Syed Nazeer Husain

Indian Islamic scholar of the Ahl i Hadith movement (1805–1902)

Sayyid Nazir Husayn Dihlawi (180513 October 1902) was an Indian Islamic scholar who was a founding figure of the Ahl i Hadith movement in British India. Earning the appellation shaykh al kull (teacher of all, or the shaykh of all knowledge) for his authority among early Ahl i Hadith scholars.

Husayn was born into an aristocratic ashraf family in the northern Indian city of Monghyr, Bihar. He was raised a Shia Muslim, though later abandoned that faith. He began his studies in Sadiqpur in Bihar where he first came into contact with the revolutionary preacher Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831) in the 1820s. He later moved to Delhi in 1826 where he studied under Shah Abd al Aziz (1746 1824), son of the revivalist theologian Shah Wali Allah Dihlawi (1703–1762), and then Abd al Aziz's grandson and successor Shah Ishaq al Dihlawi (1778–1846), the renowned hadith scholar in India. When Shah Ishaq Al Dihlawi emigrated to the Hijaz, Husayn took his place as a teacher. Self consciously identifying himself with Shah Wali Allah, and viewing himself as spiritual heir to his legacy, Husayn took on the title miyan sahib, a title closely associated with Shah Wali Allah's successors. At Delhi's prestigious Madrasah i Rahimiyah seminary, which had broken up into a number of interlinked schools following Shah Ishaq al Dihlawi's death in 1846, Husayn led the most Salafi oriented school.

Nazir Husayn advocated political quietism and was among a large number of Muslim scholars from both the Sunni and Shia sects who supported British rule and rejected calls for armed jihad against it. He was also among a number of Muslim scholars, including the muftis of Mecca, who declared British India to be dar al Islam (abode of peace) and not Dar al harb (abode of war). Despite having denied any involvement in the rebellion in its aftermath and having strongly opposed the declaration of jihad as sinful and a faithless breach of covenant, He was arrested in 1868 by the British on suspicion of being the leader of the Wahhabi insurgents in Delhi and detained for six months but was eventually released without charge after it had emerged that he had not supported the rebels. Husayn consistently denied any links with the Wahhabis as well as any role in the Delhi uprising in 1857. However, their zealous opposition against co religionists and non Muslims alike, to the extent of using violence against mosques and shrines, and their strong anti polytheist, anti innovation, anti Shia and anti Christian message in close resemblance to the followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab (1703–1792), did not stop other Muslim groups from denouncing them as Wahhabis. Neither did the British Government of India cease using this term for them until the Ahl i Hadith leaders published, in 1885, a book denying any links with Wahhabism and called for the Government to cease employing this term in reference to them. Husayn taught hadith at Delhi for half a century, gaining international renown in this field and attracting students from different parts of India, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Almost all of the major scholars of the early Ahl i Hadith movement studied under him. Husayn held together a network of scholars who aligned themselves to the teachings of Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, but were more uncompromising in their rejection of what they believed were blameworthy innovations in the faith and the legitimacy given to the four Sunni schools of law. The solicitude of the British also gained Husayn favour among modernist Muslims associated with the Aligarh Institute, whose Aligarh Institute Gazette dedicated an obituary praising him when he died in 1902 at the age of ninety seven. Although Husayn himself has been seen as less literalist and more favourably inclined towards Sufism than later exponents of the Ahl i Hadith, demanding an oath of allegiance (bay'ah) from his disciples, a practice commonly associated with Sufism, and even praising Ibn Arabi, a colossus among Sufis. Nevertheless, overall, these teachings resulted in the development of close ties with Wahhabi scholars but strong controversy between the Ahl i Hadith and the Deobandis who upheld strict adherence to the Hanafi school. Muhammad Qasim Nanawtawi and Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, the founding figures of the Deobandi movement; although prominent Deobandi scholars including Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani have issued fatwas against him. Husayn might have had an influence on Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya, whose second marriage Husayn had performed in 1884, though Ahmad never studied under him. Ahmad's foremost disciple and successor Hakim Nur ul Din also briefly studied under Husayn. Other students of Husayn included the Afghan Indian scholar Abdullah Ghaznavi; the two major Ahl i Hadith proponents in the Punjab: Muhammad Husain Batalvi and Sanaullah Amritsari; and the Indian hadith scholar Shams ul Haq Azimabadi. The modernist founder of the Aligarh Movement and Muslim University, Syed Ahmad Khan, also studied under Husayn in the 1850s.