Azizul Haque (scholar)

ʿAzīz al-Ḥaqq ibn Irshād ʿAlī ad-Dākawī ( ar, عزيز الحق بن إرشاد علي الداكوي; 19192012), simply known as Azizul Haque ( bn, আজিজুল হক) or by his epithet Shaykh al-Hadith was a Bangladeshi Islamic scholar, politician, writer, translator and Islamic lecturer. He is the founder of Khelafat Majlish and first Bangali translator of Sahih al-Bukhari. He was Vice Chancellor of Jamia Rahmania Arabia Dhaka.

Early life and education

Azizul Haque was born in 1919, into a Bengali Muslim family of Qadis in the village of Bhirich Khan, Louhajang, Bikrampur, Bengal Presidency (now in Munshiganj District, Bangladesh). His father was Haji Ershad Ali, and Haque lost his mother when he was only 4–5 years old. He was then raised by his maternal grandmother in the nearby village of Kalma, where he began his initial primary education at the local mosque.

At the age of 7, Haque moved to Brahmanbaria with his father, who had a business there. Haque enrolled at the Jamia Islamia Yunusia, where he spent four years studying under Shamsul Haque Faridpuri, Hafezzi Huzur and Shah Abdul Wahhab, who his father had close connections with. His father placed Haque under the care of Faridpuri. In 1931, he followed Faridpuri to the newly-established Ashraful Uloom Madrasa in Bara Katara, Dhaka where he studied for twelve years. From 1940 to 1941, Haque studied books such as ''Tafsir al-Baydawi'', ''Jami' al-Tirmidhi'' and ''Sahih al-Bukhari'' under Zafar Ahmad Usmani. Haque had completed his Master of Arts in Hadith studies in Ashraful Uloom.

He travelled to North India in 1943 for further Islamic studies. He started off at the Jamiah Islamiah Talimuddin in Dabhel near Surat, Gujarat where he studied under Shabbir Ahmad Usmani. Finally he went to Darul Uloom Deoband in Saharanpur where he studied Tafsir, pursuing a degree from Muhammad Idris Kandhlawi. Haque was fluent in the Bengali, Urdu