Faḍl-i Ḥaqq Khayrābādī

Son and pupil of the author of al-Mirqāt, the most famous scholar of the Khayrābādī school; later commentators read a passage of al-Mirqāt as advice addressed to him.

Life

Faḍl-i Ḥaqq was born in Khayrābād in 1211/1796–97 (TDV) or 1212/1797 (Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, Asad Q. Ahmed). He was taught mainly by his father, Faḍl-i Imām, and studied ḥadīth in Delhi with Shāh ʿAbd al-Qādir Dihlawī; an Urdu study of the family adds Shāh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Nuzhat al-khawāṭir says that he memorised the Qurʾān in four months and completed the course of studies at thirteen.

Like his father he worked for the East India Company in Delhi, as a clerk in the office of the commissioner (TDV; Nuzhat: in the dīwān al-inshāʾ). Jamal Malik, using his letters to his father of 1234–1237 (1818–1822), dates his entry into British service to about 1815. Between 1246/1832 and 1256/1840, according to Ahmed, he taught in Alwar, Saharanpur and Tonk at the invitation of their rulers; around 1256/1840 he moved to Rampur, where Nawwāb Muḥammad Saʿīd Khān made him tutor of the princely household. Students came to him from far away, and he trained many of the next generation of teachers of and philosophy.

His reputation rested on the rational sciences. He wrote glosses on the advanced texts of the Indian course, among them Qāḍī Mubārak’s on Sullam al-ʿulūm, and on Mīr Dāmād’s al-Ufuq al-mubīn; the TDV repeats the story that he taught that obscure work while playing chess. His al-Hadiyya al-saʿīdiyya, a book on natural philosophy dedicated to the Nawwāb of Rampur and completed by his son ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, became a madrasa text. He was also a prolific Arabic poet; Nuzhat al-khawāṭir speaks of more than four thousand verses.

He took part in some of the sharpest religious controversies of his day. Against Shāh Muḥammad Ismāʿīl of Delhi he wrote several treatises arguing that a peer of the Prophet is impossible (imtināʿ al-naẓīr); the TDV says the debate drew in the Mughal emperor Bahādur Shāh II and the poet Ghālib. When the uprising of 1857 broke out he was in the service of the ruler of Alwar; according to a contemporary account quoted by Malik he came to Delhi in mid-August 1857 and was taken into the counsels of the emperor. After the uprising he was arrested at Khayrābād, tried at Lucknow and sentenced to transportation for life; he reached Port Blair in the Andaman Islands in October 1859 and died there in 1861. In captivity he wrote an Arabic account of the uprising, al-Thawra al-hindiyya, and Arabic qaṣīdas.

For readers of al-Mirqāt he is important in two ways. He was the first pupil of the book’s author and the link through whom the Khayrābādī teaching passed to Rampur, Tonk and later generations. And in a passage on the five kinds of , where Faḍl-i Imām turns to the reader with ‘so you, dear son, must listen to my advice’, the commentators printed in the 2015 Karachi edition understand the words as addressed to Faḍl-i Ḥaqq, though also, out of kindness, to every student.

Uncertain or disputed

Date of death: Nuzhat al-khawāṭir gives 12 Ṣafar 1278 (19 August 1861); family records cited by Malik give 20 August 1861; the plaque at his grave in Port Blair, quoted by Malik, gives 12 February 1861; the TDV gives 1279/1862. Nuzhat al-khawāṭir and al-Ziriklī also misplace his exile in ‘Ceylon’ and ‘Rangoon’.
His role in 1857 is disputed. Later accounts, and the Wikipedia article, say that he issued a fatwā for jihad in Delhi. Malik points out that the well-known Delhi fatwā of July 1857 does not carry his name and that, according to a contemporary account, he only arrived in Delhi in mid-August; he finds no definitive evidence for the extent of his involvement, though Faḍl-i Ḥaqq never denied opposing British rule. Malik also doubts that the release his son was seeking had been granted before he died.
The TDV lists among his works al-Kāfī li-ḥall Īsāghūjī, a commentary on the Īsāghūjī. Brockelmann ascribes an al-Kāfī (India 1301) to a later Faḍl-i Ḥaqq, of Rampur (d. 1358/1939), and Nuzhat al-khawāṭir names it for neither. If the TDV is right he would also belong to the Īsāghūjī tradition; this has not been settled.

Works

al-Hadiyya al-saʿīdiyya fī al-ḥikma al-ṭabīʿiyya الهَدِيَّةُ السَّعِيدِيَّةُ فِي الحِكْمَةِ الطَّبِيعِيَّةِNatural philosophy in the Aristotelian–Avicennan tradition, completed by his son ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq; printed Kanpur 1283, 1288, 1292 and Cairo 1322 (TDV). Still listed among the philosophy books of the Dars-i Niẓāmī.work
Ḥāshiya ʿalā Sharḥ Sullam al-ʿulūm li-l-Qāḍī MubārakGloss on Qāḍī Mubārak’s commentary on al-Bihārī’s Sullam al-ʿulūm (printed Delhi 1899, TDV).gloss
Ḥāshiya ʿalā al-Ufuq al-mubīnOn Mīr Dāmād’s al-Ufuq al-mubīn; one of four premodern Indian commentaries on it (Ahmed).gloss
Ḥāshiya ʿalā Talkhīṣ al-Shifāʾ — on Faḍl-i Imām KhayrābādīGloss on his father’s abridgement of Ibn Sīnā’s al-Shifāʾ (Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, TDV).gloss
Treatises on logic and metaphysicsOn knowledge and the known (taḥqīq al-ʿilm wa-l-maʿlūm), bodies, the natural universal (al-kullī al-ṭabīʿī), gradation (tashkīk) and quiddities, and the categories (Qāṭīghūriyās); also al-Rawḍ al-majūd on existence (Hyderabad 1313) and al-Jins al-ghālī fī sharḥ al-Jawhar al-ʿālī (Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, TDV).work
al-Thawra al-hindiyya (al-Risāla al-ghadriyya) الثَّوْرَةُ الهِنْدِيَّةُPrison memoir and account of 1857, written in the Andamans; published with an Urdu translation by ʿAbd al-Shāhid Khān Shirwānī as Bāghī Hindūstān (Bijnor 1947).work
Treatises on the impossibility of a peer of the Prophet (imtināʿ al-naẓīr)Against Shāh Muḥammad Ismāʿīl Dihlawī (Nuzhat al-khawāṭir, TDV).work

Reception

Nuzhat al-khawāṭir calls him without equal in his time in the philosophical sciences and Arabic, but criticises his worldly manners. It quotes Nawwāb Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān, who had seen him in Delhi, as calling him ‘the imām of his time in the philosophical sciences, without dispute’ while faulting his attacks on the followers of Shāh Ismāʿīl.

Malik notes that Barelwi scholars later republished his works and made him a figurehead, Deobandi historians such as Muḥammad Miyān praised his scholarship and politics, and Ahl-i Ḥadīth writers criticised him. In India and Pakistan he is now widely remembered as a hero of the struggle against British rule; Malik describes the shrine (dargāh) at his grave in Port Blair.

Admirers give him the title ‘the fourth teacher’ (al-muʿallim al-rābiʿ) of ; the notes in the 2015 Karachi edition of al-Mirqāt and the Khairabadi Institute both use it.

Sources (8)