the mid nineteenth century, their lives began to find a new dimension. Like learned and holy men throughout the Islamic world they strove to guide the faithful, as colonial rulers brought modernization after a western fashion, and revealed in the process concern, as much for the worldwide Muslim community as for the Muslims of British India. Their aim was, first and last, to defend Islam, and this they felt done best, or so their deeds suggest, less through a process of inner renewal and reformed Islamic practice, as Deobandi ‘ulema preferred, then by fighting for Islamic issues in public life. Thus in 1878 they founded the Majlis Muid al-Islam, the immediate aim of which was to raise money to help the Ottoman Empire in its war with Russia. In 1913 they helped to found the Anjuman-i Khuddam Ka’ba to protect the holy places of Islam, and were prominently involved in the great campaign of protest over the destruction of part of a mosque in Kanpur. After World War I, they played a leading part in launching the Khilafat movement: in December 1918 they were the first ‘ulema to attend the All-India Muslim League sessions; they developed an alliance with Mahatma Gandhi; they helped to organize the Central Khilafat Committee in 1919; and throughout they drove the agitation more extreme till in 1920 the Khilafat movement adopted a policy of non-cooperation with the British government, and under its influence so did the Indian National Congress. During these years of pan-Islamic fervor Farangi Mahall were continually speaking at meetings, issuing fatwa, guiding the movement on points of religion, and going to prison. Then , as the movement began to wane, the founded yet another pan-Islamic organization, the Anjumna-i Khuddam-i Harmain, to help protect the holy places of Mecca and Medina from the depredations of Ibn Sa’ud and his Ahab followers. The leader of the Farangi Mahallis in these twentieth century battles for the faith was Mawlana ‘Abd al-Bari12 . But this contribution did not end there. In 1919, he also helped to found, and was the first president of the organization of Indian ‘ulema, the Jamiatul-’Ulema-i Hind; while his son, Mawlana Jamal Mian, with his Farangi Mahall contemporaries, was very active in the All-India Muslim League’s struggle for Pakistan, being honorary joint secretary of the League from 1942. No other family of ‘ulema played such a prominent role in Indo-Muslim affairs before 1947.
So Farangi Mahall in remarkable of its contribution to Islamic learning, mysticism and politics. It is remarkable for the quantity of records in which the family may be studied. Indeed, there can be few families, not just in South Asian, but anywhere in Asia about whom we can discover so much over so long a period. There are over 200 documents emanating from the Mughal and Nawabi government, (farmers, parwanas, deeds of sale, receipts, petitions) relating to land and grants supporting the family in its work, the earliest being Akbar’s first known farman of 1559.13 There is some correspondence dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while many of the books they wrote still exist, some in manuscript but some too in the handsome editions of Newal Kishore of the family’s own Usufi Press. There are substantial collections of fatawa for the nineteenth century, some diaries, various editions of mawlid lectures, and some or the earliest Urdu newspapers still in existence, which Mawlvi Muhammad Yaqub of Farangi Mahall edited, Tilism-i Lakhnaw and Kurnamah.14 Moreover, there is much of the most valuable source, biographical and malfuzat literature. For the twentieth century there are great riches: a mass of correspondence, diaries, books, newspapers, pamphlets, and some of the papers and proceedings of the organizations with which the Farangi Mahallis were involved. From these sources several substantial monographs on aspects of the family and its contributions so Indian Islam should emerge. Moreover, taken together with similar sources in the hands of the descendants of other learned families, and in those of the holy families of the shrines, there exist the materials from which a deeply textured picture of the religious and social history of Islamic India over the past three centuries can be painted.
Several problems command attention within the history of Farangi Mahall. There is the problem of the material basis of their support, of how they survived as a family of Islamic learning, not just under the favorable rule of the Mughals but also under the less favorable regimes first of the Mughals but also the problem of how a family of tradition survived, of how one family maintained a distinctive style and purpose down the centuries, neither deterred by influences emanating from the qasbah zamindari families amongst whom marriages were sometimes made, nor seduced in the main by those from the rich and materialistic worlds of Arcot and Hydrabad into which branches of the family expanded. Then, we need to be able to identify the particular emphasis and quality of their Islamic scholarship so that we can place it with rather more precision then now, not just in the context of eighteenth-century Indian Islamic scholarship but also in hat of the Islamic world in general. So far unfortunately, as little work has been done on the learning of the Farangi Mahallis as has been done on the background against which it must be set. There follows a need to trace the development of their scholarship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a development which seems to stand in stark contrast so that of Shah Wali Allah, his descendants and their followers, both spiritual and intellectual. Islam, however, is less about what scholars think and write then about how men behave. Here we must reach into the Sufi as much as scholarly part of the Farangi Mahall world to unveil their vision of a perfect and well-formed life, the example of correct Islamic behavior which they wished to set before the faithful.15 Associated with this question is that of changes in right conduct, the movement of religious change which Barbra Metcalf has discerned especially amongst Muslims of the Delhi world, as processes of religious revival and reform began to draw Muslims away from the particularistic and ecstatic practices of the shrines to the more sober forms of religious expression commanded by scripture. We need to know how Farangi Mahallis responded to this profound and important new departure in Indian Islam, how far they shared in it, modifying it perhaps in the light of their own distinctive way, and how far they maintained their own traditions unchanged. We are not concerned, however merely with how Farangi Mahallis interacted with Muslim reformism, we also need to know how they interacted with the Hindu world on whose margins they moved, and that of Shi’a scholarship which was vigorous in nineteenth-century Lucknow, not to mention that of Muslims beyond India amongst whom, from the mid-nineteenth century, they increasingly came to travel. Then, there is the opportunity, which should not be missed, to explore the life of a leading learned man and his family in the early twentieth century, to discover the pattern of his day, his month, his year, set in the context of family, city quarter, school, and calendar of saints festivals. These problems and possibilities and others will be investigated in the forthcoming monograph. The remainder of this essay will be concerned with two further problems: how the influence of Farangi Mahall was spread and maintained throughout much of India; and how Farangi Mahallis responded to modernization under British rule. The aim is to provide no more than an outline in the hope of revealing some of the excitement of the history of Farangi Mahall, and what it might contribute to the history of Indian Islam.
The Muslim reaction to the events of 1857 was equally consequential. At the time, qasbah political and religious elite did not think of themselves as a single political body, abut all of them recognized THAT JIHAD WAS A FAILURE and British rule was enduring. The agreed that their best interests lay in the cultivation of educational, religious and cultural affairs and in strengthening the Muslim community from within.
Some embraced the new regime in the hope of forming a British-Muslim condominium to govern India. Others maintained silent but deep anti-British and pan-Islamist sentiments; still others turned their back on political issues.
As the century moved on, three main strands may be distinguished in the post-Mutiny position of qasbah elites. The first was the position of the conservative religious leaders who recognized the futility of jihad, the need for adjustment to British rule, and the importance of preserving the traditions of Islamic religious belief and practice. The Sufi leaders and “sajadda-nashin” or heads of shrines wanted to maintain a panoply of saint worship and festivals and the loyalty of the Muslim masses. However, Mughal decline had deprived the shrines of economic and political support; British rule had subverted their worldly political influence. To maintain their position many Sufis associated themselves with British rule and had recourse to British courts to settle land and tenure disputes. The Sajjada Nashin often delegated their religious functions to subordinates while they saw their political interests.
Other Sufis attempted to adapt theory and practice to their declining worldly authority and stressed the purely contemplative and spiritual aspect of Sufism. They tried to preserve the inner meanings of Sufi tradition, and adopted more sober and Sharia oriented religious practices in the face of declining worldly authority.
Conservative ‘ulema” similarly attempted to maintain their traditional position.
The scholars of Farangi Mahall quarter of Lucknow and the Barelwis continued to combine “ulema” scholarship and Sufi shrines
The second response within the “ulema” circles however was the resurgence of reformism in north India and Bengal. In North India the pre-Mutiny program of religious reform survived political defeat. Its most important expression in the post-Mutiny period was the founding in 1867 of the reform college of Deoband, by Maulana Mohammed Qasim Nanautawi. Deobands curriculum combined the study of revealed sciences (Quran Hadith and law) with national subjects (logic, philosophy and science). At the time it was Sufi in orientation and affiliated with the Chisti order. Its Sufism, however was closely integrated with hadith scholarship and the proper legal practice of Islam. Deobandis poured out in Urdu vernacular, legal opinions in proper Islamic practice. The spread of printing made it possible for the first time to reach a mass audience. Deobands each was India-wide. Many students came from Afghanistan, Central Asia, Yemen and Arabia. Within 30 years of its founding, its graduates established some 40 branch schools, making Deoband the center of the new maslak–a distinctive “way” in Indian Islam.
The third strand in post Mutiny Muslim adjustment to British rule was that of the land owning and the office-holding interests. Though the British had replaced the Mughals it was still conceivable to the political elite that they could maintain their landed official and status interests…the Muslims had to accommodate to the English language. For generations the response of the political elite was formulated by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Ahmad Khan was himself descended from a prominent family of Mughal administrators, and throughout his life continued to be posted as an officer of British administration. In his view the only adequate response to the realities of post-Mutiny India was to accept British rule. In Syeds view British rule was lawful. Under British government Muslims could live in peace………his principal concern was and that of his cohorts was the need for Western type education, under Muslim auspices to train a new generation for political responsibility……….Aligarh was meant to be the Eaton of England; its playing fields as much as its class-rooms were the training ground of a new generation of Muslim political leaders. Aligarh encouraged verbal skills, self-confidence, manly solidarity and competition and the values of duty, loyalty, and leadership exercised in games and in school clubs and societies….
3) From elite to Mass politics
In the later part of the century, however the policies of loyalism and of political reform, whether of the religious reformist or the modernist variety were challenged and eventually overthrown. The ambiguities in the British attitude towards the Muslims, increasing Hindu self-assertion and the beginnings of the Indian national independence movement drove Muslim political thought and religious leaders toward a more aggressive British policy…the British attitude toward Muslim elites was a major factor in the eventual subversion of the loyalist policies of Sayyed Ahmad. The British considered that the Muslims as former masters of India harbored lingering ambitions of political power and that they had therefore to be conciliated to win favor but repressed lest they become too powerful…at the time they tried to reduce the proportion of Muslims employed in government. British governors sometimes deliberately favored Hindu over Muslim appointees. The administrative position of Muslims though still substantial deteriorated steadily…..the electoral system favored Hindus….another factor that weakened Muslim position was Hindu self assertion…in 1875 Arya Samaj…the first cow protection associations in 1882…of particular concern to educated Muslims was the campaign to make Hindi an official language. Hindu revivalism led to literary renaissance, increasing numbers of newspapers and the ever-wider circulation and ultimately a Hindu crusade against the dominant place to Urdu in government affairs. Hindus campaigned to have Devanagri recognized as an official script for the court an government use. The new script they argued would allow Hindus who did not know Persian to compete equally for government posts. The British were responsive to these demands. A British governor rejected a civil service candidates’ list on the grounds that there was too many Muslims; Persian was removed from the curriculum of Allahbad University, and in 1900 the British accepted the use of Devanagri script for official purposes in the Northwest Frontier provinces and Oudh………..the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885…Congress though open to Muslims was formed by Brahmin Lawyers.. however no event was more important for the change in Muslim elite opinion then the partition of Bengal…the first Muslim response was continue the policies…the younger generation clamored for more direct political action….Urdu defense League in 1900..1906 a petition for separate electorate.. and Lord Minto acknowledged the Muslim right to representation…in 1909…the most important expression of the new Muslim militancy were the founding of the Muslim League in 1906…in 1908 Abu’l Kalam Azad began to publish Al-Hilal…to support the caliphate.. Maulana Mohamamd Ali a graduate of Aligarh preached a similar creed in Comrade
The newfound militancy of the Muslim political elite was paralleled by the revived activism among the reformist “ulema”. In this political re-assertion the “ulema” of Deoband and Farangi Mahall played a large part. Farangi Mahall was the name given to a prominent “ulema” lineage, derived from the quarter of Lucknow which they had inhabited since the end of the seventeenth century. The quarter was renowned as one of the oldest centers on India madarsa education and Sufism, and the family of scholars had wide network of disciples. The Farangi Mahall maintained a moderate version of Sharia-Sufi Islam, combining Quranic and legal studies with mysticism. They venerated the Sufi ancestors and kept up a festival calendar of “birthday” celebrations for the saints and the Prophet, but they were careful to emphasize they did not worship the saints but rather came to the tombs in order to be closer to God. While the Deobandis and the other reformers criticized the Sufi practices, the Farangi Mahalli believed that their synthesis of Sharia’a and Sufism was a true representation of the life and teachings of the Prophet.
One crucial principle of the school was the avoidance of contact with or dependence upon the government. While the Farangis had accepted Mughal gifts in the seventeenth century, by the nineteenth century they had withdrawn from politics to avoid contamination by the Shi’a rulers of Lucknow and their British overlords. This political stance, however changed in the late nineteenth century. Beneath the acquiescent surface of apolitical religious activities was a smoldering resentment of infidel rule. This resentment was expressed in terms of sympathy with Muslims all over the world who were struggling against British, European, and Christian imperialism. The leaders of the Farangi Mahall played a large role in the formation of Muslim associations to support the Ottoman empire and protect the holy places in Arabia, and they were instrumental, after World War I, in launching the Khilafat movement and in the foundation of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind (Association of the Ulema of India).
Between 1876 and 1878 the years of the Russo-Turkish war and the Congress of Berlin, which witnessed the first British, as well as Russian, participation in the partition of the Ottoman empire, Indian Muslims agitated for a pro-Turkish policy. Jamal-ud-din Afghani propagated the doctrine of pan-Islamic policy….in 1888 Muslim religious opposition to the British rule took a new turn when the rector of Deoband issued a fatwa in favor of a Muslim alliance with the Congress party to further the struggle against imperialism. The ulema considered foreign rule as a greater danger to Islam than Hindu competition. These strong anti-colonial, anti-British and pro-Ottoman sensibilities were stimulated in the years before the First World War…….
The Western-educated and the religious-educated leaders joined hands in the open political action. In 1909 Mahmud-al-Hasan, rector Deoband, founded the Jamat-al-Ansar, Society of Helpers (of the Prophet), whose ultimate objective was an alliance of Turkey, Iran , Afghanistan to expel the British form India. In 1912-13 Maulana Abd-al-Bari, the head of Farangi Mahall and Shaukat Ali…founded the Anjuman-Khuddam-e-Kaabaa, Association of the Servants of he Kaaba to oppose British rule and defend the Ottoman empire
The Kilafat movement was led by Maulana Abdul Bari, the Ali brothers and the All India Muslim League. The Congress too joined the movement for a lttle while, but then the Congress backed out
The struggle of freedom under the Muslim League is well documented. This is what Ishtiaq Azhar says (Hasrat Mohani: a man of courage, Dawn, May 13th, 1996)
Maulana Hasrat Mohani, the fourteenth president of the former All-India Muslim League which created Pakistan under the leadership of the Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah died in Farangi Mahall on May 13, 1951, and was buried in the historic graveyard of Ulema-e-Farangi-Mahall, usually called “Maulvi Anwaar Ka Bagh”. Perhaps he had an intuition about his burial place because in “Kuliyat-e-Hasrat” he wrote a special poem on the Bagh.
When anything is written about Maulana Hasrat Mohani, one must remember this famous and historic bagh where the spiritual guide of Ali brothers, Maulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahalli, and his own peer, Maulana Abdul Wahab Farangi Mahalli, lie buried and where the son of Mulla Saeed, Mulla Ahmad Abdul Haq, is also buried.
Nobody can forget the father of Mulla Ahmad Abdul Haq, Mulla Saeed, for his contribution as the compiler of Fatwa-e-Alamgiri since this compilation alone is described by many ulema as the cornerstone of Islam. Maulana Hasrat Mohani had perhaps, chosen this historic graveyard as his last resting place because during his fatal illness he shifted to Lucknow from Kanpur and died in Farangi Mahall so that he may be buried in the historic Farangi graveyard.
It is quite relevant here to throw some light on the historic Farangi Mahall as well. Initially he head of the Farangi Mahall dynasty used to reside in Sahalla and was called “Mulla Qutub”. He had a Maktab in this village located a few miles from Lucknow and was related to another family residing in the same village. This family had a feud with another family which resided in Sahala. In revenge, as is usually the practice amongst feudals, Mulla Qutub was also assassinated although he was not involved in this feud.
When the news of this brutal murder reached Mulla Saeed, who was compiling the above mentioned historic religious document and was in constant company of Aurenzeb Alamgir, he conveyed this information to the Mughal Emperor, who ordered the Subedar of Awadh to completely destroy Sahala and provided two bungalows constructed by the French in Lucknow for residence to the descendants of Farangi Mahall. Thus the name Farangi Mahall became part of our religious history.
Maulvi Abdus Rehman the compiler of “Tazkir-e- Ulema-e-Hind” has mentioned 150 ulema who belonged to Farangi Mahall and the gifting of the two huge bungalows to the descendants of Mulla Qutub is still available with Maulana Jamal Mian Farangi Mahalli, the joint Secretary of the All India Muslim League at the time of the partition of the Subcontinent. I have seen with my own eyes, this Farmaan.
When he was a student at Aligarh, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan was his classmate. Both struggled for Pakistan, from 1937 onwards, when Maulana Hasrat Mohani, at the Lucknow session of the All-India Muslim League from dominion status to full independence. Zafar Ali Khan seconded this resolution which ultimately adopted by the Lucknow session of the Muslim League.
It was he who along with Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, created Gohar-e-Ahrah after the demolition of a part of Machli Bazaar Mosque of Kanpur on August 2, 1913. The movement, which has started from there under the leadership of Maulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahalli and Maharaja Sir Ali Mohammad Khan of Mahmoodabad, encompassed the entire Muslim leadership of politicians, intellectuals, religious scholars and poets. During this period, the nation conferred the title of “Syedul Ahrar” on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and “Rasul Ahrar” on Maulana Mohammad Ali. Both of them later on proposed two different schemes for the partition of India along with other thinkers, intellectuals and political leaders right form 1885.
, a companion of Muhammad. Abu Ayyub al-Ansari
belonged to the Bani Ghanam(1)(2) tribe from amongst the Khazraj of Yathrib (later Madina, Medina
or Madina un-Nabi). This lineage is traced through another very famous scholar and poet, descendant of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari
, Khajeh Abdollah Ansari
of Herat, Afghanistan. (1)(2)
The lineage is described, and traced in the family history records (1), as follows;
Around mid-sixteenth century Shaikh Makhdoom Nizamuddin Ansari travelled from Panipat
to, and settled in, Oudh province of the Mughal Empire. As stated above, the family settled in Sehali, near Barabanki, and soon attracted students and pupils from the surrounding areas who were interested in acquiring religious education. The town of Sehali is about fourteen miles from Bansa
- the abode of the famous, Shah Abdur Razzaq
Bansavi(of Bansa), with whom in due course, the Ulama of Firangi Mahal were to develop a deep scholarly connection.
Madrasah
Madrasah is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious...
in Lucknow
Lucknow
Lucknow is the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in India. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of Lucknow District and Lucknow Division....
, Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
Earliest History
The history of the Ansari family of Sehali or Sihali, Barabanki districtBarabanki District
The Barabanki district is one of four districts of Faizabad division, lies at the very heart of Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and forms as it were a centre from which no less than seven other districts radiate...
who later achieved great renown as the Firangi Mahal family or the Ulama-e-Farangi Mahal, is recorded in a book titled, Tazkira
Tazkira
Tazkira is one of the principal forms of Persian literature and also Urdu literature. Tazkira is a type biographical anthology, almost always of poetry alone...
-e-Ulama-e-Firangi Mahal.
The ancestors arrived in India from Herat
Herat
Herāt is the capital of Herat province in Afghanistan. It is the third largest city of Afghanistan, with a population of about 397,456 as of 2006. It is situated in the valley of the Hari River, which flows from the mountains of central Afghanistan to the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan...
, Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
, and settled mainly in and around Panipat
Panipat
Panipat بَنِبَت is an ancient and historic city in Panipat district, Haryana state, India. It is 90 km north from Delhi and 169 km south of Chandigarh on NH-1. The three battles fought at the city were turning points in Indian history. The city is famous in India by the name of "City of...
. In the mid-sixteenth century, they further spread to the Oudh province, during the reign of the great Mughal
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
Emperor, Akbar the Great. They made their way to, and settled in a small village, Sehali, District Barabanki
Barabanki District
The Barabanki district is one of four districts of Faizabad division, lies at the very heart of Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh state of India, and forms as it were a centre from which no less than seven other districts radiate...
, Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...
, India.
While the Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan
Shah Jahan
Shah Jahan Shah Jahan (also spelled Shah Jehan, Shahjehan, , Persian: شاه جهان) (January 5, 1592 – January 22, 1666) Shah Jahan (also spelled Shah Jehan, Shahjehan, , Persian: شاه جهان) (January 5, 1592 – January 22, 1666) (Full title: His Imperial Majesty Al-Sultan al-'Azam wal Khaqan...
was still alive, a war of succession to the Mughal throne ensued. The Emperor's youngest son, and the governor of Deccan, Abu Muzaffar Muhiuddin Aurangzeb
Aurangzeb
Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir , more commonly known as Aurangzeb or by his chosen imperial title Alamgir , was the sixth Mughal Emperor of India, whose reign lasted from 1658 until his death in 1707.Badshah Aurangzeb, having ruled most of the Indian subcontinent for nearly...
, was amongst the protagonists, and was the ultimate victor in this war and deposed his father. The Ansari family of Sehali is said to have professed loyalty to, and supported Aurangzeb
Aurangzeb
Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir , more commonly known as Aurangzeb or by his chosen imperial title Alamgir , was the sixth Mughal Emperor of India, whose reign lasted from 1658 until his death in 1707.Badshah Aurangzeb, having ruled most of the Indian subcontinent for nearly...
Alamgeer during his campaigns in the war of succession as well as during his reign as the Mughal Emperor.
After the assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
of Mullah Qutab uddin Shaheed, (d. 1692) the family leader was Mullah Saeed bin Mullah Qutab Uddin who still saw the hostility of his relatives and decided that he is was going to depart from Sehali and find a home somewhere else. He went to Hyderabad, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
to visit Emperor Aurangzeb.
Founding of the School
"Hamaarey Hindostaan ka Cambridge yehi hai" - Maulana Shibli NomaniShibli Nomani
Allamah Shibli Nomani was a respected scholar of Islam from Indian subcontinent during British Raj. He was born at Bindwal in Azamgarh district of present-day Uttar Pradesh. He is known for the founding the Shibli National College in 1883 and the Darul Mussanifin in Azamgarh...
, India's most eminent historian and scholar
In Hyderabad, Mullah Asad bin Qutab Shaheed was at the court of Emperor Aurangzeb
Aurangzeb
Abul Muzaffar Muhy-ud-Din Muhammad Aurangzeb Alamgir , more commonly known as Aurangzeb or by his chosen imperial title Alamgir , was the sixth Mughal Emperor of India, whose reign lasted from 1658 until his death in 1707.Badshah Aurangzeb, having ruled most of the Indian subcontinent for nearly...
, who consulted him on Islamic matters. With the help of his brother, Mullah Asad who was living in Deccan at that time got a royal decree issued for the Governor of Lucknow
Lucknow
Lucknow is the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in India. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of Lucknow District and Lucknow Division....
to search of a desirable place to live in Lucknow. Mullah Saeed took this decree to Sehali. He met the Governor of Lucknow and chose two houses which were in the Mohallah “Ihatah Chiragh Baig”, these houses belonged to a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
trader named Neal and after his departure, according to the law of the time, had come under the control of the government.
After a while this house and the area around it was given to Mullah Saeed bin Qutab uddin Shaheed and his brother Mullah Asad bin Qutab uddin Shaheed by the order of the Emperor. This royal decree is in the possession of Jamal Mian bin Maulana Abdul Bari and it clearly states the names of only Mullah Saeed and Mullah Asad. Mullah Nizam Uddin bin Mullah Qutab Uddin Shaheed and Mullah Raza bin Mullah Qutab Uddin Shaheed were young and their names could not be listed on this Royal Decree.
Along with the house, some land, in raich]] and Barabanki was awarded specifically to Mullah Saeed. No exact account is available but all this land was lost by his decedents and now except for a small orchard in Sehali, none of this land belongs to the family. Mullah Saeed moved his whole family from Sehali to this house.
This eventually became the school today and its name Firangi Mahal is related to its former ownership by the Frenchman Neal. Firangi in Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
now means "foreigner", but at this time Firangi was Arabic for a Frank
Frank
Frank may refer to:* A member of the medieval Germanic people, the Franks* Frank * Frank * Crusaders or any persons originating in Catholic western Europe, in medieval Middle Eastern history...
.
Change In India
The culture of the Mughals was a conglomeration of earlier Muslim Muyara and Gupta dynasties—an apogee of celebration of Turkish, Persian, Afghan, Pathan, Mongol and local native Buddhist, Brahman, Rajput and other cultures. Urdu, Punjabi, Pahari, Kashmiri, Pushto, Saraiki, Hindkoh, Baluchi, Barouhi, Sindhi, Gujrati, and Mekrani were languages that all grew up during the same time. Prakrit, Sanskrit and Pali were formalized. Vedas were indeed translated and written into Devanagri during the era of Akbar. Their dress, prose, cuisine, and demeanor is a confluence of cultures of the Middle East and South Asia.The Mughal empire cannot be divorced from the “Mughlea” edification and the “Mughlea” culture. Growing this culture involved creating and supporting institutions that would functions as green houses for Muslim intellectual growth. Guardians of the nurseries of this culture were individuals and families whose entire purpose of existence was research into Islamic ideas. They wrote the curriculums for the schools, and took Islam to the nooks and corners of South Asia. During the height of the Mughal empire they assisted in guiding imperial religious thought (giving religious advice to Akbar, and assisting the emperor Aurunzeb Alleger in writing the Fatwa e Alamgiri). During the decline of the Mughal empire, they carefully guarded and revived Islamic thinking in South Asia. During the British rule some of these families carefully created a vision for the youth of South Asia.
The members of Farangi Mahal exercised great influence over the development of Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
religious thought in India between the 17th century and 20th century. This was the period when the world was changing and the peoples of India were exposed to the rising colonial powers of Europe. The European colonial powers were expanding their influence through their capabilities at sea, trade and exploration, and later they projected their economic and military power because of the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
. During this period, the great Mughal Empire
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
had shrunk and disintegrated, and gradually India became subject to British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
influence and later rule.
The Muslims in India, in particular, faced the trauma of seeing their influence and power wane and also had to face, and learn to handle the challenges of a new era that acutely affected their culture and way of life. The Ulama (Heads of the religious school) of Firangi Mahal helped the Muslims of India understand the nature of this challenge, and helped them preserve their culture, way of life, and to deal with the very significant changes taking place in their surroundings.
"The learned and holy men of Farangi Mahall were the consolidators in the subcontinent of the rationalist traditions of Islamic scholarship derived from Iran. These were encapsulated in a renowned and widely-used syllabus which they created and which became the dominant system of Indian Islamic education from the eighteenth century.
These traditions represented a confident and flexible Islamic understanding which, the Farangi Mahallis felt, had the capacity to preserve Islam even while selectively adopting social, cultural and technological changes from the West. Between 1780 and 1820 these traditions were arguably poised to bring forth some form of Islamic enlightenment. But over the course of nineteenth century they were overcome by the twin forces of Islamic reformism and Western education." (2)
It was in Lucknow that a family of Muslim leaders was so strong that even the mighty Jauhar brothers could not make a decision without the consent of the Muslim Sufis 6 leaders.
Nurtured by Akbar, Jehangir and Aurenzeb these Muslim leaders were in the forefront in the preservation of the Muslim culture in Northern India. Long before Quaid-e-Azam and Sir Syed Ahmad Khan appeared on the scene it was these Muslim leaders who kept the flame of independence alive. It was because of institutions like the Farangi Mahall led Nizamiyya that created the need for Aligarh.
This is what Francis Robinson says about the learned Sufi Family. Here’s a brief intro extracted from his article3
“Ah, Lucknow, where I first met Maulana Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi. But let’s talk about another institution there. The Farangi Mahallis of Lucknow were a family of prominent Islamic scholars and mystics.
Over the past twenty years learned and holy men ‘ulema and Sufis, have emerged as a subject for serious study. The ‘ulema of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent have come to share in this development, although perhaps a lttle tardily…
It is no surprise that little, which is informed with modern academic concerns, has been published as yet, either in English or in Urdu, on the learned and holy men of Lucknow’s Farangi Mahall family, a family that played a considerable part in Indian Islamic life for nearly three hundred years, and came to stand for a distinctive style of Indian Islam…
The Farangi Mahall family trace their ancestry through the great scholar and mystic, ‘Abd Allah Ansari of Herat (1006-88), to Ayub Ansari, the Prophet’s friend and standard bearer, whose tomb is the focus of the great Ottoman shrine center at Eyup
Eyüp
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on the Golden Horn
Golden Horn
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just outside the land walls of Istanbul
Istanbul
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. We do not know when the family migrated to India but, according to the family biographers, in the fourteenth century one ‘Ala al-Din settled at Sihali in Awadh. His descendant, Mulla Hafiz, was acknowledged as a distinguished scholar by the emperor Akbar who made a generous ”madad-i ma’ash” grant in his favor in 1559.
In 1692 the great-great-grandson of Mulla Hafiz, Mulla Qutb al-Din, was murdered in a squabble over land and his library burned [and the Mulla killed]…The emperor Awrangzeb recompensed the Mulla’s four sons by assigning them a European [Farangi] indigo merchant’s house in Lucknow and by making grants to support their work. Around 1695 the family moved Sihali to that house, which was known as Farangi Mahall [the European’s Palace].
This is what Barbara Metcalf says about the Farangi Mahallis:
At the turn of the eighteenth century a family of men famed for their religious and long supported by the Mughal court, settled in Lucknow. Its patriarch, Mulla Qutub’u-Din (d. 1691), had retained close ties with the Delhi court and, with his sons, had participated in the collection of the Fatwa-yi ‘Alamgiri. When Qutub’ud-Din was killed in a land dispute with a family of rival shaiks, the emperor punished his opponents and generously compensated his sons, two of whom had accompanied him on his campaign to the Deccan. His award included land in Bahraich district of Oudh, given as jagir; and the quarter of Lucknow where a French adventurer had once built a mansion known as Farangi mahall, given a revenue-free tenure. It was to be the name of Farangi Mahall that eh family was subsequently known.
The shift to Lucknow was significant, for as we have noted, as the century progresses the locus of artistic and intellectual vitality was to be increasingly in the regional kingdoms. In Lucknow, the Nawab, although a Shi’i patronized the school because it offered training for bureaucrats. He required newly arrived Iranis to present a certificate from Farangi Mahall before they could receive court patronage. Preparing qazis and muftis, the legal officials required by Muslim courts, was the specialty of Farangi Mahall, which now filled a void left by the disruption of scholarly centers in the capital.
This is what Francis Robinson says about the guardians of freedom:
Once established in Lucknow, the descendants of Mulla Qutb al-Din built up a reputation for scholarship, indeed they have good claim to be the leading learned family of the past three centuries. Teaching was their first occupation; they made Farangi Mahall into a center of learning which attracted scholars not only from all parts of India but also from places as far away as Arabia, Central Asia and China. In the early eighteenth century it must have been one of the largest centers of learning in India. Students from outside Lucknow stayed with the family or were boarded at the city’s Tila Mosque, which had room for seven hundred, and their expenses were met in part from the Mughal treasury.
At this time, it seems, there was no “madrassa” or school in Farangi Mahall, no central organizing institution; members of the family simply taught those who came to them in the porches and front rooms of their homes. There was a “madrassa” for a few years in the late nineteenth century. But it was only in 1905 that the efforts of the family were finally co-coordinated in an institutional framework, the “Madrassa-i ‘Aliya Nizamiyya”, which continued the work of teaching until 1969.
The atmosphere of the Farangi Mahall quarter, wedged in between Lucknow’s Chowk and Victoria Road, was evidently striking: “This is the very Cambridge of our India” declared Shibli Nomani after a visit in 1896.
This is what Ishtiaq Azhar says (Hasrat Mohani: a man of courage, Dawn, May 13th, 1996)
Maulana Hasrat Mohani, the fourteenth president of the former All-India Muslim League which created Pakistan under the leadership of the Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah died in Farangi Mahall on May 13, 1951, and was buried in the historic graveyard of Ulema-e-Farangi-Mahall, usually called “Maulvi Anwaar Ka Bagh”. Perhaps he had an intuition about his burial place because in “Kuliyat-e-Hasrat” he wrote a special poem on the Bagh.
When anything is written about Maulana Hasrat Mohani, one must remember this famous and historic bagh where the spiritual guide of Ali brothers, Maulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahalli, and his own peer, Maulana Abdul Wahab Farangi Mahalli, lie buried and where the son of Mulla Saeed, Mulla Ahmad Abdul Haq, is also buried.
Nobody can forget the father of Mulla Ahmad Abdul Haq, Mulla Saeed, for his contribution as the compiler of Fatwa-e-Alamgiri since this compilation alone is described by many ulema as the cornerstone of Islam. Maulana Hasrat Mohani had perhaps, chosen this historic graveyard as his last resting place because during his fatal illness he shifted to Lucknow from Kanpur and died in Farangi Mahall so that he may be buried in the historic Farangi graveyard.
It is quite relevant here to throw some light on the historic Farangi Mahall as will. Initially he head of the Farangi Mahall dynasty used to reside in Sahalla and was called “Mulla Qutub”. He had a Maktab in this village located a few miles from Lucknow and was related to another family residing in the same village. This family had a feud with another family which resided in Sahala. In revenge, as is usually the practice amongst feudals, Mulla Qutub was also assassinated although he was not involved in this feud.
When the news of this brutal murder reached Mulla Saeed, who was compiling the above mentioned historic religious document and was in constant company of Aurenzeb Alamgir, he conveyed this information to the Mughal Emperor, who ordered the Subedar of Awadh to completely destroy Sahala and provided two bungalows constructed by the French in Lucknow for residence to the descendants of Farangi Mahall. Thus the name Farangi Mahall became part of our religious history.
Maulvi Abdus Rehman the compiler of “Tazkir-e- Ulema-e-Hind” has mentioned 150 ulema who belonged to Farangi Mahall and the gifting of the two huge bungalows to the descendants of Mulla Qutub is still available with Maulana Jamal Mian Farangi Mahalli, the joint Secretary of the All India Muslim League at the time of the partition of the Subcontinent. I have seen with my own eyes, this Farmaan.
This is what Barbara Metcalf says about the Farangi Mahallis:
The scholarly efforts of these ‘ulema, however went far beyond the simple training of officials. The career of one of the most famous of the family in the eighteenth century, maulana ‘Abdu’l-’Ali (1731-1810) suggests the scope of their scholarship. After he had completed his studies, ‘Abdu’l-’Ali took service under a succession of different princes. But despite official responsibilities and frequent shifts from place to place, he demonstrated a prodigious scholarly capacity. Committed to the metaphysical doctrine of wahdut’l-wujjud, he wrote commentaries on the “fusus” of Ibnu’l-’Arabi (1165-1240) and on the “Masnawi” of Jalalu’din Rumi 9d.1273). His main fields of scholarship, however were jurisprudence, theology, and philosophy. He wrote in excellent classical Arabic and Persian. A recent scholar has judged his works to be “according to the fashion of his time, commentaries, glosses, and super-glosses on most of the usual text-books.” But his contemporaries called his “bahru’l-Ulum”, the “Ocean of Sciences.” and “mailu’l-Ulama,” the “chief of the ‘ulema.” and judged his contributions to be of great value and significance.[1]
The following addition to the article is also taken from Francis Robinson History of Farangi Mahall
Farangi Mahallis also traveled as teachers. Some like Maylana Abd al Baqi (born 1869-70) taught in Medina, others taught and set up madras’s in India. Notable amongst these were the great eighteen-century logician, Mulla Hasan (died 1794) who left a reputation in Rampur which inspired its Shia Nawab to support the Farangi Mahall madarsa in the 1920s; the extremely successful Malik al-ulama Mullaa Haider (died 1840), who established the Hydrabad branch of the family and brought Farangi Mahall a continuing association with India’s most powerful Muslim state; Mawlana Shifi (died 1979), who taught at Lucknow, Calcutta, Dacca and Aligarh, maintaining his family style and purpose to the end; and most important of all, Mulla Abd-al-Bari Bahar-al-ulum, who in the sixty years before his death in 1810 taught in Lucknow, Shah-Jahanpur, Rampur, Buhur and finally in Madras where his presence in the Madrasa-e-kalan, funding by Nawab Walajah is said to have inspired a revival of learning in South India.10
In Lucknow, and wherever they traveled, the Farangi Mahall family pioneered a new curriculum, the Dars-e-Nizamiayya. This has come to form the basis of most madrasa courses in India, including that of the Dar al-ulum in Deoband. The new Curriculum seems to have grown on the one hand out of increased interest in the development of practical skills which would enable the ulema to discharge their duties competently in state service as judges and administrators, and, on the other hand, out of interest in the traditions of philosophical and theological learning which Mir Fazal Allah Shirazi (died 1589) helped to stimulate in Mughal India and which flourished most vigorously in Awadh and eastern UP. Consolidated by Mulla Nizam-al-Din (died 1748), the third of Mulla Qutub al-Din’s four sons, the tendency of the curriculum was to focus attention on the meaning of scripture and the classical sources rather than their literal content, because it took much less time than the established systems of learning, a really able student could complete his studies by the time he was sixteen or seventeen. Thus minds were sharpened, intellectual activity quickened, and a new scholastic style was spread amongst the learned Muslims of India.
The most important measure of the intellectual contribution of the Farangi Mahalli ‘ulema was their systemization of a new curriculum which, with modifications, has dominated religious teaching in South Asia to the present. The Farangi Mahallis, under the direction of a son of Qutub Sahib, Mulla Nizamu’d-din 9d 1748), expanded the existing corpus of works typically studied to include a number of books on each of the various subjects of ma’qualt: Arabic grammar, logic, philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, fiqh, and theology. Quran and hadis were only marginally studied, the former through two commentaries, the latter through abridgement30. The emphasis was to be reversed, as discussed below, by other groups of ‘ulema, but even they were influenced by the scholarly standard set by his school. The Farangi Mahallis were respected for their desire to guard and foster the intellectual tradition in a period of political instability. This concern was widely shared by the ‘ulema, as evidenced by the extent to which the new syllabus, subsequently known as the das-i-nizami, was adopted. Students came to Farangi Mahall from a wide geographic area, and they carried this syllabus with them to their homes. When, for example, the madrasay-yi ‘Aliyah in Calcutta was established under the British auspices in 1780, its first principal was a graduate who instituted the nizami curriculum there.31 To the extent that an important dimension of modern transformation of the ‘ulema rested in closer ties among themselves, this contribution of Farangi Mahall was an important one.
The school’s policy of preparing family member and students for careers in princely service was increasingly fraught with difficulties. Nonetheless, the family clung to the style of religious occupation. Wherever there was a prince, the Farangi Mahallis sought positions under him. Thus in the mid-eighteenth century one family member was appointed as qazi in Delhi. ‘Abdul’l-’Ali whose scholarship from Shahjahanpur to Rampur to Muhur to Madras and finally to Carnatic, where the nawwab, who was from Gopamau to Oudh, granted him both a large stipend and a madrasah in perpetuity. Another family member of the family was patronized by Hafiz Rahmat Khan (1708-1174), the ruler of Rohilkahnd; then as conditions deteriorated, he first fled to Delhi, then to Rampur32 . One family member was appointed mufti by the government of Oudh-only the first of many of the family to hold that post. Three members of the family joined princely armies. The travels, the varieties of employment, the violent deaths of at of at least one member in each of the first four generations of the family-all this suggests the difficulties facing the family in maintaining the pattern of dependence on princes.
Still this pattern continued without change well in to the nineteenth century. In each generation there would be some to uphold the family tradition of teaching and serious scholarship. There would be pious mystics, one of whom in each generation held the imamship of the Farangi Mahall mosque. Hazrat Muhammad ‘Abdul-Wali was one such ‘alim, a man who had thousands of disciples in the period before 1857. But most of the family, in any generation, would seek a livelihood in official employment. After completing their education they would turn to princes or the British government as source of jobs and support. Their motive was in part financial, for many who lacked jobs lived very impecuniously; but they were simply following the pattern of occupation hat had continued from Mughal days.
Shah Waliyu’llah
Like the Farangi Mahallis, Shah Waliyu’llah hoped for a restoration of stable Muslim rule in which the ‘ulema would play an important role34 . Unlike them, he explicitly analyzed the basis of the arrangement between ruler and ‘ulema and argued the necessity of their complementary functions and the need for proper balance between the two.
This is what Francis Robinson says about the Farangi Mahallis:
Like most but not all teachers, Farangi Mahallis were also scholars. Their scholarship is to be distinguished from that of another great family of Indian learned met, that of Shah Wali Ullah of Delhi (1703-62), whose contribution helped to pave the way toward the founding of the most important Indian madrasa of the present, that of Deoband. Those in the Wali-Allah-Deobandi tradition, which was to develop as scrotulist and reforming one, came to place much emphasis on the Quran and the Hadith, what were known as traditional sciences, while the concern of the Farangi Mahallis was primarily with LOGIC and JURISPRUDENCE, what were known as the rational sciences. Nevertheless, the family, as a family down the ages, covered most aspects of Muslim learning and their achievements are expressed in over seven hundred books. Amongst the most prolific were Mulla Mobin (died 1810-11) and Mawlana Abd al-Bari (1878-1926) who wrote 111 books. Of course, many of their books were glosses and super-glosses on the classical texts they taught, but there were also works on mysticism and collections of poetry; there were biographies like Maylana ‘Inyat Allah’s Tazkira-i-’Ulema-i-Farangi Mahall which is the major source of family history; and then there was a variety of work form versatile scholars like Wali Allah (1768-1853) who ranged from a commentary on the Quran in five volumes to treatise on government, Adab-al-Slatin.11 Works which should be noted in particular are: Mulla Hasan’s text on logic which has been popular for nearly 200 years amongst those teaching the Dars-i-Nizamiyya, Bahr-al’Ulum’s study of Rumi’s mathnawi, and Mulla Nizam al Din’s work on the life and the deeds of this friend and Sayyed ‘Abd al-Razaq of Bansa, Manaqib-i-Razzaqiyya. The works of one prolific scholar, who wrote almost entirely in Arabic, stand before all. Mawlana ‘Abd al-Hayy’s (1848-86) al Si’aya which is an introduction to the fiqh text Sharh Wiqaya, his al-Ta’liq al-Mumajajd which is an introduction to Imam Muhammad’s Mu’tta—-a text on Hadith in the light of jurisprudence of Abu Hanifa, and his Zafar al-Amani which is his commentary on Sayyid Shirif Jurjani’s text on the fundamentals of Hadith, established his as one of the greatest scholars of recent times. These books, together with his collection of fatawa, are still much used by Muslims both inside and outside India and have led to Lucknow being known as the ‘city of Abd-al-Hayy’.
This is what Barbara Metclaf says aboot the Farangi Mahallis:
The Farangi Mahallis also fostered the tradition of combining scholarly and mystic learning. Like other religious people in this period, they increasingly came to be initiated in more than one mystic order, and greatly valued mystic experience. Sufi bonds strengthened the family, for members would often be bound by common fealty to a pir, in the early eighteenth century to Sayyidu’s-sadat ‘Adu’r Razzaq Banswi; and family ties were often reinforced by the passing of ijazat, the permission to make one’s own disciples, from one generation to another. It is significant that the Farangi Mahallis did not eschew Sufi experience. As we have seen, the Punjabi Chistis in the same period came to be known for their teaching of the Law, the subject par excellence of the ‘ulema. Increasingly in post-Mughal India, the pattern of religious leadership was to become one in which the institutional distinction of ‘alim and Sufi mystic was substantially blurred.
The Farangi Mahallis, however, were not just scholars, but like many learned men throughout the Islamic world, were also mystics: they strove to balance their command of formal Islamic knowledge with spiritual development. Even ‘Abd al Hayy, whose grave is one of bare earth open to the skies, stressed the benefits of visiting the shrine at Bansa and in his will urged his relatives to study Imam al-Ghazalli’s Ihya ‘ulum al-din. As in their scholarship, the mysticism of the Farangi Mahallis with its heavy concentration of the saint’s tomb and the celebration of ‘urs, the anniversary of the saints death., contrasted strikingly with the later Wali-Deobandi tradition, which eschewed such practices. Moderate supporters of the doctrine of what al-waged, they continued to study and to teach the works of Ibn al-Arabi up to the twentieth century. Sayyid ‘Abd al-Razzaq (died 1724), the illiterate pir of the Qadiri order, was the saint to whom all members of this learned Farangi Mahall family looked. They registered their associates with Abd-al-Razzak as crucial to their spiritual well being, while the sajjadas of his shrine at Bansa some thirty miles from Lucknow were careful to pay the scholars of Farangi Mahall especial respect. There are also three important centers of devotion within the family.
· The shrine of Mulla Nizam-al-Din in Lucknow, which is renowned for the benefit it can bring the mentally disturbed and scholars in difficulty
· The shrine of Shah Anwar al Haqq, and his successors and followers, which is also in Lucknow and
· The shrine of Mawlana ‘Abd al-Bahr al’Ulum which is the Walihjahi mosques in Madras
There are furthermore three important lineages which run through the family:
· The Qadiri following from Sayyid ‘Abd al Razzaq of bansa
· The Chisti-Nizami from shah Qudrat Allah Nizami of Safipur and the
· Chisti-Sabiri which goes back through Mulla Qutub al-Din to Shaikh Muhibb Allah of Allahbad, the great proponent of Ibn al-Arabi to Shah Ahmad ‘Abd al-Haqq of Radawli
This is what Barbara Metcalf says about the Farangi Mahallis:
The princes encouraged this arrangement. The Muslim courts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century prided themselves on their cultural attainments, among which religious learning held an important place. In Rohilkhand a Pathan kingdom flourished; at its height under Hafizu’lMulk as many as five thousand scholars were said to be supported by the rulers and other patrons. Hafizu’l-Mulk himself presided over a board of the learned who supervised education, and he honored those who completed their studies with lavish court ceremonial. But hafiz’l-Mulk’s kingdom, like that of many princes, did not last long.
The Farangi Mahalli ‘ulema, however, even though demand for their skills declined and the availability of princely patronage was increasingly scarce, did not consciously seek a more independent position for themselves by addressing a more widely based audience. Rather they continued to focus, as had the ‘ulema of Mughal days, on obtuse and technical kinds of scholarship. They did not as a group have the interest in popular reform characteristic of some other ‘ulema. This was evident in their continued emphasis on ma’qulat and in the fact that they taught Shi’i as well as Sunni students, cooperating as they did with the Oudh court. The Farangi Mahallis thus represented in attenuated form the style of religious leadership that had flourished under the Mughals. Yet in their independent efforts to maintain a high intellectual standard for the ‘ulema, their success in drawing students from a wide area, and their integration of the bookish and mystic traditions, they exemplified increasingly important characteristics of he ‘ulema in the post-Mughal period. It was, above all, their erudition what won them respect and support from Muslims anxious to guard their intellectual heritage. When the Farangi Mahallis found themselves, wily nilly, without a role at the Muslim courts, the distinction remained.33
This is what Francis Robinson says about the Farangi Mahallis:
By the present century the springs of Indian mysticism were failing, but where they still flowed, the Farangi Mahall family were often prominent. They had connections with many of the major shrines in north India. They taught the sons of many sajjadda at Madrasa-’Aliya Nizamiyya, whose register reads like a roll call of the high families of the region. Consequently, the Farangi Mahallis were given much respect. The last important pir of the family was ‘Abd al-Bari. His influence ramified throughout North Indian society, where his disciples ranged from the cadres of great landed families to politicians such as Muhammad and Swat Ali and to relatives of the sajjadas of the most important shirine in India, that of Moin al-Dill Chisti at Ajmere. His influence, and that of Farangi Mahall was demonstrated when at the ‘urs of Mu’in ak-Din Chisti in 1916 he played the leading role in founding the Bazm-i-Sufiyya-i Hindm which aimed to revive and to reform Indian mysticism.
Such was the pattern of Farangi Mahalli achievement. Such too was the pattern of their lives, and one followed by 100 of the 150 or so male descendants of Mulla Qutub al-Din born before 1900, about whose activities we have some evidence. Then, from the mid nineteenth century, their lives began to find a new dimension. Like learned and holy men throughout the Islamic world they strove to guide the faithful, as colonial rulers brought modernization after a western fashion, and revealed in the process concern, as much for the worldwide Muslim community as for the Muslims of British India. Their aim was, first and last, to defend Islam, and this they felt done best, or so their deeds suggest, less through a process of inner renewal and reformed Islamic practice, as Deobandi ‘ulema preferred, then by fighting for Islamic issues in public life. Thus in 1878 they founded the Majlis Muid al-Islam, the immediate aim of which was to raise money to help the Ottoman Empire in its war with Russia. In 1913 they helped to found the Anjuman-i Khuddam Ka’ba to protect the holy places of Islam, and were prominently involved in the great campaign of protest over the destruction of part of a mosque in Kanpur. After World War I, they played a leading part in launching the Khilafat movement: in December 1918 they were the first ‘ulema to attend the All-India Muslim League sessions; they developed an alliance with Mahatma Gandhi; they helped to organize the Central Khilafat Committee in 1919; and throughout they drove the agitation more extreme till in 1920 the Khilafat movement adopted a policy of non-cooperation with the British government, and under its influence so did the Indian National Congress. During these years of pan-Islamic fervor Farangi Mahall were continually speaking at meetings, issuing fatwa, guiding the movement on points of religion, and going to prison. Then , as the movement began to wane, the founded yet another pan-Islamic organization, the Anjumna-i Khuddam-i Harmain, to help protect the holy places of Mecca and Medina from the depredations of Ibn Sa’ud and his Ahab followers. The leader of the Farangi Mahallis in these twentieth century battles for the faith was Mawlana ‘Abd al-Bari12 . But this contribution did not end there. In 1919, he also helped to found, and was the first president of the organization of Indian ‘ulema, the Jamiatul-’Ulema-i Hind; while his son, Mawlana Jamal Mian, with his Farangi Mahall contemporaries, was very active in the All-India Muslim League’s struggle for Pakistan, being honorary joint secretary of the League from 1942. No other family of ‘ulema played such a prominent role in Indo-Muslim affairs before 1947.
So Farangi Mahall in remarkable of its contribution to Islamic learning, mysticism and politics. It is remarkable for the quantity of records in which the family may be studied. Indeed, there can be few families, not just in South Asian, but anywhere in Asia about whom we can discover so much over so long a period. There are over 200 documents emanating from the Mughal and Nawabi government, (farmers, parwanas, deeds of sale, receipts, petitions) relating to land and grants supporting the family in its work, the earliest being Akbar’s first known farman of 1559.13 There is some correspondence dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while many of the books they wrote still exist, some in manuscript but some too in the handsome editions of Newal Kishore of the family’s own Usufi Press. There are substantial collections of fatawa for the nineteenth century, some diaries, various editions of mawlid lectures, and some or the earliest Urdu newspapers still in existence, which Mawlvi Muhammad Yaqub of Farangi Mahall edited, Tilism-i Lakhnaw and Kurnamah.14 Moreover, there is much of the most valuable source, biographical and malfuzat literature. For the twentieth century there are great riches: a mass of correspondence, diaries, books, newspapers, pamphlets, and some of the papers and proceedings of the organizations with which the Farangi Mahallis were involved. From these sources several substantial monographs on aspects of the family and its contributions so Indian Islam should emerge. Moreover, taken together with similar sources in the hands of the descendants of other learned families, and in those of the holy families of the shrines, there exist the materials from which a deeply textured picture of the religious and social history of Islamic India over the past three centuries can be painted.
Several problems command attention within the history of Farangi Mahall. There is the problem of the material basis of their support, of how they survived as a family of Islamic learning, not just under the favorable rule of the Mughals but also under the less favorable regimes first of the Mughals but also the problem of how a family of tradition survived, of how one family maintained a distinctive style and purpose down the centuries, neither deterred by influences emanating from the qasbah zamindari families amongst whom marriages were sometimes made, nor seduced in the main by those from the rich and materialistic worlds of Arcot and Hydrabad into which branches of the family expanded. Then, we need to be able to identify the particular emphasis and quality of their Islamic scholarship so that we can place it with rather more precision then now, not just in the context of eighteenth-century Indian Islamic scholarship but also in hat of the Islamic world in general. So far unfortunately, as little work has been done on the learning of the Farangi Mahallis as has been done on the background against which it must be set. There follows a need to trace the development of their scholarship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a development which seems to stand in stark contrast so that of Shah Wali Allah, his descendants and their followers, both spiritual and intellectual. Islam, however, is less about what scholars think and write then about how men behave. Here we must reach into the Sufi as much as scholarly part of the Farangi Mahall world to unveil their vision of a perfect and well-formed life, the example of correct Islamic behavior which they wished to set before the faithful.15 Associated with this question is that of changes in right conduct, the movement of religious change which Barbra Metcalf has discerned especially amongst Muslims of the Delhi world, as processes of religious revival and reform began to draw Muslims away from the particularistic and ecstatic practices of the shrines to the more sober forms of religious expression commanded by scripture. We need to know how Farangi Mahallis responded to this profound and important new departure in Indian Islam, how far they shared in it, modifying it perhaps in the light of their own distinctive way, and how far they maintained their own traditions unchanged. We are not concerned, however merely with how Farangi Mahallis interacted with Muslim reformism, we also need to know how they interacted with the Hindu world on whose margins they moved, and that of Shi’a scholarship which was vigorous in nineteenth-century Lucknow, not to mention that of Muslims beyond India amongst whom, from the mid-nineteenth century, they increasingly came to travel. Then, there is the opportunity, which should not be missed, to explore the life of a leading learned man and his family in the early twentieth century, to discover the pattern of his day, his month, his year, set in the context of family, city quarter, school, and calendar of saints festivals. These problems and possibilities and others will be investigated in the forthcoming monograph. The remainder of this essay will be concerned with two further problems: how the influence of Farangi Mahall was spread and maintained throughout much of India; and how Farangi Mahallis responded to modernization under British rule. The aim is to provide no more than an outline in the hope of revealing some of the excitement of the history of Farangi Mahall, and what it might contribute to the history of Indian Islam.
The Muslim reaction to the events of 1857 was equally consequential. At the time, qasbah political and religious elite did not think of themselves as a single political body, abut all of them recognized THAT JIHAD WAS A FAILURE and British rule was enduring. The agreed that their best interests lay in the cultivation of educational, religious and cultural affairs and in strengthening the Muslim community from within.
Some embraced the new regime in the hope of forming a British-Muslim condominium to govern India. Others maintained silent but deep anti-British and pan-Islamist sentiments; still others turned their back on political issues.
As the century moved on, three main strands may be distinguished in the post-Mutiny position of qasbah elites. The first was the position of the conservative religious leaders who recognized the futility of jihad, the need for adjustment to British rule, and the importance of preserving the traditions of Islamic religious belief and practice. The Sufi leaders and “sajadda-nashin” or heads of shrines wanted to maintain a panoply of saint worship and festivals and the loyalty of the Muslim masses. However, Mughal decline had deprived the shrines of economic and political support; British rule had subverted their worldly political influence. To maintain their position many Sufis associated themselves with British rule and had recourse to British courts to settle land and tenure disputes. The Sajjada Nashin often delegated their religious functions to subordinates while they saw their political interests.
Other Sufis attempted to adapt theory and practice to their declining worldly authority and stressed the purely contemplative and spiritual aspect of Sufism. They tried to preserve the inner meanings of Sufi tradition, and adopted more sober and Sharia oriented religious practices in the face of declining worldly authority.
Conservative ‘ulema” similarly attempted to maintain their traditional position.
The scholars of Farangi Mahall quarter of Lucknow and the Barelwis continued to combine “ulema” scholarship and Sufi shrines
The second response within the “ulema” circles however was the resurgence of reformism in north India and Bengal. In North India the pre-Mutiny program of religious reform survived political defeat. Its most important expression in the post-Mutiny period was the founding in 1867 of the reform college of Deoband, by Maulana Mohammed Qasim Nanautawi. Deobands curriculum combined the study of revealed sciences (Quran Hadith and law) with national subjects (logic, philosophy and science). At the time it was Sufi in orientation and affiliated with the Chisti order. Its Sufism, however was closely integrated with hadith scholarship and the proper legal practice of Islam. Deobandis poured out in Urdu vernacular, legal opinions in proper Islamic practice. The spread of printing made it possible for the first time to reach a mass audience. Deobands each was India-wide. Many students came from Afghanistan, Central Asia, Yemen and Arabia. Within 30 years of its founding, its graduates established some 40 branch schools, making Deoband the center of the new maslak–a distinctive “way” in Indian Islam.
The third strand in post Mutiny Muslim adjustment to British rule was that of the land owning and the office-holding interests. Though the British had replaced the Mughals it was still conceivable to the political elite that they could maintain their landed official and status interests…the Muslims had to accommodate to the English language. For generations the response of the political elite was formulated by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Ahmad Khan was himself descended from a prominent family of Mughal administrators, and throughout his life continued to be posted as an officer of British administration. In his view the only adequate response to the realities of post-Mutiny India was to accept British rule. In Syeds view British rule was lawful. Under British government Muslims could live in peace………his principal concern was and that of his cohorts was the need for Western type education, under Muslim auspices to train a new generation for political responsibility……….Aligarh was meant to be the Eaton of England; its playing fields as much as its class-rooms were the training ground of a new generation of Muslim political leaders. Aligarh encouraged verbal skills, self-confidence, manly solidarity and competition and the values of duty, loyalty, and leadership exercised in games and in school clubs and societies….
3) From elite to Mass politics
In the later part of the century, however the policies of loyalism and of political reform, whether of the religious reformist or the modernist variety were challenged and eventually overthrown. The ambiguities in the British attitude towards the Muslims, increasing Hindu self-assertion and the beginnings of the Indian national independence movement drove Muslim political thought and religious leaders toward a more aggressive British policy…the British attitude toward Muslim elites was a major factor in the eventual subversion of the loyalist policies of Sayyed Ahmad. The British considered that the Muslims as former masters of India harbored lingering ambitions of political power and that they had therefore to be conciliated to win favor but repressed lest they become too powerful…at the time they tried to reduce the proportion of Muslims employed in government. British governors sometimes deliberately favored Hindu over Muslim appointees. The administrative position of Muslims though still substantial deteriorated steadily…..the electoral system favored Hindus….another factor that weakened Muslim position was Hindu self assertion…in 1875 Arya Samaj…the first cow protection associations in 1882…of particular concern to educated Muslims was the campaign to make Hindi an official language. Hindu revivalism led to literary renaissance, increasing numbers of newspapers and the ever-wider circulation and ultimately a Hindu crusade against the dominant place to Urdu in government affairs. Hindus campaigned to have Devanagri recognized as an official script for the court an government use. The new script they argued would allow Hindus who did not know Persian to compete equally for government posts. The British were responsive to these demands. A British governor rejected a civil service candidates’ list on the grounds that there was too many Muslims; Persian was removed from the curriculum of Allahbad University, and in 1900 the British accepted the use of Devanagri script for official purposes in the Northwest Frontier provinces and Oudh………..the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885…Congress though open to Muslims was formed by Brahmin Lawyers.. however no event was more important for the change in Muslim elite opinion then the partition of Bengal…the first Muslim response was continue the policies…the younger generation clamored for more direct political action….Urdu defense League in 1900..1906 a petition for separate electorate.. and Lord Minto acknowledged the Muslim right to representation…in 1909…the most important expression of the new Muslim militancy were the founding of the Muslim League in 1906…in 1908 Abu’l Kalam Azad began to publish Al-Hilal…to support the caliphate.. Maulana Mohamamd Ali a graduate of Aligarh preached a similar creed in Comrade
The newfound militancy of the Muslim political elite was paralleled by the revived activism among the reformist “ulema”. In this political re-assertion the “ulema” of Deoband and Farangi Mahall played a large part. Farangi Mahall was the name given to a prominent “ulema” lineage, derived from the quarter of Lucknow which they had inhabited since the end of the seventeenth century. The quarter was renowned as one of the oldest centers on India madarsa education and Sufism, and the family of scholars had wide network of disciples. The Farangi Mahall maintained a moderate version of Sharia-Sufi Islam, combining Quranic and legal studies with mysticism. They venerated the Sufi ancestors and kept up a festival calendar of “birthday” celebrations for the saints and the Prophet, but they were careful to emphasize they did not worship the saints but rather came to the tombs in order to be closer to God. While the Deobandis and the other reformers criticized the Sufi practices, the Farangi Mahalli believed that their synthesis of Sharia’a and Sufism was a true representation of the life and teachings of the Prophet.
One crucial principle of the school was the avoidance of contact with or dependence upon the government. While the Farangis had accepted Mughal gifts in the seventeenth century, by the nineteenth century they had withdrawn from politics to avoid contamination by the Shi’a rulers of Lucknow and their British overlords. This political stance, however changed in the late nineteenth century. Beneath the acquiescent surface of apolitical religious activities was a smoldering resentment of infidel rule. This resentment was expressed in terms of sympathy with Muslims all over the world who were struggling against British, European, and Christian imperialism. The leaders of the Farangi Mahall played a large role in the formation of Muslim associations to support the Ottoman empire and protect the holy places in Arabia, and they were instrumental, after World War I, in launching the Khilafat movement and in the foundation of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind (Association of the Ulema of India).
Between 1876 and 1878 the years of the Russo-Turkish war and the Congress of Berlin, which witnessed the first British, as well as Russian, participation in the partition of the Ottoman empire, Indian Muslims agitated for a pro-Turkish policy. Jamal-ud-din Afghani propagated the doctrine of pan-Islamic policy….in 1888 Muslim religious opposition to the British rule took a new turn when the rector of Deoband issued a fatwa in favor of a Muslim alliance with the Congress party to further the struggle against imperialism. The ulema considered foreign rule as a greater danger to Islam than Hindu competition. These strong anti-colonial, anti-British and pro-Ottoman sensibilities were stimulated in the years before the First World War…….
The Western-educated and the religious-educated leaders joined hands in the open political action. In 1909 Mahmud-al-Hasan, rector Deoband, founded the Jamat-al-Ansar, Society of Helpers (of the Prophet), whose ultimate objective was an alliance of Turkey, Iran , Afghanistan to expel the British form India. In 1912-13 Maulana Abd-al-Bari, the head of Farangi Mahall and Shaukat Ali…founded the Anjuman-Khuddam-e-Kaabaa, Association of the Servants of he Kaaba to oppose British rule and defend the Ottoman empire
The Kilafat movement was led by Maulana Abdul Bari, the Ali brothers and the All India Muslim League. The Congress too joined the movement for a lttle while, but then the Congress backed out
The struggle of freedom under the Muslim League is well documented. This is what Ishtiaq Azhar says (Hasrat Mohani: a man of courage, Dawn, May 13th, 1996)
Maulana Hasrat Mohani, the fourteenth president of the former All-India Muslim League which created Pakistan under the leadership of the Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah died in Farangi Mahall on May 13, 1951, and was buried in the historic graveyard of Ulema-e-Farangi-Mahall, usually called “Maulvi Anwaar Ka Bagh”. Perhaps he had an intuition about his burial place because in “Kuliyat-e-Hasrat” he wrote a special poem on the Bagh.
When anything is written about Maulana Hasrat Mohani, one must remember this famous and historic bagh where the spiritual guide of Ali brothers, Maulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahalli, and his own peer, Maulana Abdul Wahab Farangi Mahalli, lie buried and where the son of Mulla Saeed, Mulla Ahmad Abdul Haq, is also buried.
Nobody can forget the father of Mulla Ahmad Abdul Haq, Mulla Saeed, for his contribution as the compiler of Fatwa-e-Alamgiri since this compilation alone is described by many ulema as the cornerstone of Islam. Maulana Hasrat Mohani had perhaps, chosen this historic graveyard as his last resting place because during his fatal illness he shifted to Lucknow from Kanpur and died in Farangi Mahall so that he may be buried in the historic Farangi graveyard.
It is quite relevant here to throw some light on the historic Farangi Mahall as well. Initially he head of the Farangi Mahall dynasty used to reside in Sahalla and was called “Mulla Qutub”. He had a Maktab in this village located a few miles from Lucknow and was related to another family residing in the same village. This family had a feud with another family which resided in Sahala. In revenge, as is usually the practice amongst feudals, Mulla Qutub was also assassinated although he was not involved in this feud.
When the news of this brutal murder reached Mulla Saeed, who was compiling the above mentioned historic religious document and was in constant company of Aurenzeb Alamgir, he conveyed this information to the Mughal Emperor, who ordered the Subedar of Awadh to completely destroy Sahala and provided two bungalows constructed by the French in Lucknow for residence to the descendants of Farangi Mahall. Thus the name Farangi Mahall became part of our religious history.
Maulvi Abdus Rehman the compiler of “Tazkir-e- Ulema-e-Hind” has mentioned 150 ulema who belonged to Farangi Mahall and the gifting of the two huge bungalows to the descendants of Mulla Qutub is still available with Maulana Jamal Mian Farangi Mahalli, the joint Secretary of the All India Muslim League at the time of the partition of the Subcontinent. I have seen with my own eyes, this Farmaan.
When he was a student at Aligarh, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan was his classmate. Both struggled for Pakistan, from 1937 onwards, when Maulana Hasrat Mohani, at the Lucknow session of the All-India Muslim League from dominion status to full independence. Zafar Ali Khan seconded this resolution which ultimately adopted by the Lucknow session of the Muslim League.
It was he who along with Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan, created Gohar-e-Ahrah after the demolition of a part of Machli Bazaar Mosque of Kanpur on August 2, 1913. The movement, which has started from there under the leadership of Maulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahalli and Maharaja Sir Ali Mohammad Khan of Mahmoodabad, encompassed the entire Muslim leadership of politicians, intellectuals, religious scholars and poets. During this period, the nation conferred the title of “Syedul Ahrar” on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and “Rasul Ahrar” on Maulana Mohammad Ali. Both of them later on proposed two different schemes for the partition of India along with other thinkers, intellectuals and political leaders right form 1885.
From Arabia to India
The Firangi Mahal family trace a direct, unbroken lineage to Abu Ayyub al-AnsariAbu Ayyub al-Ansari
Abu Ayyub al-Ansari - born Khalid ibn Zayd ibn Kulayb in Yathrib - hailed from the tribe of Banu Najjar and was a close companion of Muhammad. Abu Ayyub was one among the Ansar of early Muslim history, or those who supported Muhammad after the hijra to Medina in 622...
, a companion of Muhammad. Abu Ayyub al-Ansari
Abu Ayyub al-Ansari
Abu Ayyub al-Ansari - born Khalid ibn Zayd ibn Kulayb in Yathrib - hailed from the tribe of Banu Najjar and was a close companion of Muhammad. Abu Ayyub was one among the Ansar of early Muslim history, or those who supported Muhammad after the hijra to Medina in 622...
belonged to the Bani Ghanam(1)(2) tribe from amongst the Khazraj of Yathrib (later Madina, Medina
Medina
Medina , or ; also transliterated as Madinah, or madinat al-nabi "the city of the prophet") is a city in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia, and serves as the capital of the Al Madinah Province. It is the second holiest city in Islam, and the burial place of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, and...
or Madina un-Nabi). This lineage is traced through another very famous scholar and poet, descendant of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari
Abu Ayyub al-Ansari
Abu Ayyub al-Ansari - born Khalid ibn Zayd ibn Kulayb in Yathrib - hailed from the tribe of Banu Najjar and was a close companion of Muhammad. Abu Ayyub was one among the Ansar of early Muslim history, or those who supported Muhammad after the hijra to Medina in 622...
, Khajeh Abdollah Ansari
Khajeh Abdollah Ansari
Abu Ismaïl Abdullah ibn Abi-Mansour Mohammad or Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat also known as Pir-i Herat was a famous Persian Sufi who lived in the 11th century in Herat...
of Herat, Afghanistan. (1)(2)
The lineage is described, and traced in the family history records (1), as follows;
- Abu Ayyub al-AnsariAbu Ayyub al-AnsariAbu Ayyub al-Ansari - born Khalid ibn Zayd ibn Kulayb in Yathrib - hailed from the tribe of Banu Najjar and was a close companion of Muhammad. Abu Ayyub was one among the Ansar of early Muslim history, or those who supported Muhammad after the hijra to Medina in 622...
- Abu Mansoor al-Ansari al-Taabi'i
- Jaafar al-Ansari
- Ali al-Ansari
- Ahmad al-Ansari
- Muhammad al-Ansari
- Abu Mu'aaz al-Ansari
- Jaafar al-Ansari
- Abu Mansoor Ansari Balkhi
- Abu Ismail Khajeh Abdollah AnsariKhajeh Abdollah AnsariAbu Ismaïl Abdullah ibn Abi-Mansour Mohammad or Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat also known as Pir-i Herat was a famous Persian Sufi who lived in the 11th century in Herat...
of Herat - Jabar Muqarrab-Baari Ansari
- Ayyub Ansari
- Khajeh Auz Ansari
- Khajeh Shahabuddin Mahmood Ansari
- Khajeh Nizamuddin Ansari
- Khajeh Sultan Muhammad Ansari
- Khajeh Zaheeruddin Ansari
- Khajeh Jalaluddin Ansari
- Khajeh Shamsuddin Ansari
- Khawaja Pir Habibullah Ansari
- Khawaja Pir Muizzuddin Ansari
- Khawaja Pir Ghayasuddin Ansari
- Khawaja Dost Muhammad Ansari
- Khawaja Jamaluddin Ansari
- Khawaja Azizuddin Ansari
- Khawaja Dawood Ansari
- Khawaja Ishaaq Ansari
- Shaikh Khawaja Ismail Ansari
- Qutub al-Aalam, Shaikh Khawaja Alauddin Ansari, of Herat
- Shaikh Nizamuddin Ansari
- Sharfuddin Ansari
- Shaikh Muhiuddin Ansari
- Shaikh Fazlullah Ansari
- Shaikh Habibullah Ansari
- Mulla Shaikh Muhammad Hafiz Ansari
- Mulla Shaikh Ahmad Ansari
- Mulla Shaikh Abdul Kareem Ansari
- Mulla Shaikh Abdul Haleem Ansari
- Maulana Qutubuddin Ansari - The Qutub Shaheed
Around mid-sixteenth century Shaikh Makhdoom Nizamuddin Ansari travelled from Panipat
Panipat
Panipat بَنِبَت is an ancient and historic city in Panipat district, Haryana state, India. It is 90 km north from Delhi and 169 km south of Chandigarh on NH-1. The three battles fought at the city were turning points in Indian history. The city is famous in India by the name of "City of...
to, and settled in, Oudh province of the Mughal Empire. As stated above, the family settled in Sehali, near Barabanki, and soon attracted students and pupils from the surrounding areas who were interested in acquiring religious education. The town of Sehali is about fourteen miles from Bansa
Bansa
-Town structure:The town in under the jurisdiction of the Ga East District and is in the Abokobi-Madina constituency of the Ghana parliament....
- the abode of the famous, Shah Abdur Razzaq
Shah Abdur Razzaq
Shah Abdur Razzaq of Bansa, who not only won the recognition of his contemporaries but who exerted after his death one of the most powerful influences in Awadh spiritual history. His shrine, a nucleus of ascetic pietism, shelters the devotee, Hindu and Muslim alike, from disease and mental...
Bansavi(of Bansa), with whom in due course, the Ulama of Firangi Mahal were to develop a deep scholarly connection.
See also
- LucknowLucknowLucknow is the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in India. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of Lucknow District and Lucknow Division....
- Ansari (nesbat)
- Islam in IndiaIslam in IndiaIslam is the second-most practiced religion in the Republic of India after Hinduism, with more than 13.4% of the country's population ....
- Waris Pak
- Abu Ayyub al-AnsariAbu Ayyub al-AnsariAbu Ayyub al-Ansari - born Khalid ibn Zayd ibn Kulayb in Yathrib - hailed from the tribe of Banu Najjar and was a close companion of Muhammad. Abu Ayyub was one among the Ansar of early Muslim history, or those who supported Muhammad after the hijra to Medina in 622...
- Khajeh Abdollah AnsariKhajeh Abdollah AnsariAbu Ismaïl Abdullah ibn Abi-Mansour Mohammad or Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat also known as Pir-i Herat was a famous Persian Sufi who lived in the 11th century in Herat...