Turāb ʿAlī al-Laknawī

Lucknow logician of the nineteenth century, a student of Muftī Ẓuhūr Allāh of Farangī Maḥall, who wrote glosses on all three standard commentaries on Sullam al-ʿulūm and trained several later commentators.

Life

ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī’s Nuzhat al-khawāṭir traces his family from Delhi and Amroha to Lucknow, where he was born in 1213/1798–99. He read Arabic with Mawlānā Makhdūm al-Ḥusaynī, some treatises in logic, kalām and literature with Shaykh Maẓhar ʿAlī, a merchant, and the rest of the madrasa books with Muftī Ismāʿīl b. al-Wajīh al-Murādābādī and Muftī Ẓuhūr Allāh al-Anṣārī of Farangī Maḥall. Asad Q. Ahmed adds that Muftī Ismāʿīl had been qāḍī of Lucknow and was later sent to England as an envoy. Turāb ʿAlī then gave himself wholly to teaching; he made the pilgrimage in 1259/1843, studying hadith with Muftī ʿAbd Allāh Sirāj in Mecca, and taught for the rest of his life. He received the title Rukn al-Dīn, a sign, in Ahmed’s words, of royal patronage. He died on 12 Ṣafar 1281 (July 1864) at Muḥammadābād and was buried there.

Ahmed places him among the students of Ẓuhūr Allāh who carried the commentary tradition of Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī’s Sullam al-ʿulūm in nineteenth-century Lucknow. He wrote on each of the three standard commentaries on the Sullam, those of Ḥamd Allāh al-Sandīlawī, Qāḍī Mubārak and Mullā Ḥasan. His notes on Mubārak were lithographed in 1262/1846 and his notes on Mullā Ḥasan in 1265/1848–49; remarks at the end of the latter by one Walī Muḥammad suggest, according to Ahmed, that it was written for students. Although he claimed descent from ʿAlī, he studied hadith with Sunni scholars and does not seem to have been a Shīʿī.

Ahmed regards his role as a teacher as significant: through him the study of Mullā Ḥasan’s commentary, until then a Sunni affair in Lucknow, passed to Shīʿī scholars of the city. His students included the Shīʿī commentators Ḥaydar ʿAlī al-Riḍawī (d. 1302/1885) and Kamāl al-Dīn al-Mūhānī (d. 1295/1878), and Jaʿfar ʿAlī b. Afḍal (d. 1300/1883) and Anwar ʿAlī al-Lakhnawī (d. 1303/1886); Nuzhat names further students, among them Muʿīn al-Dīn al-Karawī, Qāḍī Anwar ʿAlī al-Murādābādī and Sayyid Ghanī Naqī al-Zaydbūrī, ‘and countless others’.

Works

• al-Taʿlīq al-marḍī ʿalā Sharḥ al-Qāḍī التَّعْلِيقُ المَرْضِيُّ عَلَى شَرْحِ القَاضِي — عَلَى Qāḍī MubārakNotes on Qāḍī Mubārak’s commentary on Sullam al-ʿulūm (Nuzhat). Ahmed cites his notes on Mubārak as al-Taʿlīq, lithographed in 1262/1846.تَعْلِيقات
• Sharḥ al-sharḥ ʿalā al-Qāḍī (al-Bayān al-wāfī) شَرْحُ الشَّرْحِ عَلَى القَاضِي — عَلَى Qāḍī MubārakA second work on Mubārak (Nuzhat). A Kanpur print of 1881 titled ‘Manhīyāt sullam. Sharḥ al-sharḥ’ contains the part on conceptions with Mubārak’s commentary and his own notes and Turāb ʿAlī’s supercommentary al-Bayān al-wāfī (Penn record of the British Library copy).حاشِيَة
• al-Taʿlīq al-aḥsan ʿalā Sharḥ Mullā Ḥasan (Taʿlīqāt aḥsan) التَّعْلِيقُ الأَحْسَنُ عَلَى شَرْحِ مُلَّا حَسَن — عَلَى Mullā ḤasanNotes on Mullā Ḥasan’s commentary on the Sullam; lithograph 1265/1848–49 (Ahmed).تَعْلِيقات
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ al-Sullam li-Ḥamd Allāh حَاشِيَةٌ عَلَى شَرْحِ السُّلَّمِ لِحَمْدِ اللّٰهِ — عَلَى Ḥamd AllāhGloss on Ḥamd Allāh al-Sandīlawī’s commentary on the Sullam (Nuzhat; Ahmed).حاشِيَة
• Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ Hidāyat al-ḥikma li-l-ShīrāzīGloss on al-Shīrāzī’s commentary on al-Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma (Nuzhat).حاشِيَة
• Shams al-ḍuḥā li-izālat al-dujā, with its completion Takmilat al-ʿalī li-Liwāʾ al-hudāGloss on the gloss of Ghulām Yaḥyā al-Bihārī (Nuzhat).حاشِيَة

Reception

The 1881 Kanpur print of Mubārak’s commentary with his supercommentary, now in the British Library’s Early Arabic Printed Books, shows that his notes were still in use in the madrasas of the late nineteenth century.

Nuzhat al-khawāṭir counts him among the scholars ‘prominent in the rational and the transmitted sciences’.