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Abstract
In the early modern period, Persian scholars deliberated on the complexities in the Islamic doctrines in distinct ways. Several Sufis and scholars engaged in intellectual debates regarding ideal Muslim conduct. This paper focuses on ‘Abd al-Haqq Muhaddis Dehlawi (1551–1642)—a polymath with specialised training in the Ḥadīs̤ and Sufism—to situate his ideas within the larger intellectual discourse about Islam in South Asia. On account of his training and scholastic approach, an a priori label of orthodoxy and revivalism is associated with ‘Abd al-Haqq. However, his letters to Mughal courtiers and his Sufi taz̠kirāt showcase his complex pedagogy as a scholar of Islamic praxis and Sufism. This paper delineates his lucid approach in underlining Islamic tenets and the history of the Sufis in South Asia.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Professor Sunil Kumar for his guidance and support all through my research and the reviewers for their comments.
Notes
1. On Persian texts of the Sultanate period, see Sunil Kumar, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007): 362–77; Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, Indo-Persian Historiography up to the Thirteenth Century (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2010). On Hindawi texts, see Ramya Sreenivasan, ‘Warrior Tales at Hinterland Courts in North India 1370–1550’, in After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth Century North India, ed. Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014): 242–72; Aditya Behl, Love’s Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition 1379–1545 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
2. Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics’, Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 2 (1998): 317–49.
3. Ali Anooshahr, ‘Shirazi Scholars and the Political Culture of the Sixteenth-Century Indo-Persian World’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 51, no. 3 (2014): 331–52.
4. Muzaffar Alam, The Mughals and the Sufis (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2021).
5. ‘Abd al-Haqq’s brief bionote was incorporated by Nizam al-Din Ahmad in T̤abaqāt-i Akbarī and by ‘Abd al-Qadir Badayuni in the Muntak̲h̲ab al-Tawārīk̲h̲. Subsequently, his bionote was regularly carried in biographies of Muslim intellectuals produced in the seventeenth century, such as the T̤abaqāt-i Shāh Jahānī and Bādshāh Nāma.
6. On ‘Abd al-Haqq’s literary productions, see S.A.A. Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movement in Northern India in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Agra: Agra University, 1965); also see Sushmita Banerjee, ‘The World of a Seventeenth Century ‘Alim: ‘Abd al-Haqq Muhaddis, Islam, History and Notions of Piety’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Delhi, 2016): chap. 2.
7. On ‘Abd al-Haqq as a revivalist, see Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movement; on ‘Abd al-Haqq as a reformer, see Scott Kugle, ‘Abd al-Haqq Dihlawi, an Accidental Revivalist: Knowledge and Power in the Passage from Delhi to Makka’, Journal of Islamic Studies 19, no. 2 (2008): 196–246.
8. Carl W. Ernst, ‘Situating Sufism and Yoga’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15, no. 1 (2005): 15–43; 17.
9. The authorship of a text on yoga is attributed to Shaykh Mu‘in al-Din Chishti, and Shaykh Hamid al-Din Nagauri is regarded as the author of a text on alchemy, but Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi regarded yogis as misguided: see Ibid., 35.
10. See Rushd Nāma (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek): Or. Sprenger 827, 2a, cited in Soraya Khodamoradi and Carl W. Ernst, ‘Rušd-nāma’, in Perso-Indica: An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions, ed. Fabrizio Speziale, Carl W. Ernst and Eva Orthmann (2019), accessed April 2, 2023, http://www.perso-indica.net/work/rusd-nama-3.
11. On ‘Abd al-Quddus Gangohi, see Simon Digby, ‘Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537A.D.): The Personality and Attitudes of a Medieval Indian Sufi’, in Medieval India: A Miscellany, Vol. 3, Aligarh Muslim University, Department of History (London: Asia Publishing House, 1975): 1–66.
12. Francesca Orsini, ‘Krishna Is the Truth of Man: Mir Abdul Wahid Bilgrami’s Haqā’iq-i Hindī (Indian Truths) and the Circulation of Dhrupad and Biśnupad’, in Culture and Circulation in Premodern South Asia, ed. Allison Busch and Thomas de Brujin (Leiden: Brill, 2014): 225–27. ‘Abd al-Wahid Bilgrami had earned a citation in the Muntak̲h̲ab al-Tawārīk̲h̲ on account of his popularity.
13. Heidi Pauwels, ‘A Sufi Listening to Hindi Religious Poetry: Mir Abdul Wahid Bilgrami’s Haqayaq-i Hindi’ (n.p., 1992): 8, accessed November 20, 2020, http://hdl.handle.net/1773/19592.
14. Francesca Orsini states that Biśnupad and Harikathā circulated amongst multireligious audiences in the sixteenth century, hence Haqā’iq-i Hindī represents this multivocality of voices, that is saguṇa terms in Krishna songs could be multivocal just the way nirguṇa Nathpanthi terms were used by the Sufis: see Orsini, ‘Krishna’, 228.
15. Audrey Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016): 101–41.
16. The patronage for the production of Indic translations was not restricted to the Mughal court. The sub-imperial court played a critical role in patronage to poets from various linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. On ‘Abd al-Rahim Khan-I Khanan, see C.R. Naik, Abdur Rahim Khan-I Khanan and His Literary Circle (Ahmedabad: Gujarat University, 1966); Corinne Lefevre, ‘The Court of ʿAbd-ur-Rahim Khan-i Khanan as a Bridge between Iranian and Indian Cultural Traditions’, in Culture and Circulation in Premodern South Asia, ed. Allison Busch and Thomas de Brujin (Leiden: Brill, 2014): 75–106; on the Mughal patronage of Braj texts, see Allison Busch, Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
17. Muzaffar Alam, ‘Strategy and Imagination in a Mughal Sufi Story of Creation’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 49, no. 2 (2012): 156–85.
18. Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst, ‘A Muslim Bhagavadgita: ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti’s Interpretative Translation and Its Implications’, Journal of South Asian Religious History 1 (2015): 1–29.
19. On the shaping of Akbar’s world-views, see Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘Akbar’s Personality Traits and World Outlook: A Critical Appraisal’, in Akbar and His India, ed. Irfan Habib (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997): 79–96. On Badayuni’s perspective on Akbar’s interactions with religious groups—Akbar was convinced that ‘truth is the inhabitant of every place; and how could it be right to consider it as necessarily confined to one religion or creed’—see ‘Abd al-Qadir Badayuni, Muntak̲h̲ab al-Tawārīk̲h̲, Vol. 2, ed. Captain W.N. Lees and Munshi Ahmad Ali (Calcutta: College Press, 1865): 256. On Timurid genealogy and the shaping of Mughal imperial identity, see Lisa Balabanlilar, Imperial Identity in the Mughal Empire: Memory and Dynastic Politics in Early Modern South and Central Asia (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2012).
20. On the usage of millennial and Sufi motifs by sovereigns in the early modern period in South Asia and Iran, see Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
21. Several histories with a prime focus on documenting and reminiscing about the lives of Mughal emperors were produced in the 1580s. Jauhar Aftabchi’s Taz̠kirāt al-Wāqi‘āt (1587–89), Gulbadan Begum’s Humāyūn Nāma (1570s–80s) and Bayazid Bayat’s Tazkirā-i Humāyūn wa Akbar (1587–90) provided a personalised account of select episodes from the lives of the Mughal emperors, but they did not define Akbar’s position in the Muslim world.
22. The Ta’rīk̲h̲-i Alfī was collectively authored by seven scholars, including Badayuni, Naqib Khan and Nizam al-Din Ahmad: see S.A.A. Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of the Muslims in Akbar’s Reign (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1975): 223–300.
23. Qazvini, Alfi, 4243–44, cited in Ali Anooshahr, ‘Dialogism and Territoriality in a Mughal History of the Islamic Millennium’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55, nos. 2–3 (2012): 227–28.
24. Ibid., 251–52. The Ta’rīk̲h̲-i Alfī focused on territoriality by showcasing Hindustan as a political and social unit, setting the groundwork for the perception of an Indian empire in the writings of Nizam al-Din Ahmad and Firishta. On Firishta’s rendition of the history of Hindustan, see Manan Ahmed Asif, The Loss of Hindustan: Invention of India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).
25. See John F. Richards, ‘The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir’, in The Mughal State, ed. Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998): 140–41; on the usage of millennial and Sufi motifs by sovereigns in the early modern period in South Asia and Iran, see Moin, Millennial Sovereign.
26. See Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam in India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).
27. Muzaffar Alam, ‘The Debate Within: A Sufi Critique of Religious Law, Tasawwuf and Politics in Mughal India’, South Asian History and Culture 2, no. 2 (2011): 138–59; 142–45.
28. Ibid., 151.
29. Interestingly, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi was given the epithet Mujaddid-i Alf-i Sani (renewer of the second millennium) by his disciples. Shaykh Sirhindi proposed that the Prophetic age was the best phase for the Islamic community, but gradual degradation occurred in the subsequent centuries, and hence, in every millennium, one person would come forward not to bring a new Sharī‘at, but to revive the old one and thus, the idea of a renewer of faith is valid; on Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, see Alam, The Mughals.
30. Yohannan Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi: An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity (Montreal: McGill University, 1971): 46.
31. Ibid., 43–45.
32. The letters of ‘Abd al-Haqq were published in the margins of the lithographed edition of the Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār: see ‘Abd al-Haqq Muhaddis Dehlawi, Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār ma‘Maktūbāt (Zilla Khairpur, Pakistan: Faruq Academy, n.d.): 118–23.
33. ‘Abd al-Haqq Muhaddis Dehlawi, Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār, ed. Alim Ashraf Khan (Tehran: Society for Appreciation of Cultural Works, 2005): 118–19.
34. Ibid., 120–21.
35. Ibid., 548.
36. Ibid., 150.
37. Ibid., 228.
38. Ibid., 295–96.
39. ‘Abd al-Haqq Muhaddis Dehlawi, Takmīl al-Īmān wa Taqwiyat al-Yaqān, Perfection of Faith and Its Commentary, Fortification of Conviction, trans. Yusuf Talal ‘Ali (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute; Delhi: Adam Publishers, repr., 2007): 83–85, 91–92.
40. Ibid., 55–60.
41. Dehlawi, Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār ma‘Maktūbāt, 177–81.
42. Dehlawi, Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār, 174–75.
43. Ibid., 241–54.
44. Dehlawi, Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār ma‘Maktūbāt, 123–28.
45. ‘Abd al-Haqq Muhaddis Dehlawi, Marj al-Baḥrain fi al-Jam‘Bain al-T̤arīqain, Urdu trans. Sana al-Haqq Siddiqui (Multan: Taib Academy, repr., 2001): 49–50.
46. Ibid., 90.
47. Dehlawi, Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār ma‘Maktūbāt, 13–24, 36–51.
48. Dehlawi, Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār, 198.
49. Ibid., 270.
50. Ibid., 385.
51. Dehlawi, Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār, 12.
52. For details on the structure and organisation of the narratives and authorial intent of the Siyar al-Awliyā’, see Jyoti Gulati Balachandran, ‘Exploring the Elite World in the Siyar al-Awliyā’: Urban Elites, Their Lineages and Social Networks’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 52, no. 3 (2015): 241–70. The Siyar al-Awliyā’ reports that the first five prominent Chishti Sufi pīrs are Shaykh Mu‘in al-Din Chishti, Shaykh Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki, Shaykh Farid al-Din, Shaykh Nizam al-Din Awliya and Shaykh Nasir al-Din Mahmud Chiragh-i Dehli. All these Chishti Sufi pīrs had numerous murīd(s) (disciples) and kh̲alīfā(s) (spiritual successors). On problems in writing a linear history of Sufis in the pre-Mughal period, see Sushmita Banerjee, ‘Sufi Dynastic Families in Pre-Mughal India’, in Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Asian History, ed. David Ludden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021): 1–30, accessed February 27, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.365.
53. For a detailed study of the structure and organisation of the content in the Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār, see Sushmita Banerjee, ‘Conceptualising the Past of the Muslim Community in the Sixteenth Century: A Prosopographical Study of the Ak̲h̲bār al-Ak̲h̲yār’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 54, no. 4 (2017): 423–56.
54. For a recent study of the early modern period in India, see Meena Bhargava and Pratyay Nath, ed., The Early Modern in South Asia: Querying Modernity, Periodization and History (Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
55. Alam, ‘The Debate Within’.
56. Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movement.
57. Aziz Ahmad, ‘Trends in the Political Thought of Medieval Muslim India’, Studia Islamica, no. 17 (1962): 121–30.