The teacher of Faḍl-i Imām, through whom the logic of Sandīla, Gūpāmaw and Farangī Maḥall reached the Khayrābādī school.
Life
Nuzhat al-khawāṭir describes Muftī ʿAbd al-Wājid as ‘one of the great scholars’ of Khayrābād. He was the son of a sister of Muḥammad Aʿlam al-Sandīlawī (d. 1198/1784), a pupil of the Farangī Maḥall masters Kamāl al-Dīn Sihālawī and Niẓām al-Dīn, and read most of the books of the madrasa course with his uncle. He also studied with Qāḍī Wahhāj al-Dīn of Gūpāmaw and read part of al-Maybudī’s on Hidāyat al-ḥikma with Aḥmad Allāh b. Ṣifat Allāh al-Khayrābādī.
He taught for a long time in Khayrābād and was then appointed muftī of Lucknow by Rāja Tikait Rāy, continuing to teach alongside his office. Among his many students was Faḍl-i Imām, the author of al-Mirqāt. Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, quoting Faḍl-i Imām’s own Āmadnāma, dates his death to Friday 4 Shawwāl 1216 (February 1802).
Asad Q. Ahmed uses this web of teachers to explain where the Khayrābādī tradition came from: through ʿAbd al-Wājid it joined the Sandīla and Farangī Maḥall line of Muḥammad Aʿlam with the Gūpāmaw and Khayrābād scholars who had trained Qāḍī Mubārak, the author of the most studied on Sullam al-ʿulūm.
Uncertain or disputed
- The TDV calls Faḍl-i Imām’s teacher ʿAbd al-Wājid Kirmānī, while Nuzhat al-khawāṭir and Ahmed call him ʿAbd al-Wājid al-Khayrābādī; an Urdu study (Al-Qamar) combines the names. No written works of his are recorded in the sources consulted.
Sources (3)
- ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī, Nuzhat al-khawāṭir: entry ‘al-Muftī ʿAbd al-Wājid al-Khayrābādī’ (tarājim.com)
- Asad Q. Ahmed, Palimpsests of Themselves: Logic and Commentary in Postclassical Muslim South Asia (University of California Press, 2022), 27–28, 36
- A. S. Bazmee Ansari, ‘Fazl-ı İmâm Hayrâbâdî’, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi 12 (1995), 274