Scholar of the rational and transmitted sciences at Sihālī near Lucknow, the founder of the Farangī Maḥall family, teacher of Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī and father of Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn.
Life
Quṭb al-Dīn was born and grew up at Sihālī, a village near Lucknow. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Ḥasanī’s Nuzhat al-khawāṭir says that he read most of the madrasa books with Mullā Dāniyāl al-Chawrāsī, a pupil of ʿAbd al-Salām al-Dīwī, and some with others, perhaps including al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Laknawī; he had finished the usual sciences by thirty, then joined the Chishtiyya and devoted himself to teaching. He is said to have fasted continually, recited the whole Qurʾān at night, and taught every day except Tuesday and Friday, which he kept for writing. Asad Q. Ahmed shows that through al-Dīwī, who also taught ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm al-Siyālkūtī, his line of learning ran back to the Dashtakī circle of Shiraz.
His students, according to Nuzhat, included Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shamsābādī, Amān Allāh al-Banārasī, Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī, al-Qāḍī Shihāb al-Dīn al-Gūpāmawī and the ḥadīth scholar Ṣifat Allāh al-Khayrābādī. Ahmed calls him ‘the fountainhead of the Farangī Maḥallī tradition of scholars’: his pupils and their pupils taught al-Bihārī, Qāḍī Mubārak and most of the early commentators on Sullam al-ʿulūm. Francis Robinson credits him with bringing the seventeenth-century advances in the rational sciences into the course that his son later formalised (see ‘The Dars-i Niẓāmī’).
He was killed at Sihālī in 1103/1692 in a feud over local leadership: Nuzhat gives two accounts, one of a quarrel between the Anṣārī and ʿUthmānī families, the other of a local magnate who pursued a relative of Quṭb al-Dīn into his house, killed those he found there, burnt the house and took his son Niẓām al-Dīn captive. Most of his writings were lost in the fire; parts of glosses on al-Umūr al-ʿāmma, on al-Taftāzānī’s Talwīḥ and on the commentary on Ḥikmat al-ʿayn survived. His son Muḥammad Saʿīd brought the family to Lucknow, where Awrangzīb granted them the Farangī Maḥall. Nuzhat says he was sixty-three at his death.
Uncertain or disputed
- Year of death: 1103/1692 (Nuzhat, Ahmed); Robinson gives 1691, and Abdul Momen dates the founding of the family’s teaching institution in Lucknow to 1693 (as reported in ‘The Dars-i Niẓāmī’).
- Whether al-Bihārī studied with him directly: Nuzhat and the TDV say so; the early commentator Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Sihālawī first calls al-Bihārī his student and then corrects himself: ‘rather, he was a student of his student’ (al-Shamsābādī).
- Year of birth: not recorded; Nuzhat’s age at death (sixty-three) would place it around 1040/1630.
Works
- Glosses on al-Umūr al-ʿāmma, on the Talwīḥ and on Sharḥ Ḥikmat al-ʿaynParts survived the burning of his house (Nuzhat, after al-Risāla al-quṭbiyya).حاشیه
- Glosses on the commentaries on the ʿAqāʾid ʿAḍudiyya and ʿAqāʾid Nasafiyya, on al-Muṭawwal, and a treatise on the dār al-ḥarbListed by al-Bilgrāmī (Subḥat al-marjān), who says that most were burnt (Nuzhat).حاشیه
Reception
His descendants and their students made Farangī Maḥall one of the two main centres (with the Khayrābādīs) of logic and philosophy in North India; his son Niẓām al-Dīn gave his name to the Dars-i Niẓāmī.
Sources (2)