Teacher of the rational sciences at the Dār al-ʿUlūm Deoband whose commentary on Sullam al-ʿulūm, Ḍiyāʾ al-nujūm, is still used in South Asian madrasas.
Life
Muḥammad Ibrāhīm al-Balyāwī belongs to the last phase of the Indian commentary tradition on Muḥibb Allāh al-Bihārī’s Sullam al-ʿulūm. Asad Q. Ahmed, in his study of that tradition, calls him ‘a notable scholar of the Dār al-ʿUlūm Deoband’ and names him first among the Deobandi scholars who wrote first-order commentaries on the Sullam between the end of the first quarter and the third quarter of the twentieth century, alongside Muḥammad Isḥāq al-Hazārawī, Sayyid Anwār al-Ḥaqq al-Pishāwarī and Mawlānā Mumtāz al-Dīn. He gives his death as 1387/1967.
His training linked Deoband with the older tradition of the rational sciences: Ahmed describes him as a student of a student of Faḍl-i Ḥaqq Khayrābādī, the son of the author of al-Mirqāt. He in turn taught the rational sciences to later commentators. Ahmed names two: Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Subḥān al-Hazārawī (1316–1377/1898–1958), who was trained both by him and by Barakāt Aḥmad, a student of ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Khayrābādī, and who wrote on Qāḍī Mubārak’s commentary; and Abū ʿUbayd Manẓūr Aḥmad Nuʿmānī (b. 1340/1922), whose commentary on Mubārak, al-Tuḥfa al-nuʿmāniyya, was completed in 1398/1978.
His commentary on the Sullam is called Ḍiyāʾ al-nujūm (‘the light of the stars’). Ahmed cites it from a Multan edition (Maktaba Ḥaqqāniyya) and calls it ‘highly influential’ and ‘regularly used in South Asian madāris’. In his account it is typical of the new setting: from the late nineteenth century commentaries on the Sullam were written mostly by scholars connected with Deoband and served the teaching of a fixed curriculum in a formal institution.
Uncertain or disputed
- The sources consulted give no date of birth, no birthplace and no full list of his teachers; the nisba al-Balyāwī presumably refers to Ballia in eastern Uttar Pradesh, but this is not stated in them.
- The language of Ḍiyāʾ al-nujūm was not checked; Ahmed lists it among the first-order commentaries without saying that it is in Urdu, as he does for some others.
- Ahmed’s biographical information comes from Bukhārī’s Akābir and Rizvi’s History, which were not consulted here.
Works
- Ḍiyāʾ al-nujūm (Sharḥ Sullam al-ʿulūm) ضِيَاءُ النُّجُومِ — üzerine Sullam al-ʿulūmPrinted in Multan by Maktaba Ḥaqqāniyya (n.d.); ‘highly influential’ and ‘regularly used in South Asian madāris’ (Ahmed).şerh
Reception
Ahmed treats Ḍiyāʾ al-nujūm as one of the commentaries through which the Sullam is still read in South Asia, beside the lithograph of Barakat Allāh’s Iṣʿād al-fuhūm.
Sources (1)