Rahmatallāh al-Kairānawī

Rahmatallāh ibn Chalīl ar-Rahmān al-Kairānawī al-Hindī ( Arabic رحمة الله بن خليل الرحمن الكيرانوي الهندي, DMG Raḥmatallāh ibn Ḫalīl ar-Raḥmān al-Kairānawī al-Hindī born. March 9, 1818 in Uttar Pradesh , died May 1, 1891 in Mecca ) was an Islamic scholar from India who fought against the Christian mission and wrote several pamphlets in Urdu and Arabic against Christianity . They aimed to provide evidence of the general corruption of Christian scriptures. His public discussion with the Protestant missionary Karl Gottlieb Pfander (1803–1865) in Agra in 1854 represents a high point in the conflict between Christianity and Islam in the 19th century. After the Indian uprising of 1857 , Rahmatallāh fled to Mecca and founded a madrasa there . It was the first madrasa in Mecca to teach non-religious sciences.

Rahmatallāh traveled to Istanbul several times and was on friendly terms with the Ottoman sultans Abdülaziz (1861–1876) and Abdülhamid II (1876–1909). His way of dealing with Christianity is still considered exemplary by many Muslim apologists .

Life

Ancestry and Early Years in India

Rahmatallāh's family traced back to the third caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān , which is why he is also provided with the Nisba al-ʿUthmānī in some sources . An ancestor named ʿAbd ar-Rahmān Kādharūnī had come to India in the 11th century in the wake of the conquering movement of Mahmud from Ghazna , had served the ruler as Qādī and settled in Panipat north of India.

Al-Kairānawī was born on 1st Jumādā al-auwal 1233 (= March 9, 1818) in Kairana near Muzaffarnagar in today's state of Uttar Pradesh . Up to the age of twelve he received his education from his father in Kairāna. In 1830 he went to Delhi and studied there with Sheikh ʿAbd ar-Rahmān al-Aʿmā and in the madrasa of Maulānā Muhammad Hayāt. For a while he stayed in Lucknow on and studied Persian literature and medicine. Around 1841 he took over the post of Mīr Munschī with the Maharajah Hindu Rao for the area of ​​Delhi. At an unknown point in time, he returned to Kairāna and opened a madrasa there, where he taught himself. One of his students there was Shāh ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the founder of the Madrasa al-Bāqiyāt as-Sālihāt in Vellore , one of the most important Islamic universities in South India.

Confrontation with the Christian missionaries

In the 1840s Rahmatallāh heard about the missionary activities of the evangelical missionary Karl Gottlieb Pfander (1803-1865) from Waiblingen near Stuttgart in this city and began to think about how he could act against the activities of the Christian missionaries. End of 1840 or at the beginning of the 1850s, he met the from Bihar originating surgeon Dr. Muhammad Wazīr Chān, who worked at the British Thomason Hospital Medical College in Agra and who spoke English. Both were united by a common goal, namely the fight against Christian missionary work in India. Wazīr Chān was also extremely important for Rahmatallāh because he had acquired the latest European theological literature during a study visit and Rahmatallāh, who himself had no knowledge of English, was able to make these texts accessible.

In 1852 Rahmatallāh was officially asked by the Muslim theologian ʿAlī Hasan and the Mughal prince Mīrzā Fachr ad-Dīn to argue against the Christian missionaries. He began a counter-campaign and published several books aimed at refuting the books of Pfander and other Christian missionaries. He also collected a lot of material in order to be as well informed as possible about the Bible and Christian dogmas. In 1853 or 1854 Rahmatallāh published yet another book with the title Iʿǧāz-i ʿĪsāwī , in which he tried to prove the falsification of the Christian texts.

The public dispute with Pfander

In January 1854, Rahmatallāh visited Pfander personally at home to challenge him to a public dispute, but did not find him there. After he wrote to Pfander with his request and agreed to it, the first meeting for April 10, 1854 was arranged. The debate eventually took place at the Church Mission Society school in Agra and lasted two days. In addition to al-Kairānawī, Wazīr Chān took part on the Muslim side, who also provided him with translation services. Participants in the debate on the Christian side were Pfander himself, William Muir (1819–1905) and the missionary Thomas Valpy French (1825–1891). The reports about the number of those present vary widely. While Pfander himself speaks of 100 to 200 people present, according to other reports up to 1,000 people were present.

The focus of the discussion on the first day was the doctrine of abrogation : the two Muslims advocated the doctrine that the Koran had abrogated earlier revelations. To prove the correctness of this thesis, they cited various examples of prohibitions and commandments that had undergone significant changes from the early biblical times to the present. Rahmatallāh also made extensive use of the work The Life of Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss in his attacks . Pfander had little to counter Rahmatallāh's attacks. While he could dismiss the quotes of his opponents from contemporary biblical criticism as mere reflections by theological colleagues who followed the zeitgeist, he could not so easily brush aside the quotes from the literature of the Church Fathers to which these authors referred.

Rahmatallāh and the Muslim public later celebrated the dispute as a great victory for Islam, while Pfander was disturbed by the outcome. As late as 1854, several Urdu and Persian writings on the debate were published, including letters and Rahmatallāh from earlier times. In some of these reports the claim was made that Pfander fled from the Muslim theologians.

Participation in the Indian uprising

Three years after the dispute, Kairānawī took part in the Indian uprising along with Wazīr Khan and other scholars . After Alavi he played a leading role among the rebels in his hometown of Kairana. After the uprising failed, a reward of 1,000 rupees was offered for his capture. According to an Arab source, he first disguised himself as a simple peasant for a time in order to escape his captors, and then fled via Yemen to Mecca. His extensive property was confiscated in January 1864 and auctioned off.

Emigration to Mecca and trips to Istanbul

Rahmatallāh first settled in Mecca. There he befriended the city's leading scholar, Ahmad Zainī Dahlān, and received an official license to teach the Holy Mosque . After many mosques were seized in India in connection with the suppression of the uprising and turned into public or private buildings, he encouraged a group of Islamic scholars of India with a fatwa , the reopening of the British government in a petition Friday Mosque of Delhi to demand . In 1859 this request was granted.

Rahmatallāh's opponent Pfander had been transferred to Istanbul in 1858 and continued his missionary work there. When the Ottoman sultan heard of his dispute with Rahmatallāh, he invited Rahmatallāh to come to Istanbul in 1863. In this first stay in Istanbul, Rahmatallāh met frequently with the Sultan, the Ottoman statesman Hayreddin Pasha and the Scheichülislam Ahmad As'ad and wrote his most famous work, the Izhar al-Haqq ( "Aufzeigung of truth"). The Sultan awarded him the Mecidiye Order for his services to the defense of Islam and gave him a monthly salary of 500 rials .

The establishment of the Saulatīya madrasa

After his return to Mecca Rahmatallāh made the decision to found a madrasa there, which in addition to the religious sciences also taught secular sciences. In 1868 he realized this plan by taking up classes in the so-called Dār as-Saqīfa, a house on Jabal al-Hindī, which belonged to a wealthy Indian emigrant. However, the space available to him there was very cramped, so he looked around for alternatives. In 1872 the Begum Saulat an-Nisā ', the wife of a Bengali zamindar, came to Mecca for the Hajj . She provided him with the money to build his own madrasa in al-Chandarīsa alley in the al-Bāb neighborhood. The construction of the building was completed on October 8, 1873. At the same time, Rahmatallāh was able to begin teaching in the new madrasa, which he named Madrasa Saulatīya after its founder.

At his school Rahmatallāh taught not only the religious sciences, but also logic ( manṭiq ), Islamic philosophy, Kalām , the art of disputation ( al-munāẓara ), astronomy and geometry. In his first teaching session he based the teaching on the book Ḥuǧǧat Allaah al-bāliġa by Shāh Walīyallāh ad-Dihlawī and on the muqaddima of Ibn Chaldūn .

With the financial support of a Muslim from Patna named Mīr Wādschid Husain, Rahmatallāh was able to expand the school by a residential building ( dār al-iqāma ) for fifty students in 1876 . In 1886 the madrasa received its own mosque. It was built from stones obtained from the demolition of a public building in the courtyard of the Holy Mosque. The school was maintained with donations from Muslims from India. Abdur Razzack, the British Vice Consul in Jeddah, reported in 1885 that the madrasa was the most flourishing in all of the Hejaz . Many of the school's graduates later made careers as scholars, qadis and muftis . Among the best-known graduates of Saulatīya were Husain ibn ʿAlī , the founder of the Hashimite state of the Hejaz, ʿAbdallāh Sarrādsch, Prime Minister of Transjordan from 1931 to 1933 , and Muhammad Hasyim Asy'arī, the founder of the Nahdlatul Ulama organization in the Dutch East Indies . Many of Rahmatallāh's disciples later founded madrasas themselves.

Rahmatallāh also took care of the repair of the canal system in Mecca that supplied Mecca with water. Together with other Indian Muslims, he founded a commission in 1878 which called for donations for the repair of these lines in various Islamic countries, particularly Egypt and India. This commission was able to raise large sums of money and had engineers and craftsmen come from India, who laboriously repaired and expanded the aqueduct that supplied Mecca with water from Wādī an-Nuʿmān and also installed a steam pump that brought the water from the ʿArafāt plain to Minā pumped up.

In 1883 he sent a request to the British consul in Jeddah to be allowed to return to India. However, based on a report by the local government of the north-west provinces, in whose jurisdiction Kairawana was, the British government of India rejected this request.

Later trips to Istanbul

At the invitation of Sultan Abdülhamid II, Rahmatallāh came to Istanbul again in March 1884 and lived there in the Yıldız Palace . After suffering from a cataract of the eyes , he returned to Istanbul in July 1887 at the invitation of Abdülhamid. This time he was quartered in the Çadır kiosk of the Yıldız Palace. The sultan awarded him the honorary title rukn al-ḥaramain aš-šarīfain ("pillar of the two sublime holy places ") and awarded him a robe in recognition of his services to the development of his school . However, he refused to finance the school from the Ottoman side.

Although the doctors assured him that the treatment would be successful, he did not agree to an operation and eventually returned to the Hejaz to spend his last days in Mecca. There he underwent eye surgery in 1888, but it was unsuccessful. Henry Mortimer Durand , the Foreign Minister of the Government of India, requested information about Rahmatallāh in 1888 because he was suspected of inciting, with Ottoman support, Indian Muslims who came to Mecca for the Hajj to rebel against the British.

Rahmatallāh died on Ramadan 22, 1308 (= May 1, 1891) in Mecca and was buried in the Muʿallā cemetery.

Works

Rahmatallāh has written a total of 18 works in Urdu and Arabic. The most famous of these are in chronological order:

• Izālat al-auhām , answer to the work Mīzān al-ḥaqq by Karl Gottlieb Pfander, published in Delhi in Urdu in 1852 and later also in Persian, in which al-Kairānawī rejects the allegations made there against Islam.
• Izālat aš-šukūk ("Removal of Doubts") is a work in Urdu for Muslims to provide counter-arguments for refuting allegations against Islam and the Koran by Pfander and the other missionaries. The book comprises two volumes with a total of 1116 pages and was published in Delhi in the years 1852-1853.
• Iʿǧāz-i ʿĪsāwī ("The Miracle of Jesus"), 600-page work that appeared in Urdu before the Agra debate in 1853 . Al-Kairānawī advocated the thesis that the biblical texts were completely falsified . He drew on several critical Bible commentaries such as Nathanial Lardner's "The credibility of the Gospel history" (1827 edition), A commentary upon the Holy Bible , published 1831-35 by M. Henry and T. Scott, and TH Homes Introduction to the critical study of the Holy Scriptures (1822 edition).
• Al-Baḥṯ aš-šarīf fī iṯbāt an-nasḫ wa-t-taḥrīf ( The Noble Discussion to Prove Abrogation and Adulteration ), account of the dispute with Pfander, which appeared in Urdu in 1854 and was later translated into Persian and Arabic.
• Aṣaḥḥ al-aḥādīṯ fī ibṭāl at-taṯlīṯ , 1854/55 written rejection of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity , which was originally conceived as an appendix to Izālat aš-šukūk , but was only published as a separate work in 1875.
• Iẓhār al-ḥaqq ( Showing the Truth ), the main Arabic work of Rahmatallāh. Published in Istanbul in 1864, the book saw numerous editions and was translated into Turkish, French, English, Urdu and Gujarati . The French translation from 1880 was done by PV Carletti, a professor of Arabic at London University who was very critical of evangelical Christianity . The different language versions of the book were reprinted again and again in the 20th century. Various Christian refutations also appeared. The work is divided into six books, each consisting of several chapters. Two parts can be recognized: while the first part focuses on the refutation of Christianity, the second part aims to prove the truth of Islam and the divine mission of the Prophet and the Koran. The doctrine of the Tahrīf of the biblical texts again plays an important role, with Rahmatallāh dividing the falsification into different categories. He distinguishes between "falsification in the wording" ( taḥrīf lafẓī ) and "falsification in the meaning" ( taḥrīf maʿnawī ) and divides the latter again into "falsification by substitution", "falsification by addition" and "falsification by deletion". For each of these types of adulteration, he provides a series of evidence. In the fourth chapter, Rahmatallāh states that the Bible cannot be inspired by God. To confirm this thesis, he relies on statements by European scholars who, with the help of the historical-critical method, came to the conclusion that the Bible could not be the revealed word of God.
• At-Tanbīhāt fī iṯbāt al-iḥiyāǧ ilā l-baʿṯa wa-l-ḥašr , Treatise on the Proof of the Need for Resurrection and Gathering of the Dead, written by al-Kairānawī in his first book in Istanbul. The Ottoman statesman Hayreddin Pascha had them printed. At the request of Sultan Abdülaziz , it was also translated into Turkish.

literature

Arabic sources

• ʿAbdallāh al-Hindī: Waqāʾiʿ al-munāẓara, allatī ǧarat bain aš-Shaiḫ Raḥmatallāh al-Hindī wa-l-qissīs Fandar al-Inklīzī . Al-Ǧaffān wa-l-Ǧābī, Limassol, Cyprus, 1996.
• Muḥammad ʿAlī Maġribī: Alām al-Ḥiǧāz fī l-qarn ar-rābiʿ ʿašar li-l-hiǧra . Jeddah 1984. Vol. II, pp. 286-313. Digitized
• Muḥammad Salīm Ibn-Muḥammad Saʿīd: Akbar muǧāhid fī t-tārīḫ: aš-šaiḫ Raḥmatallāh al-Hindī; 1818-1891 m. Maktabat al-Kullīyāt al-Azharīya, Cairo, 1977.

Secondary literature

• Asīr Adravī: Mujāhid-i Islām Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānvī aur un ke imān afroz ʿilmī maʿrake . Maktabah-i Aḫūvat, Lahore, [2000].
• Seema Alavi: Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2015. pp. 169-221.
• Abdülhamit Birışık: "Rahmetullah el-Hindî" in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm ansiklopedisi Vol. XXXIV, pp. 419c-421b. Digitized
• Muḥammad al-Fāḍil Ibn-ʿAlī al-Lāfī: Dirāsat al-aqāʾid an-naṣrānīya: manhaǧīyat Ibn-Taimīya wa-Raḥmatallāh al-Hindī. Al-Maʿhad al-ʿĀlamī lil-Fikr al-Islāmī , Herndon, VA, 2007.
• Avril A. Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī and Muslim-Christian controversy in India in the mid-19th century in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 108 (1976) 42-63. - Reprinted in Lloyd Ridgeon (eds.): Islam and religious diversity . Vol. II: Christianity . Routledge, New York, NY, 2012, pp. 219-244.
• Avril A. Powell: Muslims and missionaries in pre-mutiny India . Curzon Press, Richmond, Surrey 1993. pp. 192-225.
• Christine Schirrmacher : With the enemy's weapons: Christian-Muslim controversies in the 19th and 20th centuries; illustrated using the example of the dispute over Karl Gottlieb Pfander's "Mîzân al-ḥaqq" and Raḥmatullâh Ibn Halîl al-ʿUtmânî al-Kairânawî's "Izhâr al-ḥaqq" and the discussion about the Gospel of Barnabas . Schwarz, Berlin, 1992. pp. 103-188. Digitized
• Maḥmūd Aḥmad Ẓafar: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kīrānvī aur un ke muʿāṣirīn: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kīrānvī aur jalīl al-qadr ham ʿaṣar ʿulamāʾ ke ḥālāt . Taḫlīqāt, Lāhaur, 2007.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 115.
2. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 148.
3. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 286.
4. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 110.
5. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 287.
6. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, p. 46.
7. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 287.
8. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, p. 46.
9. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 111.
10. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 289.
11. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 110.
12. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, p. 50.
13. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 112.
14. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 123.
15. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 122 f.
16. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, p. 55.
17. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 131.
18. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, p. 56.
19. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, p. 54.
20. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 127f.
21. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, p. 44.
22. ↑ See Alavi: Muslim Cosmopolitanism . 2015, p. 169.
23. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 112.
24. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 293.
25. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, pp. 60, 63.
26. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 294.
27. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 113.
28. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, pp. 55-58.
29. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, p. 61f.
30. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 296.
31. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 298.
32. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 303.
33. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 300.
34. ↑ See Alavi: Muslim Cosmopolitanism . 2015, p. 185.
35. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, pp. 303-306.
36. ↑ Ibrāhīm Rifʿat Bāšā: Mirʾāt al-ḥaramain: au ar-riḥlāt al-Ḥigāzīya wa-l-ḥaǧǧ wa-mašāʿiruhū ad-dīnīya . Dār al-kutub al-Miṣrīya, Cairo, 1925. Vol. I, p. 222.
37. ↑ See Alavi: Muslim Cosmopolitanism . 2015, p. 176f.
38. ↑ Cf. Maġribī: Aʿlām al-Ḥiǧāz . 1984, Vol. II, p. 302.
39. ↑ See Alavi: Muslim Cosmopolitanism . 2015, pp. 178, 190.
40. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 145.
41. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, p. 53.
42. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 127.
43. ↑ See Powell: Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī . 1976, pp. 62f.
44. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, pp. 211-238.
45. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, p. 174.
46. ↑ See Schirrmacher: With the enemy's weapons . 1992, pp. 174f.