Hussain Ahmad Madani (6 October 1879 – 5 December 1957) was an
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n
Islamic scholar
In Islam, the ''ulama'' (; ar, علماء ', singular ', "scholar", literally "the learned ones", also spelled ''ulema''; feminine: ''alimah'' ingularand ''aalimath'' lural are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of reli ...
, serving as the principal of
Darul Uloom Deoband
The Darul Uloom Deoband is an Islamic seminary (darul uloom) in India at which the Sunni Deobandi Islamic movement began. It is located in Deoband, a town in Saharanpur district, Uttar Pradesh. The seminary was established by Muhammad Qasim ...
. He was among the first recipients of the civilian honour of
Padma Bhushan
The Padma Bhushan is the third-highest civilian award in the Republic of India, preceded by the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan and followed by the Padma Shri. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is given for "distinguished service ...
in 1954.
[The rise and fall of the Deoband movement]
The Nation (newspaper), Published 27 June 2015, Retrieved 19 July 2017
Madani played a key role in cementing the Congress-Khilafat Pact in the 1920s and "Through a series of lectures and pamphlets during the 1920s and 1930s, Madani prepared the ground for the cooperation of the Indian Ulama with the Indian National Congress."
His work ''
Muttahida Qaumiyat Aur Islam
''Composite Nationalism and Islam'', titled ''Muttahida Qaumiyat Aur Islam'' ( ur, ) is a book written in 1938 by Husain Ahmad Madani, the Dean of Darul Uloom Deoband, espousing composite nationalism—a united India for both Muslims and non- ...
'' was published in 1938 and advocated for a united country, in
opposition to the partition of India
Opposition to the partition of India was widespread in British India in the 20th century and it continues to remain a talking point in South Asian politics. Those who opposed it often adhered to the doctrine of composite nationalism. The Hindu, C ...
.
Early life and ancestry
Hussain Ahmed Madani was born in
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...
in a small town named
Bangarmau
Bangarmau is a big city with Tehsil Bangarmau (earlier in Safipur), in the Unnao district, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is located on high ground overlooking the left bank of the Kalyani river, about 50 km northwest of Unnao and 22 km nor ...
in district
Unnao
Unnao is a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of Unnao district and a part of Lucknow division, between Kanpur and Lucknow. Unnao is a large industrial city with three industrial suburbs around it. ...
. When he was born his father worked as a teacher in
Bangarmau
Bangarmau is a big city with Tehsil Bangarmau (earlier in Safipur), in the Unnao district, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is located on high ground overlooking the left bank of the Kalyani river, about 50 km northwest of Unnao and 22 km nor ...
. His family was originally from Tanda in district
Faizabad
Faizabad (Hindustani pronunciation: ɛːzaːbaːd is a city situated near the southern banks of Saryu river in Ayodhya district in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The area of this Faizabad region is administered by Ayodhya Municipal Corpor ...
. His father's name was Sayyid Habibullah, who was a descendant of the
Islamic prophet
Prophets in Islam ( ar, الأنبياء في الإسلام, translit=al-ʾAnbiyāʾ fī al-ʾIslām) are individuals in Islam who are believed to spread God in Islam, God's message on Earth and to serve as models of ideal human behaviour. So ...
Muhammad
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...
through
Husayn ibn Ali
Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib ( ar, أبو عبد الله الحسين بن علي بن أبي طالب; 10 January 626 – 10 October 680) was a grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a son of Ali ibn Abi ...
down 35 generations. Husayn's 16th generation down descendant Sayyid Nurul Haq was given 24 villages in
Tanda by the Emperor of Delhi. Eventually through time, some of this land was inherited by Sayyid Habibullah (thirteen villages as of 1757).
Career
![Madani chattar, Nayasarak, Sylhet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Madani_chattar%2C_Nayasarak%2C_Sylhet.jpg)
After graduating from the Darul Uloom Deoband, he migrated to
Medina
Medina,, ', "the radiant city"; or , ', (), "the city" officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah (, , Turkish: Medine-i Münevvere) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (, ), is the Holiest sites in Islam, second-holiest city in Islam, ...
with his family. He began teaching Arabic grammar,
usul al-fiqh
Principles of Islamic jurisprudence, also known as ''uṣūl al-fiqh'' ( ar, أصول الفقه, lit. roots of fiqh), are traditional methodological principles used in Islamic jurisprudence (''fiqh'') for deriving the rulings of Islamic law (''s ...
,
usul al-hadith
Hadith studies ( ar, علم الحديث ''ʻilm al-ḥadīth'' "science of hadith", also science of hadith, or science of hadith criticism or hadith criticism)
consists of several religious scholarly disciplines used by Muslim scholars in th ...
, and
Quranic exegesis
Tafsir ( ar, تفسير, tafsīr ) refers to exegesis, usually of the Quran. An author of a ''tafsir'' is a ' ( ar, مُفسّر; plural: ar, مفسّرون, mufassirūn). A Quranic ''tafsir'' attempts to provide elucidation, explanation, in ...
. He spent 18 years teaching these various Islamic sciences in Medina. He was then appointed as head teacher and "Shaikhul Hadith" of Darul Uloom Deoband. He served in this position for approximately 28 years.
[
]
Efforts for independence
After his teacher Mehmud Hasan was sentenced by the British for his role in the Silk Letter Conspiracy
The Silk Letter Movement ('Tehreek-e-Reshmi Rumal') refers to a movement organised by Deobandi leaders between 1913 and 1920, aimed at gaining Indian independence from British rule by forming an alliance with the Ottoman Empire, the Emirate of Af ...
to a prison in the Island of Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
, Madani volunteered to go with him so that he could look after him. He had personally not been convicted. Mehmud was imprisoned for three years. It so happened that Islamic month of Ramadan had come and neither Mehmud Hasan nor Madani was Hafiz of the Qur'an. At this instance, Mehmud Hasan said to his student (Madani) that most of his life, he didn't have a Ramadan without listening to the complete Qur'an in the special night prayers called Tarawih
''Tarawih'' ( ar, تراويح, tarāwīḥ), also rendered in English as ''Taraweeh'', is derived from the Arabic root ر و ح related to rest and relaxation. Tarawih prayers are special Muslim prayers involving reading long portions of the ...
. Hussain Ahmed Madani, who respected his teachers very much, took this very sentence of his teacher seriously and started to memorize the Quran while in prison. Daily, Madani would memorise one Juz (part) of the Quran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation in Islam, revelation from God in Islam, ...
and recite it in the Tarawih. Continuing to do so, he memorized the whole Quran in the 30 days of Ramadan, thus saving his teacher Mehmud Hasan from being deprived of listening to the Quran, as he had every Ramadan.
After his release, he returned to India and became actively involved in India's freedom struggle. He had considerable influence over a section of the Muslims, more prominently those belonging to Eastern Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...
and Bihar
Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West Be ...
. Maulana Madani was one of the founder members of Jamia Millia Islamia
Jamia Millia Islamia () is a central university located in New Delhi, India. Originally established at Aligarh, United Provinces (present-day Uttar Pradesh, India) during the British Raj in 1920, it moved to its current location in Okhla in ...
, New Delhi
New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...
. He was the member of foundation committee (for the foundation of Jamia Millia Islamia) headed by Sheikhul-Hind Maulana Mahmood Hasan, met on 29 October 1929. He was against the two-nation theory
The two-nation theory is an ideology of religious nationalism that influenced the decolonisation of the British Raj in South Asia. According to this ideology, Indian Muslims and Indian Hindus are two separate nations, with their own customs, ...
, and predominantly due to this, a large number of Muslims from Eastern U.P. and Bihar declined to migrate to Pakistan at the time of 1947 independence of Pakistan
The Pakistan Movement ( ur, , translit=Teḥrīk-e-Pākistān) was a political movement in the first half of the 20th century that aimed for the creation of Pakistan from the Muslim-majority areas of British India. It was connected to the per ...
and the Partition of India
The Partition of British India in 1947 was the Partition (politics), change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in South Asia and the creation of two independent dominions: ...
. He became the President of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind
Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind or Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind () is one of the leading organizations of Islamic scholars belonging to the Deobandi school of thought in India. It was founded in November 1919 by a group of Muslim scholars including Abdul Bari F ...
, a post he held until his death in 1957. (He also held the post of ''Shaikhul Hadith'' at Darul Uloom Deoband till his death).[
]
Debate between Iqbal and Madani
Husain Ahmad Madani opposed the inception of Pakistan. He was of the view that in the present times, nations are formed on the basis of homeland (geographic basis) and not on ethnicity and religion. On the issue of whether the identity of a nation depended upon its land or religion, there was an interesting debate between Husain Ahmad Madani and Allama Iqbal. Allama Iqbal
Sir Muhammad Iqbal ( ur, ; 9 November 187721 April 1938), was a South Asian Muslim writer, philosopher, Quote: "In Persian, ... he published six volumes of mainly long poems between 1915 and 1936, ... more or less complete works on philoso ...
, a known pan-Islamist and a leading pro-Pakistan figure of the time, had at first developed differences of opinion with Husain Ahmad Madani over this issue. Later a mutual friend of both these leaders, a person named Taloot intervened by writing letters to both Iqbal and Madani. Taloot was able to bring more clarity to the circumstances and the intent of Madani in stating what he originally had stated about forming new nations and homelands. Taloot's intervention was successful and eventually both Iqbal and Madani were able to understand each other better. It resulted in a reconciliation between the two Muslim leaders and Iqbal finally wrote a personal letter saying that he respected Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani's service and devotion to Islam as much as any other Muslim despite their political differences. Husain Ahmad Madani himself was reportedly quoted as saying, "All should endeavor jointly for such a democratic government in which Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis are included. Such a freedom is in accordance with Islam." ... ."that Muslims could live as observant Muslims in a religiously plural society where they would be full citizens of an independent, secular India."[
]
Literary works
*''Composite Nationalism and Islam
''Composite Nationalism and Islam'', titled ''Muttahida Qaumiyat Aur Islam'' ( ur, ) is a book written in 1938 by Husain Ahmad Madani, the Dean (education), Dean of Darul Uloom Deoband, espousing composite nationalism—a united India for both ...
''
*''Naqsh-e-Hayat'' (Autobiography of Maulana Madni).
* ''Ash-Shihabus Saqib'' (A refutation of Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi)
* ''Maktubat Shaykh al-Islam'' (Spread over 2000 pages).[Ma'asr Shaykh al-Islam (Biography of Hussain Ahmed Madani), Mawlāna Nizāmuddīn Asīr Adrawī, Page 494, Darul Mu'allifeen Deoband (5th edition, April 2017).]
* ''Safar Nama Shaykhul Hind Mahmud al-Hasan
Mahmud Hasan Deobandi (also known as Shaykh al-Hind; 1851–1920) was an Indian Muslim scholar and an activist of the Indian independence movement, who co-founded the Jamia Millia Islamia university and launched the Silk Letter Movement for t ...
'' (related to Silk Letter Movement).
* ''Tasawwur-e-Shaikh'' (related to Tasawwuf
Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, ...
)
Awards and recognition
* Padma Bhushan
The Padma Bhushan is the third-highest civilian award in the Republic of India, preceded by the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan and followed by the Padma Shri. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is given for "distinguished service ...
Award by the Government of India
The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...
in 1954
* India Post
India Post is a government-operated postal system in India, part of the Department of Post under the Ministry of Communications. Generally known as the Post Office, it is the most widely distributed postal system in the world. Warren Hastings ha ...
issued a commemorative postage stamp in his honour in 2012
* Madani Square, structure named after his efforts and hard work in Sylhet
Sylhet ( bn, সিলেট) is a metropolitan city in northeastern Bangladesh. It is the administrative seat of the Sylhet Division. Located on the north bank of the Surma River at the eastern tip of Bengal, Sylhet has a subtropical climate an ...
, Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
.
Death and legacy
Madni died on 5 December 1957. His funeral prayer was led by Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi
Muḥammad Zakarīyā ibn Muḥammad Yaḥyá Ṣiddīqī Kāndhlawī Sahāranpūrī Muhājir Madanī (''Muḥammad Zakarīyā ibn Muḥammad Yaḥyá aṣ-Ṣiddīqī al-Kāndahlawī as-Sahāranfūrī al-Madanī''; 2 February 189824 May 1982) ...
.[
] Urdu author Nizamuddin Asir Adrawi
Nizāmuddīn Asīr Adrawi (also known as Asīr Adrawi; 1926 – 20 May 2021) was an Indian Sunni Muslim scholar, biographer, historian and author in the Urdu language. He established Madrassa Darus Salam in Adari and served as Officer In Charg ...
has written his biography, ''Ma'asr Shaykh al-Islam,'' which is published by Darul Mu'allifeen, Deoband
Deoband is a town and a municipality in Saharanpur district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, about 150 km from Delhi. Darul Uloom Deoband, an Islamic seminary and one of the largest Islamic Institution of India is located there.
Etymo ...
. A technical college in Saharanpur was named Madani Technical Institute after him.
See also
* Madani–Iqbal debate
The Madani–Iqbal debate was a debate between Islamic scholars of 20th century British India, Hussain Ahmed Madani and Muhammad Iqbal, on the question of nationalism in the late 1930s. Madani’s position throughout the debate was to insist on th ...
* Bahishti Zewar
* Muhammad Taqi Usmani
Muhammad Taqi Usmani (born 5 October 1943) is a Pakistani Islamic scholar and former judge who is the current president of the Wifaq ul Madaris Al-Arabia and the vice president and Hadith professor of the Darul Uloom Karachi. An intellectual ...
* Muhammad Rafi Usmani
Muhammad Rafi Usmani ( ur, محمد رفیع عثمانی; 21 July 1936 – 18 November 2022) was a Pakistani Muslim scholar, jurist and author who served as the President of Darul Uloom Karachi. He was an alumnus of Darul Uloom Deoband, Univer ...
* Ebrahim Desai
* Shah Ahmad Shafi
Shah Ahmad Shafi ( bn, শাহ আহমদ শফী) (1916 – 18 September 2020) was a Bangladeshi Sunni Islamic scholar, the chief of Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh, Rector of Al-Jamiatul Ahlia Darul Ulum Moinul Islam Hathazari and also the c ...
* Syed Waheed Ashraf
Syed Waheed Ashraf is an Indian Sufi scholar and poet in Persian and Urdu. Ashraf received his B.A., M.A. and PhD (1965) degrees from Aligarh Muslim University. The title of his doctoral dissertation was ''A Critical Edition of Lataife Ashraf ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
External links
*Al-E’tidaal Fi Maraatib ar-Rijaal (English Translation), Islamic Book Service, Pages 34–35
*Aap Beeti (English Translation), Darul Isha’at, Pages 375–376
{{DEFAULTSORT:Madani, Hussain Ahmed
Hanafis
Maturidis
Deobandis
Hadith scholars
Shaykh al-Islāms
Sunni Sufis
Critics of Wahhabism
Indian independence activists
Indian Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam
Recipients of the Padma Bhushan in literature & education
Founders of Indian schools and colleges
Indian Islamic religious leaders
People from Unnao district
Darul Uloom Deoband alumni
Darul Uloom Deoband faculty
1879 births
1957 deaths
Students of Mahmud Hasan Deobandi
Presidents of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind
Burials at Mazar-e-Qasmi
Hussain Ahmad Madani