Scholar of the Farangī Maḥall family whose Iṣʿād al-fuhūm, printed with the text of the Sullam al-ʿulūm, is the edition most used in South Asian madrasas today and the base text of Asad Q. Ahmed’s English translation.
Life
Barakat Allāh belonged to the Farangī Maḥall family of Lucknow, in the line of Ghulām Muṣṭafā, whose descendants had written some of the earliest commentaries on the Sullam al-ʿulūm. Asad Q. Ahmed reports that he was trained by two descendants of Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Sihālawī, the author of Suddat al-ʿulūm, and he names him with ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Laknawī as the last members of the old Lucknow network to write on the Sullam before new institutions, curricula and the printing press changed the way the book was taught.
He wrote on the Sullam three times. Rafʿ al-ishtibāh, printed in 1326/1908, is a commentary on Ḥamd Allāh’s commentary and, in Ahmed’s words, ‘one of the last engagements with Ḥamdallāh’. He also wrote on Mullā Ḥasan’s commentary, one of the latest commentaries on it. His Iṣʿād al-fuhūm, a gloss printed around the text of the Sullam in a Kanpur lithograph, is described by Ahmed as ‘the latest non-mamzūj text-cum-commentary of the Sullam to gain wide acceptance in South Asia’; because it was easy to obtain and ‘pervasively used by various South Asian madāris’, Ahmed based his translation on its text. His notes often record the explanations of earlier Lucknow and Sandīla scholars, and of his own forebears, which Ahmed quotes in his commentary.
Uncertain or disputed
- No birth date or detailed biography was found in the sources consulted; Ahmed’s biographical note rests on ʿInāyat Allāh’s ʿUlamāʾ-i Farangī Maḥall, which was not seen.
Works
- Iṣʿād al-fuhūm إِصْعَادُ الفُهُومِ — بر Sullam al-ʿulūmGloss printed with the matn (Kanpur: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Qawmiyya, n.d., lithograph); Ahmed counts it among the first-order commentaries. Base text of Ahmed’s translation (2022).حاشیه
- Rafʿ al-ishtibāh ʿan Sharḥ al-Sullam li-Ḥamd Allāh رَفْعُ الاشْتِبَاهِ عَنْ شَرْحِ السُّلَّمِ لِحَمْدِ اللهِ — بر Ḥamd AllāhPrinted by al-Maṭbaʿ al-Yūsufī, 1326/1908 (Ahmed).حاشیه
- Commentary on Mullā Ḥasan’s commentary on the Sullam — بر Mullā ḤasanAmong the latest commentaries on Mullā Ḥasan (Ahmed).حاشیه
Reception
Through Iṣʿād al-fuhūm his text of the Sullam is the one most South Asian students read today, and the one now available in English.
Sources (2)