Pakistani teacher at the Jāmiʿa Niẓāmiyya Riḍawiyya in Lahore and author of al-Mirḍāt, an Arabic gloss on al-Mirqāt written for madrasa students.
Life
A biographical account by ʿAbd al-Mubīn Nuʿmānī Qādirī, circulated after his death, gives his birth as 24 Shaʿbān 1363 (August 1944) in Mirzapur in Hoshiarpur district, East Punjab; the family later moved to Lahore. He studied at several madrasas of the Barelwi (Ahl-i Sunnat) tradition, among them the Jāmiʿa Riḍawiyya in Faisalabad, the Jāmiʿa Imdādiyya at Bandyāl and the Jāmiʿa Niẓāmiyya Riḍawiyya in Lahore. His teachers included Sardār Aḥmad Chishtī and ʿAṭā Muḥammad Chishtī Golṛawī Bandyālwī; the notes of the 2015 Karachi edition of al-Mirqāt quote ʿAṭā Muḥammad Bandyālwī as ‘the absolute master’.
He taught in Haripur, Chakwal and Lahore and became shaykh al-ḥadīth of the Jāmiʿa Niẓāmiyya Riḍawiyya in Lahore. He was known as a teacher of and philosophy as well as a writer on the history and beliefs of the Ahl-i Sunnat; he took part in the Raza Foundation’s edition of Aḥmad Riḍā Khān’s al-Fatāwā al-riḍawiyya. He died in Lahore on 1 September 2007.
His gloss on al-Mirqāt, al-Mirḍāt, was written in Arabic for students and published by the Maktaba Qādiriyya in Lahore. In its introduction he explains why he chose the book: it is ‘well known among people and accepted by both the learned and the ordinary’, contains important questions in a smooth style, is part of the curriculum of Islamic madrasas, and is ‘approved by friend and foe alike’. The same introduction warns that , for all its use, is a tool for tafsīr, ḥadīth, fiqh and theology, and that whoever spends his whole life on it ‘has stopped on the bridge’.
Uncertain or disputed
- The biographical details come from a memorial account published online (SlideShare) and not from a reference work; the date of first publication of al-Mirḍāt was not found.
Works
- al-Mirḍāt, ḥāshiyat al-Mirqāt المِرْضَاةُ حَاشِيَةُ المِرْقَاةِ — on al-MirqātArabic gloss on al-Mirqāt (Lahore: Maktaba Qādiriyya). With ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Khayrābādī’s commentary it is the main source of the notes in the Maktabat al-Madīna edition (Karachi 2015), and it is printed with the text in other Pakistani editions.gloss
Reception
An Urdu survey of the Khayrābādī family’s works (Al-Qamar, 2023) singles out al-Mirḍāt as the Pakistani gloss on al-Mirqāt, and the editors of the 2015 Karachi edition, published by the Barelwi movement Dawat-e-Islami, built their notes mainly on it and on ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Khayrābādī’s .
Sources (3)
- ʿAbd al-Mubīn Nuʿmānī Qādirī, biography of ʿAllāma ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm Sharaf Qādirī (English version, SlideShare)
- al-Mirqāt, with al-Ḥāshiya al-mufīda (Karachi: Maktabat al-Madīna, 2015), introduction quoting al-Mirḍāt
- Farooq Amir et al., ‘Khayrābādī khāndān kī ʿilmī o taṣnīfī khidmāt’ (Urdu), Al-Qamar 6/1 (2023), 290