Sayyid Muḥammad Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān al-Qannawjī (14 October 1832 – 26 May 1890) was an Islamic scholar and leader of British India's Muslim community in the 19th century, often considered to be the most important Muslim scholar of the Bhopal State.Jamal Malik, Perspectives of mutual encounters in South Asian history, 1760–1860, p. 71. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2000. He is largely credited alongside Syed Nazeer Husain with founding the revivalist Ahl-i Hadith movement, which is a strain of Sunni Islam throughout the immediate region.Daniel W. Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought: Vol. 5 of Cambridge Middle East Studies, p. 27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Malik, p. 72.M. Naeem Qureshi, Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics, p. 458. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1999. Siddiq Hasan Khan was also a prominent scholarly authority of the Arab Salafiyya movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Khan's controversial nature has led to contrasting assessments of his personality, having been described by contrasting sources as a fundamentalist, and one of the first heroes of the Indian independence movement.Claudia Preckel, Wahhabi or National Hero? Siddiq Hasan Khan. International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, vol. 11, No. 1, p. 31.Annmarie Schimmel, Islam in the Indian Subcontinent, p. 207. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1980. As one of the central figures of the early Ahl-i Ḥadīth networks, Siddiq Hasan Khan was also a major South Asian exponent of the teachings of the classical theologian ibn Taymiyya (661–728 A.H /1263–1328 C.E). Apart from ibn Taymiyya, Siddiq Hasan Khan was also influenced by the scholarly traditions of al-Shawkani, Shah Waliullah Dehlawi and Sayyid Ahmed.
Early life
Family background Khan's family were said to be descendants of Ali, the fourth of Rashidun caliphs. Initially settled in Bukhara, they migrated to Multan and later to Kannauj (also sometimes spelled as Qannawj). Khan was born in Bareilly, which was the natal home of his mother, on 14 October 1832.Abu Nasr Syed Mohammad Ali Hasan Khan, Maasir e Siddiqui Part 2Shaharyar Khan, The Begums of Bhopal: A History of the Princely State of Bhopal, p. 120. London: I.B. Tauris, 2000. Seema Alavi, Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832–90) and the Creation of a Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the 19th century. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 54, No. 1, p. 4. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2011. After a few days, his mother brought him to his ancestral city Kannauj.
Khan grew up in a family which was impoverished despite its history of Islamic scholarship; his father converted from Shi'a Islam to Sunni Islam in the early 1800s. Siddiq Hasan's father Sayyid Awlad Hasan was a strong supporter of Sayyid Ahmad, pledging Bay'ah (oath of allegiance) at his hands and had accompanied him to Afghanistan in the northwest frontier Province to participate in his famous Jihad movement. Wilayat Ali Khan and Inayat Ali Khan, two major leaders of the Wahhabi Jihad movement had stayed briefly in Khan's house in Qannauj. Under the instructions and tutelage of Wilayat Ali, Khan studied the Hadith work Bulugh al-Maram and later wrote a well-known commentary on it.
Religious Studies Thus, Khan was influenced by the religious ideals of Sayyid Ahmad and his Wahhabi jihad movement in his early life. Khan received much of his education in Farukhabad, Kanpur and Delhi under the care of friends of his father, who died when Khan was only five years old.Khan, p. 121.Alavi, p. 5. While in Delhi, Siddiq Hasan studied Hadith sciences under the tutelage of 'Abd al Haqq Banarasi (d.1870) who was a major source of influence in shaping the teachings of Ahl-i Hadith. 'Abd al Haqq Banarasi was a member of Sayyid Ahmad Shahid's Hajj to Mecca in 1821 and decided to stay behind in Hejaz. Later Banarasi travelled to the Yemenite capital Sana'a, and studied under the theologian al-Shawkānī (d. 1834). After his studies under in Yemen, Banarasi would be the first scholar in India to introduce the works of Shawkani in India. When Khan adopted 'Abd al-Haqq as his teacher, the latter had become a well known Muhaddith noted for his stances against Taqlid.
After pursuing Islamic studies with two Yemeni clerics who had emigrated to Bhopal, Khan came under the influence of the works of prolific Yemeni Islamic scholar Muhammad al-Shawkani. The reformist influence on Khan's thinking only increased with his performance of Hajj (Muslim pilgrimage) to Mecca, during which he became familiar with the works of the 14th century Syrian polemicist Ibn Taymiyyah. Khan brought back a large amount of books with him upon returning to Bhopal and began writing commentaries. Khan relocated to Bhopal in 1854 initially selling perfume but later working as a schoolteacher, where his religious views gained him the ire of traditionalist locals. He was expelled to Tonk in 1857, but soon returned to Kannauj to protect his family during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.M. Khan, p. 122.
Nawab Consort of Bhopal
Rise to Power Siddiq Hasan Khan took up a job as an archivist and state historian in 1859 under Shah Jahan, who at the time was notable as a woman in the Kingdom of Bhopal who was heir apparent to the throne. For the first time in his life, Khan was financially well-off and brought his sister and mother to live with him in Bhopal. Khan married for the first time in 1860, to the daughter of the prime minister who was eleven years his senior. Siddiq Hasan Khan eventually married Begum on suggestion of his father-in-law (father of his first wife). Upon Shah Jahan's coronation in 1871, Khan was promoted to the position of chief secretary, began spending longer periods of time alone with Shah Jahan and the two were eventually married; with his second marriage, Khan had become the male consort of the female monarch.Alavi, p. 6.
According to Lepel Griffin, the marriage was in part to quash the rumor mongering, and officials made it clear that Khan was merely the Sultan's husband and would not function in any executive role.M. Khan, p. 125. The marriage was controversial due to Indian beliefs regarding the remarriage of widows; ironically, the stated justification for support of the marriage by British officials – themselves predominantly Christians – was that Islam encourages widows to remarry. Despite remaining the spouse of the actual monarch, Khan's wife began to observe purdah and corresponded with male diplomats with Khan as her representative. Shāh Jahān Bēgum's daughter Sulṭān Jahān Bēgum was one of her stepfather's fiercest opponents, often labelling him as a "Wahhabi"; for forcing her mother to be in purdah. Khan's mother-in-law held rather negative reviews of her daughter's new husband, and there was friction between the two families.
Implementation of Reforms Once in power, Siddiq Hasan Khan began enforcing his reformist ideas through the authority of the state. Under his wife's reign, the doctrines of the Ahl-i Hadith began to be enforced as the state religion. Various royal ceremonies and folk rituals which Khan regarded as bid'at (religious innovations) were banned. Apart from this, a comprehensive religious educational programme was also implemented by the Bhopal State. Numerous madrasahs teaching Ahl-i Hadith doctrines were set up, hundreds of religious treatises of Khan were published and mass distributed across South Asia through the state-run printing press.
With the help of Yemeni Islamic scholars in Bhopal, Khan also attacked folk Islam as well as the practices of both Sufism and Shi'a Islam. As the de facto ruler of Bhopal, Khan banned celebrations for the Islamic prophet Muhammad's birthday (Mawlid) as heretical practices without basis in Islam, something which upset Sufis greatly. Additionally, his reformist ideas in regard to Islamic jurisprudence upset the predominant Hanafi school of Islamic law.Malik, p. 76. Khan's humble beginnings and working-class background also caused him to become the object of scorn, condescension yet also jealousy on the part of Bhopal's gentry.Khan, p. 127. Khan was still described as a prototypical Indo-Persian gentleman, multilingual, educated and with wide-reaching international ties.Alavi, p. 5.
Khan's socio-political efforts proved to be his undoing; just as quickly as he rose to become Bhopal's most influential Islamic leader, so did he lose this status. Siddiq Hasan's enemies in Bhopal State and other Muslim religious circles had often accused him of being a "Wahhabi", a label commonly employed by the colonial authorities to denote "anti-British" rebels, "fanatic", "puritan" etc.; with the intention to eradicate his influence in Bhopal. Initially, the British ignored accusations of his Muslim opponents that Khan was a proponent of "Wahhabism". "Wahhabi" label was detested within both the British and Ottoman Empires due to the political challenge posed by the Arabian reformer Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab's Muwahhidun movement to the dominance of the two states in the Middle East. Later, the British authorities began to inspect Siddiq Hasan's books closely and discovered his treatises which elaborated his doctrines on jihad. Furthermore, when they detected that 17 Wahhabi scholars from Najd had come to study in Bhopal under Khan's tutelage, the British suspected him of being part of a pan-Islamic anti-British conspiracy; extending across India, Egypt, Istanbul, and Mahdist Sudan.Claudia Preckel, Wahhabi or National Hero? Siddiq Hasan Khan. International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, vol. 11, No. 1, p. 31.Seema Alavi, Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832–90) and the Creation of a Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the 19th century. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 54, No. 1, p. 8. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2011.
Conflicts with the Colonial Authorities
After reviewing Khan's treatises that incited to jihad and observing several students from Arabia attend lessons under Khan, the British authorities publicly accused Khan of puritanism and anti-colonial agitation in 1881.Malik, p. 72. The British press at the time maligned Khan as a negative influence in the region, and pejoratively dubbed him as "the penniless adventurer." Despite being accused of sedition against the state, Governor-General of India Lord Dufferin found no evidence of seditious acts on Khan's part at all after official inquiries.Malik, p. 76. Khan even went so far as to write criticisms of Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, who followed an entirely different school of Islamic law, to exonerate himself from the accusations of Wahhabism.Alavi, p. 8.
Deposal and House Arrest (1885–1890) Wary of Khan's influential position in the Bhopal State, British Resident Sir Lepel Griffin deposed Khan in 1885; charging him with instigating Indian Muslims against the British administration. For his part, Siddiq Hasan Khan firmly denied any Wahhabi influence on the Indian reformists. Furthermore, Khan had directly criticised the Najdi Wahhabis for their religious fanaticism, which caused bloodshed among fellow Muslims. Despite this, the British dismissed all his titles and sentenced him to house-arrest until his death in 1890. He was forbidden to visit his wife Shāh Jahān Bēgum during the day, but was permitted to spend the night in her palace, the Tāj Maḥal. Both before and after his removal from the royal court by the British in 1885, Shah Jahan defended her husband to the very end as shown in the meeting minutes of a heated, vehement exchange between herself and Sir Griffin.M. Khan, p. 141. On behalf of her husband, Shah Jahan denied that Khan held any executive power and merely advised her on some issues, arguing that the claims of her husband controlling her were based on jealousy on the part of her son-in-law and personal problems between Khan and Lepel.Khan, p. 148.
Death