Reformism and Orthodox Practice in Early

Nineteenth-Century Muslim North India:

Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed Reconsidered 1

SANA HAROON

Abstract

This paper is a reconsideration of the career of the north-Indian Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed (1786–1831).
I argue that Sayyid Ahmed used a Sufi devotional premise to understand and explain principles of
orthodoxy. He also applied a concept of innate spiritual knowledge to reformed practice, suggesting that
ordinary people, without scholarly training, could determine and apply the principles of orthodox practice
of Islam for themselves and for others. His movement modified traditional seminary-centred teaching
and leadership through the creation of a popular and easily transferrable system of practice rooted in the
community and imprinted with the obligation to spread reformist teachings.

Introduction

The history of Islam in modern South Asia has largely been written through studies of texts,
institutions and ideologies, caging it within a discursive framework. Consideration of the
spiritual and faith-based dimensions of religion has been neglected, and consequently so has
the history of religious practice. North Indian seminaries, political organisations and religious
philosophers certainly articulated ideas about governance and society, but they wrote more
about divinity and worship. Ideas which carried over from the institutional to the popular
domain.
Sayyid Ahmed Bareilvi’s movement was grounded in an effort to bring the teachings of
the Quran and the example of the Prophet Muhammad to ordinary people. Sayyid Ahmed,
himself a mediocre student, was linked to a venerated religious line and a seminary in Delhi
which was central to the reformist movement. He argued that ‘ilm batani’ or innate wisdom
was an appropriate foundation for individual practice, making the mediations of faith by
the ‘learned’ unnecessary. Sayyid Ahmed has an iconic status in some modern Pakistani
and north Indian Muslim intellectual traditions, a significance which has been attributed
to his calls to jihad against ‘heresy’ in north India during the 1820s and his subsequent
‘martyrdom’. I propose to look beyond this simplistic reading of Sayyid Ahmed’s movement
to indicate the ways in which he translated highly intellectualised principles of worship into a

1 Thanks to Dr Avril Powell, Dr Sarah Ansari and Dr Robert Nichols for their detailed comments on drafts of
this paper, to Professor Marcia Grant and Dr Nausheen Anwar and Yousuf Kerai for their comments at the FAS
seminar series and finally to Mohsin Khwaja for helping me to find key texts. E-mail: sana.haroon@gmail.com

JRAS, Series 3, 21, 2 (2011), pp. 177–198 !

C The Royal Asiatic Society 2011

doi:10.1017/S1356186311000174
178 Sana Haroon

system of locally enacted prayer and congregation, using principles of mystical devotionalism
to communicate the rationale for orthodox, ritualised, individualised Muslim practice. His
movement suggests some of the ways in which principles of orthodoxy defined at seminaries
and in organisations and treatises were translated into popular practice.
Sayyid Ahmed used previously theoretically articulated reformist principles of Quranic
study and emulation of the Prophet Muhammad as a basis for individual devotion, but
explained this as a system of metaphysical thinking through a constant, daily awareness of
divinity. Underlying this orthodox-mystical practice was the fraternity of village or town
community on which the entire structure of reformed practice and its continuity was based.
The community systemised ritual participation while at the same time providing a framework
through which understanding of orthodox tenets such as prayer, fasting, undertaking the
pilgrimage, giving charity and the principle of the singularity of God and the prophethood
of Muhammad could be transmitted through community interpretation, leadership and
authority within matters of faith which could continually be conferred, without the need
for brick-and-mortar institutions of learning or political patrons.

Why another history of Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed Bareilvi?

The story of Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed who led a jihad against the Sikhs in the Pashtun
north-west in 1826–31 is widely known and is often referenced as a moment of unusual and
transformative political organisation and mobilisation by Muslims. Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed
has long occupied a prominent position in European historiography of Indian Islam, an
early landmark being the pamphlet written in 1872 by W. W. Hunter, entitled The Indian
Musalmans – an accusation of ‘Wahhabi’ beliefs as underlying Muslim militarism during the
anti-British uprisings of 1857 and after. Hunter claimed that Sayyid Ahmed was inspired
to lead a jihad movement against Ranjit Singh’s Sikh state in the Indian north-west, and
encouraged anti-British rebellions in other parts of India owing to the contact he made with
Wahhabis when he performed the pilgrimage in the early 1820s. After Sayyid Ahmed’s death
on the battlefield in the Pakhtun regions, a few of his followers remained at bases he had
established in the region, refusing to return to an India which was largely coming under the
control of the British.2
Most popular accounts of Sayyid Ahmed’s activities have remained focused on Sayyid
Ahmed as a jihadi, notably Ayesha Jalal’s recent Partisans of Allah.3 Whether in an effort

2 Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India : Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton, 1982). pp. 53–4. See also
Nadvi’s accusations in S. Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi, A Misunderstood Reformer, trans. Mohiuddin Ahmad (Lucknow,
1979). Athar Rizvi’s study of Sayyid Ahmed, which integrates the study of Sufi literature and cosmology with
accounts of Sayyid Ahmed’s travels through India, gives us a good picture of his political and theosophical vision,
but again brings all consideration of his movement to conclude on the assertion that Sayyid Ahmed’s political and
intellectual will revolved entirely around jihad to establish Muslim rule in India. Sayyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shah
Abdul Aziz, (Lahore, 2004), pp. 471–541.
3 See Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah, Jihad in South Asia (Lahore, 2008). Muslim tension which she creates takes
us further from the possibility that Sayyid Ahmed’s practice had a spiritual element at all, and from the fact that even
Sayyid Ahmed could have preserved even a ‘kernel of the faith’ and passed this on to his successors. Interestingly,
although it was not Mohiuddin Ahmad’s objective, Jalal’s position is based on the 1975 study of Sayyid Ahmed
Mohiuddin Ahmad, Saiyid Ahmad Shahid: His Life and Mission (Lucknow, 1975). A sensationalist version of Sayyid
Ahmed’s jihad was recently published in a study, Charles Allen, God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden
Roots of Modern Jihad (Cambridge, 2006).
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 179

to critique the use of the term Wahhabi, or to reiterate and explore historic and modern
fears about Islamic revivalism, is also a body of literature which refers to the movement
as the Tariqa-i Muhammadiyya, the Path of Muhammad.4 This term of reference was used
by some colonial observers, and rightly indicated the Sufi premise for Sayyid Ahmed’s
activities by using the Sufi term tariqa or path to refer to Sayyid Ahmed’s ‘religious order’.5
However use of the term was misleading because it was in essence doing exactly what the
term Wahhabi did – linking the movement of Sayyid Ahmed to an eighteenth-century
millenarian Sufi movement of North-Africa known as the Tariqa-i Muhammadiyya which
was based on mystical dreaming communion with the Prophet Muhammad as the source of
metaphysical insight. The movement originated in Mecca and spread to what are now the
Sudan and Libya. Because Sayyid Ahmed’s followers lay across much of north India, and had
taken up arms in both the Pakhtun north-west, and in Bengal in the north-east, and Sayyid
Ahmed claimed mystical initiation by the prophet, his movement was thought to be linked
to the Tariqa-i Muhammadiyya of the Arab world. In fact Sayyid Ahmed called his movement
the Rah-i Nabuwwat. He only considered himself participant in the Tariqa-i Muhammadiyya
because he too received a dream-visitation from the Prophet Muhammad.6
Sayyid Ahmed’s entire career has been written around the brief and catastrophic episode
in the Pashtun regions in which he tried to create the model of the Muslim polity defined in
the literature of the Waliullah line. Arriving in the Pashtun regions, then under the control of
the Sikh Kingdom of Ranjit Singh, Sayyid Ahmed declared himself the Caliph-King, leader
in the faith and matters of state, in a gathering of Pashtun leaders from across the region.
Benefits accruing from position were that religious leaders among the Pakhtun clans read
the khutba in his name, and the maliks or representatives of clans present all booty of war to
him for appropriate distribution.7 The experiment went terribly wrong when the Pashtun
clans periodically turned on him, tried to poison him and then abandoned him in battle.
Sayyid Ahmed’s death on the battle field fighting the Sikh army at Balakot along with Shah
Ismail and one hundred and forty-two other companions in 1831 has been seen the end of
his movement and the failure of his scheme. But the survival of Sayyid Ahmed’s movement
was not based on the creation of an independent Muslim polity, or his own leadership. It

4 See Harlan O. Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-Century India: The Tariqah-I Muhammadiyah, ed.
David Lelyveld, New Perspectives on Indian Pasts (New Delhi, 2007). Pearson’s work is useful for his observations
about the use of the press by members of the movement, but he is limited by his sole reliance on contemporaneous
western accounts of the movement. Also see Mark Sedgwick’s brief mention of Sayyid Ahmed in his study of the
Rashidi Ahmadi Sufi order which originated in Mecca but spread through what is now Libya as the Sanusiyya,
through what is now the Sudan as the Khatmiyya, and eventually to Morocco in a form most closely approximating
its original teachings. Mark J. Sedgwick, Saints and Sons (Leiden, 2004), p. 3.
5 J. R. Colvin, ““Notice of the Peculiar Tenets Held by the Followers of Syed Ahmed, Taken Chiefly from
the “Sirat-Ul-Mustaqim,” a Principal Treatise of That Sect, Written by Moulavi Mahommed Ismail,” “Journal of
the Asiatic Society of Bengal 1, no. 11 (1832) (1832). quoted in Jamal Malik, “Encounter and Appropriation in the
Context of Modern South Asian History,” in Perspectives of Mutual Encounters in South Asian History, (ed.) Jamal
Malik (Leiden, 2000), p. 326.
6 For example Maulvi Sayyid Muhammad Ali Akbarabadi, Makhzan-I Ahmedi (Muhammad Ali Khan Bahadur,
1866). p. 11, margin, the term Tariq-i Muhammadi is used. It is also used in the condensed version of Sayyid Ahmed’s
teachings, the Sayyid Ahmad, “Risala-I Ashghal,” (Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed Academy, Lahore, 1827); “Silasil-I
Tariqat,” (Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed Academy, Lahore, 1827).
7 Text of letter from Sayyid Ahmed translated in full in S. Abdul Hasan Nadvi, Sirat Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed, vol.
I, Tarikh-I Dawat Wa Azimat (Karachi, Majlis Nasharyat-i Islam, no date; reprint, Seventh Edition) pp. 538–544.
180 Sana Haroon

survived through the system by which it introduced thinking about the self and the divine
in a real world of community-based practice.

Creating a space for mystical learning and practice outside the seminary
Sufi scholarship and pedagogy was historically based in the space of the khanqah, the Sufi
lodge and seminary. Prominent Sufi sages belonged to lodges which served as homes,
schools for the study of language, philosophy, Quran and Hadith, and spaces for mystical
meditational practices. In some Sufi traditions, seminaries would serve as spaces for recitations
of devotional poetry. Unlike the makbarah, a Sufi tomb which was open to visitors and
devotees to watch devotional musical and poetic performances and pray to or for a dead
saint, the seminary was a private and closed space. Admission to it was only at the invitation
of the head of the house, and was normally reserved for students or devotees who were
pledged at the hand of the sage in bay’at, although it was also where those wishing to pay
homage to, seek advice from, or bestow gifts upon a renowned sage were invited. Sufism,
dominating the popular practice of Islam in early nineteenth century north-India, was for
the layman based on observatory and not participatory attendance at shrines and learning
and practice of devotionalism was jealously guarded by the Sufi fraternity. It was within this
practitional and educational domain that Sayyid Ahmed, himself heir to the legacy of an
eighteenth-century Sufi saint in Rai Bareilly, was accepted as a student by the renowned
Sufi sage in Delhi, Shah Abdul Aziz (1746–1824).
Born into a family of Sunni ‘Sayyids’ who traced their descent from the Prophet
Mohammad through his daughter and then her son Hassan, Sayyid Ahmed’s ancestors
had long proudly proclaimed their Arab ancestry.8 Contemporary family histories highlight
Sayyid Ahmed’s descent from Shah Alamullah, a great mystic who spent his time between
Mecca and north-India.9 It was as a descendent of Shah Alamullah that Sayyid Ahmed was
first received in Delhi and gained access to Shah Abul Aziz’s seminary.10 This institution
had been set up by Shah Waliullah, the Sufi thinker of the eighteenth century who had
wanted to systematically reintegrate study of Quran and hadith into Sufi practice and is
credited as the father of modern reformist Muslim thinking in the Indian subcontinent.
Waliullah’s son, Shah Abdul Aziz, shared his father’s ideas and sought to influence social and
political thought through interpretations of the Quran and pronouncements on individual
and social conduct. He pursued these commitments through his seminary. This institution
was popularly referred to as a madrassa because of the reformist bent of its creator, and it was
in his sermons at the madrassa that Shah Abdul Aziz gave religious pronouncements called
fatwas, including his well known declaration that the coming of the British had made India
Darul Harb or a house of war. The seminary however shared all the features of the classic
seminary, including selective induction into the Sufi line, teaching of methods of mystical

8 In one first-hand account of Sayyid Ahmed’s movement, this lineage is described alongside recitation of the
Sufi lineage. Akbarabadi, Makhzan-I Ahmedi.
9 Nawab Muhammad Wazir Khan Bahadur Nusrat Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi,” (ed.) Sayyid Nafees al-Hussaini
(Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed Academy, n.d.), pp. 1–10.
10 Rizvi, Shah Abdul Aziz. pp. 474–475.
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 181

contemplation, philosophy and the sciences alongside language and study of the Quran and
Hadith.11
When Sayyid Ahmed applied to study with Shah Abdul Aziz, the sage sent Sayyid Ahmed
instead to his brother Shah Abdul Qadir. It was only after much urging by Shah Abdul
Qadir that Shah Abdul Aziz allowed Sayyid Ahmed to pledge the bay’at at his own hand and
continued the latter’s training in Sufi method himself.12 Sayyid Ahmed received instruction
and initiation in Qadiriyya, Naqshbandiyya and Mujaddidiyya method from Shah Abdul Aziz13
and began to study under conditions of strict personal discipline in residence at the seminary
in an established tradition of studentship. Study under a Sufi master required initiates to
master meditational exercises through observation and participation and also to learn Persian
and Arabic and read the classical texts which privileged the ideal and the unseen over that
which could be physically perceived. In addition Shah Abdul Aziz upheld a tradition of
study of shari’a through fiqh literature and hadith – writing on Islamic law and compilations
of verified sayings of the Prophet – produced in the Arab world, Persia and India over
hundreds of years. But shortly into Sayyid Ahmed’s course of study, a ‘miracle’ was said to
have occurred. Upon opening a book, ‘the letters flew off the page’ and he was unable to
read them. Shah Abdul Aziz was told of this incident, and dwelled on what his response
should be. Finally, he declared that what had happened was a miracle and that Sayyid Ahmed
must complete his programme of learning through God-granted epiphany rather than book
learning.14 In his few years of study, Sayyid Ahmed focused on divination and meditational
contemplation, unable to engage in textual study owing to his ‘miraculous’ condition, akin
to dyslexia. From the very start of his Sufi career, Sayyid Ahmed was developing a system of
personal practice that excluded the complex literary, philosophical and medical knowledge
that his teacher Shah Abdul Aziz was capable of imparting.15
Around 1812, Sayyid Ahmed left the seminary to join the lashkar or army of Amir Khan,
the Nawab of Tonk. He began to gain a reputation as a camp sage as he would prophetically
anticipate the location at which the army would camp and could predict before the horn was
sounded when the army would decamp. His sense of camaraderie with his fellow soldiers
meant that his allegiance, his first insights and his testaments to future events were expressed
first to these friends, and their meaning debated around the camp fire. He offered his skills to
help other soldiers or tradesmen or visitors survive poverty and hunger through good advice,
prayer, and the magical ability to make four spoons-full of lentils feed thirty men.16 Sayyid
Ahmed wrote wazifas or ‘prescriptions’ – magical combinations of God’s names drawn on
grids on papers. Writing wazifas, he helped a man get rid of debt taken on because of British
11 Ibid. pp. 9, 90.
12 See Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British
India : Deoband, 1860–1900. pp. 46–57.
13 Akbarabadi, Makhzan-I Ahmedi., pp. 8–13. Indian history of teaching and learning in the Chishtiyya method
is traced back to the Saint Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti (d. 1230), the Qadiriyya method to the Saint Shaikh Abdul
Qadir Jilani of Iran (d. 11?), the Naqshbandiyya method to the Central Asian Bahauddin Naqshband (d. 1389), and
Mujaddidiyya method to the ‘reformer of the second millennium,’ Shaikh Ahmed of Sirhind (1564–1624) in north
India.
14 Ibid., p. 110.
15 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, pp. 13–14, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi and Zuhurul Hasan, Arwah Salasah or Hikayat-I
Auliya (Lahore reprint, 2006). p. 109. Along with his rejection of book learning, Sayyid Ahmed’s condemned a
classic Sufi trope – mystical contemplation enabled by meditating on the person of a present or bygone Sufi saint
known as the practice of tasawwur-i shaikh.
16 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, pp. 20–86.
182 Sana Haroon

taxation demands on his lands, and gave another man a rupee coin which, if it was never
spent, would bring great wealth to its holder.17 He ran his hands over sick people and read
prayers over water which he then gave them to drink, causing them to become well again.
His prayers caused a blind man to see again, sick oxen to be able to pull carts again, and a
dried up cow to produce milk again.
Sayyid Ahmed’s demonstrations were considered to be more than the tricks of street fakirs
or ascetics. He was well regarded as a Sayyid (a descendent of the Prophet Muhammad),
for his association with the seminaries of Delhi and as a soldier of great military acumen
and courage, and he lived and worked alongside those who sought his counsel. Unlike
the other-worldly ascetics living in sheltered abodes or forsaking all material sustenance to
wander the world with a begging bowl and in rags, Sayyid Ahmed was a man very much of
this world, who sought to integrate devotion with a life of dignity and social and political
purpose. His advice to his fellow soldiers who found themselves hungry and without food
during a siege in a particularly barren region was not to deny the need for food, but to
wait for it, for surely Allah would give.18 And for all intents and purposes, Allah did give.
At moments of the greatest need, whether through a donation from a devout follower or
through the sabar (patience) of faith, Sayyid Ahmed’s followers would find that their hunger
would abate.19
As his reputation grew, Sayyid Ahmed began to channel his mystical powers to illuminate
the path of politics. He told prophesies in which he predicted the outcome of negotiations
between the Nawab and his adversaries before they were publically announced. His renown
spread so far that the Nawab himself summoned Sayyid Ahmed to his side to interpret his
troubling dreams.20 Once, after a particularly difficult siege of a Rajasthani state, the Nawab
decided to open a dialogue with the British who were at this time in open discussions and
creating treaties with rulers of many small states across north-India. Sayyid Ahmed warned
the Nawab not to follow suit, stating that if he was to meet and accept lands, money or a title
from the British, he would be incapacitated – he would ‘ not be able to do anything’.21 In a
series of meetings that followed, Sayyid Ahmed repeated this statement, to no effect as the
Nawab felt he had to concede and enter into a dialogue with the ‘firangi kufar’, the English
heretics.22 Unlike the relations of quiet advice, religious guidance and solicited prophesies in
return for patronage which traditional Sufi saints and sages had had with rulers in Central and
South Asia for centuries,23 Sayyid Ahmed confronted the worldly and the political as affairs
concerning him as much as they concerned those who came to him for advice. His magic
and divinations began to centre more on his own role in the politics of man when, although
clearly hit in the chest by a bullet, Sayyid Ahmed walked away unhurt. He later declared

17 Ibid., p. 171.
18 Ibid., pp. 29–30.
19 Ibid., p. 28.
20 Ibid., p. 82.
21 By this Sayyid Ahmed probably meant that the Nawab would have to give up on his economy of warfare
and the extraction of tithes from surrounding states, the mainstay of the Tonk economy. Waqai Ahmedi, pp. 83–85.
22 This statement, coupled with Sayyid Ahmed’s earlier declared fate of dying in jihad against the kufar, could be
the reason why Sayyid Ahmed’s later jihad against the Sikhs in the Pashtun north-west is substituted interchangeably
in lore as a war against the British.
23 The most famous such relationship was that of the Mughal emperor Akbar with the saint Salim Chishti
during the 16th century.
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 183

to his companions that he would not die there as he had received a vision of the future –
that he would die fighting in jihad against the kufar.24 The political advice which he offered
the Nawab informed his own path and Sayyid Ahmed left the army in 1816–7, unwilling
to serve after the Nawab entered into negotiations with the British and compromised his
political independence.
Sayyid Ahmed returned to Delhi in around 1816, gravitating back towards the Waliullah
family Sufi lodge, and towards the centre of mystical teaching and practice in Muslim north-
India. His time as a soldier seems to have created a disdain for the restricted inductions of
and the complex teachings of Sufism in his time, and he did not return to Abdul Aziz’s
seminary, although he did immediately visit and demonstrate his respect for his teacher
on returning. Instead Sayyid Ahmed sought to set himself up as teacher in his own right.
Living and working in a seminary involved participation in the established pedagogy of
Sufi orders, and so Sayyid Ahmed chose to remain in the world outside the seminary. He
took up residence in the living quarters of the Akbarabadi mosque which previously been
inhabited by Shah Abdul Qadir, Shah Abdul Aziz’s brother.25 During this period Sayyid
Ahmed focused on the concept of innate wisdom, lecturing scholars, ulama, Sufis and lay
people on the importance of personal perception and the experience of worship.26 He
began leading ‘those who sought to acquire knowledge from him’ in prayer and mystical
contemplations of God’s divinity, initially reiterating just the Naqshbandiyya, Qadiriyya and
Mujaddidiyya principles he had learned from Shah Abdul Aziz and later adding the Chishtiyya
method.27
Sayyid Ahmed’s use of the mosque to lead a close group of chosen students in
contemplations and meditation was not unusual – a point suggested by the fact that Shah
Abdul Qadir had himself lived and taught in the hujra or living quarters of the mosque.28
Sayyid Ahmed had inherited a space which belonged to another Sufi teacher, and did so
with the strong encouragement and sanction of the leading sages in his Sufi line at that
time, and through the resources which accrued to the Waliullah family. In the same way,
despite his sidestepping of the rigours of Sufi seminary-based education and teaching, it
should not be assumed that Sayyid Ahmed’s skill as a mystic and a savant deviated from the
demonstrations of traditional Sufis. Dream-visitations from dead saints or even the Prophet
Muhammad which conferred accomplishment as a mystic and prophesies and divinations
were not unknown in even the most important Sufi lines.29 Sayyid Ahmed’s deviation was
in the pattern of his economic and personal life. Sayyid Ahmed had lived in a real world
of Muslims, where money and food were scarce. His sense of fraternity was not restricted
24 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, p. 83.
25 Nadvi, Sirat Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed., pp. 151–152. Nadvi’s source for this information is Waqai Ahmedi.
26 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi” p. 111, quoted in Nadvi, Sirat Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed., p. 159. Navi confirms the
centrality of this concept within Sayyid Ahmed’s teachings Sayyid Jafar Naqvi, “Manzurat-Us Su’ada,” (Lahore,
Punjab University Oriental Collection, 1863), folio 33b.
27 Mohammad Ismail and Bareilvi Dehlavi, Sayyid Ahmed, Sirat-I Mustaqeem, trans. Nawab Siddiq Hassan
(Lahore, Matba Ahmadi, reprint, 1901). p. 178 describes Sayyid Ahmed’s mystical induction into the Chishtiyya line
through a dream visitation from the great saint Moiuddin Chishti.
28 Sayyid Ahmed Khan’s important 1854 work on the architectural history of Delhi notes the existence of living
quarters for students in the Akbarabadi mosque. Sayyid Ahmed Khan, Asar-Us Sanadeed, 3 vols., vol. 1 (Delhi,
William Demonte, 1854; reprint, 2003), p. 315.
29 Shah Wali Ullah himself, Abdul Aziz’s father, claimed induction into the Mujaddidiyya silsila through a
dream-visitation from the great sage and originator of the Sufi line, Mujaddid Alf Sani.
184 Sana Haroon

within Waliullah lineage, but had been demonstrably extended to the soldiers he fought
alongside in the Nawab’s army. His personal and economic life and not his connection to
the seminary underlay his growing reputation as a Sufi. Choosing to conduct himself as
a religious teacher and spiritual guide in a real world of people led Sayyid Ahmed think
about the place of mystical elevation as he understood it, in daily living. He dissected the
centuries-old religious practices of the seminaries which linked philosophical thinking and
debate, knowledge of Arabic, study of Quran and hadith, asceticism and mystical ascension.
The method by which this could be achieved was articulated in a series of lectures Sayyid
Ahmed gave in Delhi in 1817 which were then transcribed by Shah Ismail and Abdul Hai
as Sirat-i Mustaqeem – ‘The Straight Path’.30 It was written as an elucidation of the basic
precepts of the Quran and hadith referred to as ‘shari’a’, alongside an explanation of Sufi
mystical practices in an attempt to unite these principles in thought and religious practice.
Sirat-i Mustaqeem was written for Sayyid Ahmed’s companions and later his followers – some
of whom were scholars, but others of whom had very little education, if any at all. Sirat-i
Mustaqeem’s logic hinged on the concept innate knowledge which Sayyid Ahmed identified
as the basis for faith and devotion. Delivered in both public lectures and private dialogue
as well as in print form, on the understanding that individuals did not need a detailed
education to understand worship, Sirat-i Mustaqeem is the most comprehensive and detailed
representation of Sayyid Ahmed’s teachings.

Mysticism and shari’a in Sirat-i Mustaqeem

The principles of Sirat-i Mustaqeem are rooted in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya theosophy

of Shah Waliullah’s seminary, Shah Abdul Aziz’s teaching and writing, and Sayyid Ahmed’s
own training. Basing his ideas on the Waliullahi reformism of his teacher’s seminary which
called for application of the teachings of Quran and shari’a, Sayyid Ahmed proposed using
the simpler principles of Quran and shari’a as a method to engage in mystical, devotional
practice. He also anticipated extending these principles to laypeople, at once making mystical
practice and the tenets of shari’a accessible to them. This was a great development in
established thinking in the Waliullah line, which separated Sufi mystical practice as a secretive
devotional act, and relayed the lessons of the Quran to the world outside the seminary in
a series of social and political directives or fatawa. Distancing himself from the involved
philological underpinnings of Shah Abdul Aziz’s reformism and mystical practice, Sayyid
Ahmed suggested that a layman could adequately undertake devotional practice through the
‘intellectualising of the heart’, or qalabi fikr31 as long as he was given sufficient guidance and
interpretative support. And so, through Sayyid Ahmed’s method, the arena of devotional
practice and thinking could shift away from the Sufi centres of north India.
In classic Sufi thought, union with the divine, referred to as the mutalib or He who is
sought, is the spiritual quest of every individual, referred to as the talib, the seeker. Desire
for such union is described in the language and imagery of worldly, human passion, and the
purpose and anxiety of the seeker explained as the acute awareness of and desire for another
person. In an extension of the classic Sufi metaphor, Sayyid Ahmed explained how worldly

30 Rizvi, Shah Abdul Aziz, p. 508.

31 Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem, p. 89.
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 185

love could be poisoned if it necessitated cutting ties of family, learning, earning or political
loyalty. In the same way, he indicated, love for God must be iterated and pursued within
a system of worldly obligations. Rah-i Nabuwwat was the ‘straightest’ path to union with
divinity – a path which was based on shari’a derived temperance in day to day in order that
the path to union with God should not require a departure from worldly responsibilities and
living.32
Classic Sufi method is based on the practice and teaching of mystical transcendence of
the material through ‘meditational’ exercises or muraqaba and the repetitive invocation of
God’s name or zikr, and adherence to Quranic precept. The purpose of these exercises
is to refine the ability to abstractly picture the self and to perceive the presence of God
everywhere, thereby bypassing the inhibitions of body and space in the effort to witness
divinity. Sayyid Ahmed was a master of these exercises – something which underpinned
his entire religious outlook. He premised all his teachings on the importance of mystical
perception and connection between individuals and the divine. Yet religious practice is
described in Sirat-i Mustaqeem as taking two forms. On the one hand it can involve the
elevation of the self through zikr and muraqaba towards a euphoric state of self-forgetting and
closeness to God – the Rah-i Wilayati or The Saintly Path. On the other it requires elevation
of the soul towards the divine by using principles of human conduct explained in the Quran
(shari’a) to condition and control the carnal self in order to channel all human passion towards
the divine33 through the Rah-i Nabuwwat – the Way of the Prophet. It is important to note
that the differentiation was between the intellectual exercises to be undertaken in order to
effectively and constantly contemplate divinity, not between mystical thinking and shari’a.
Both paths – Rah-i Wilayati and Rah-i Nabuwwat – were based on accentuating perception
of divinity and transcending the material – one through turning off the conscious mind, and
the other by making consciousness pivot on the existence of God, making every moment and
every movement an act of worship. Because of the importance of both ‘paths’ to witnessing
divinity, the Rah-i Wilayati is described in great detail in Sirat-i Mustaqeem.34 In fact two
of the four chapters almost exclusively discuss the objectives and exercises of the Rah-i
Wilayati. The remaining two chapters, two and four, deal with those habits which should
be avoided, and those which should be embraced, and define the particular practices of the
Rah-i Nabuwwat.
Sayyid Ahmed’s commitment to classic Sufi practice, though in a simplified form, can be
gauged through the Risala-i Ashghal, a short manual condensed from the explanation of the
methods of zikr and muraqaba in different systems of Sufi thought in Sirat-i Mustaqeem which
was circulated among Sayyid Ahmed’s followers in the Pashtun regions in 1827.35 In these
three short essays, different means of imaging and elevating the ‘nafs’ or the self, through

32 Ibid., pp. 10–15.

33 Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem.
34 ‘And because mystical initiation into Rah-i Wilayat – the path of saintliness – easier, and because friends of
the saintly accomplishments can achieve union with the Prophet with less effort, this is why the comely order
required in this book was that this chapter in which the mystical method of Tariq-i Wilayat is expounded precedes
chapter four, in which the Rah-i Nabuwwat is explained’. Ibid., p. 8.
35 Rizvi, Shah Abdul Aziz., p. 509. Rizvi seems to determine this date from a translation by the Maktaba
Mahmudiyya in Lahore 1978. The version of the Risala-i Ashghal which I use has been translated and typed by
ideological descendents of Sayyid Ahmed through the Sufi pedagogic chain of transmission. The notes on this
transcription date the Risala-i Ashghal to the same year.
186 Sana Haroon

chanting God’s names, and contemplations of profound philosophical questions of God’s

presence are described. The ‘nafs’ is pictured as leaving the body, and rises through the seven
heavens to commune with the spirits of the Prophet and other great men of history, and
finally to encounter the divine. The climactic conclusion of the metaphysical ascent is the
state of euphoric fana’ and then visualising the complete negation of everything including
the nafs. This negation required both the courage to both detach from the body, and to be
able to return to it.36
Despite teaching and leading practitioners in the Rah-i Wilayat, Sayyid Ahmed stated
that only using meditation to seek God was ‘wrong’ as, despite the achievement of union,
it leaves the practitioner feeling disconsolate and uneasy. This is presumably because the
euphoria of a meditational state could not be preserved in daily and conscious living.37 It
was as a corrective to this failing of Rah-i Wilayati that Sayyid Ahmed proposed the Rah-i
Nabuwwat – a way of life which would more effectively respond to the same human longing
for union which was left unfulfilled by the short lived experiences and encounters with
the divine which resulted from traditional zikr and muraqaba. Instead he prescribed a life
of constant consideration of God’s presence and God’s will, so much so that the individual
is filled with terror of God and is shaken to his core so much so that he invokes God’s
mercy through the verbal and emotional resonance of his taubah or repentance.38 In place of
extremes of experience he prescribed moderation but rigour in personal behaviour through
closely following the Prophet’s examples of personal conduct.
In Sayyid Ahmed’s practice, as in most Sufi practice, the act of worship was a vocalised
and an experiential one, based on the spoken language and internalised meaning as an
invocation of the divine. He emphasised prayer and recitation of the Quran and as a source
of mystical connection to God as it involved enunciation of God’s own words.39 The
rational and philosophical debate over the meaning of the words of the Quran, what exactly
constituted the example of the Prophet gleaned from sunnah and hadith, merely refined daily
practices into more focused worship, but were not described as being central to the process
of worship. Understanding the meaning of words in the Quran and the sunnat of the Prophet
was important, but these did not have to be translated from the Arabic by each worshipper
himself as such effort could be left to experts who could communicate the meanings of
Quranic-Arabic words and terms to worshippers.
The meditational and contemplative features of the Rah-i Nabuwwat were based on
the Mujaddidiyya contemplations of divinity which required the practitioner to meditate
on certain of God’s names. Sayyid Ahmed called this the zikr imani, and added that
the meanings of the names could be ascertained with the use of an Arabic lexicon. He
similarly recommended the Mujaddidiyya Sufi method of contemplations of God’s sublimity
(samdiyat) and divinity (aluhiyat), not as an introspective meditational act, but as an active
process undertaken during ‘inspection of the Quran’. The zikr imani and the muraqaba of
the Mujaddidiyya Sufi method and the Rah-i Nabuwwat were not the staged ascensions of
classic Sufi meditation, requiring complex metaphysical imaging and transcendence, but

36 Ahmad, “Risala-I Ashghal”.

37 Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem, pp. 3–8.
38 Ibid., p. 159.
39 Ibid., pp. 73–80.
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 187

rather focused on the resonance of sound and power within the worshipper. In older Sufi
methods (such as the Chishtiyya and Qadiriyya), the climax of these exercises was a euphoric
self extinguishing in the perception of God. In Mujaddidiyya method, rather than having
to elevate the consciousness above the material to accomplish union with divinity, the
extinguishing of the self (nafi) was a willful negation of personal desires and concerns which
took place during contemplation exercises in order to more effectively understand God’s
will and the nature of closeness to God.40
Sayyid Ahmed extended the Mujaddidiyya notion of an omnipresent God who could be
perceived in this very plane of existence by basing the meditational experience not on an
introspective blocking out of the world, but on imagining the self as though immersed in
the ocean of God’s sublimity and divinity, thereby recognizing the expanse of prizes offered
by the Absolute Benefactor. Awareness of these aspects of God’s qualities would imbue the
practitioner with the amazement of perpetually perceiving something new. Eventually, the
practitioner would reach fana-i iradah, the eradication of will, a state of union with God’s
will and a completion and resolution of faith.41 All individual dealings with society were as
an agent of God’s will, as individualism and all longing should have been entirely eradicated
by the path of the Rah-i Nabuwwat.
The primary difference between Mujaddidiyya method and the Rah-i Nabuwwat was that
it was structured in a manner that a layperson could master its techniques without extensive
scholarly study of the philosophical treatises, the Quran or logic. Nor did the practitioner
need extensive training in meditational transcendence in order to achieve nafi. Rather than
making the intellectual or spiritual negation of self the prerequisite basis for practice, a
simpler exercise of the contemplation of bounty, mystery and the grace of the creational
force was the beginning of the exercise of comprehension of God. Many of the exercises
of the Mujaddidiyya method were designed to bring on prophetic visions of the full set
of possibilities in the living and after-world as an extension of preceding traditions which
sought to open up the human mind to the mystery of creation. Rah-i Nabuwwat enhanced a
worldly, living experience.
Shari’a-based prescriptions were described generally and without the complex arguments
of traditional fiqh writing in the Sirat-i Mustaqeem, affirming that intimate knowledge and
understanding of shari’a was not proposed as the cornerstone of practice. Sayyid Ahmed’s
most detailed enunciations about what comprised shari’a were compiled as the second
background chapter of Sirat-i Mustaqeem as “that which should guide worship”. This
entire discussion was comprised of ideas which had been developed in the Delhi seminary
such as encouraging widow remarriage, avoiding ostentatious celebrations of marriage and
circumcision, the fallacy of Shi’a rituals of commemoration and avoiding bid’at or the worship
of Sufis under the misguided belief that the rewards bestowed by God upon the great Saints

40 Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem. Explanation of the exercises and logic behind Mujaddiddi method uses Urdu
and Farsi translations of the word for closeness to encourage a fuller understanding of the presence of the Divine.
Translation of Arabic, so strongly emphasised in the scholarly tradition of the Mujaddiddi line, was expressed in
devotional practices as well.
41 Ibid., pp. 129–170.
188 Sana Haroon

will be bestowed upon their devotees.42 Believers were urged to undertake direct worship
of God to gain insight and communion with divinity.43
In the final summation of the features of a personal practice, the following acts were listed:
regular prayer, fasting, recitation of the Quran, zikr, jihad and distributing charity.44 Of these,
only prayer, fasting, and charity are actual cornerstones of Muslim practice, as ascertainable
from the Quran and hadith. The focus on jihad, zikr and recitation of the Quran were Sayyid
Ahmed’s efforts to bring the theological principles of confronting hereticism, studying the
Quran closely and achieving meditational transcendence into a system of ritualised religious
practice.

The transmission of Sayyid Ahmed’s teachings across Muslim North India

The device through which Sayyid Ahmed communicaced his ideas was the bay’at or the
pledge of the student and seeker of enlightenment at the hand of a teacher and spiritual
guide. The first of these occurred when an unknown man presented himself to Sayyid
Ahmed and asked to take the bay’at at his hand and receive instruction from him. In an
anecdote transcribed by Shah Ismail, Sayyid Ahmed said that God told him to accept the
man’s request and administer the bay’at as this man would come to number among thousands
of Sayyid Ahmed’s murids.45 At this time Shah Abdul Aziz also began to recommend Sayyid
Ahmed’s services as a Sufi teacher. Shah Abdul Aziz told a Bukhari scholar who had travelled
to see him that he should offer himself in Sayyid Ahmed’s service as what ‘Sayid Ahmed
could teach him in twelve days, the Bukhari Mulla would not even be able to learn in twelve
years of study’ with Shah Abdul Aziz.46 Shah Abdul Aziz also told Shah Abdul Hai, his own
son, and Shah Ismail, his nephew, that the two should seek instruction with Sayyid Ahmed as
he himself no longer had the strength to sit for extended periods.47 By every account, Shah
Abdul Aziz willingly, knowingly invested the authority of his highly scholarly line in this less
learned, energetic, independent thinking man and formally gave him ‘ijazat’ or permission
to confer the bay’at in his own right.48
Initially, the two cousins were skeptical of Abdul Aziz’s endorsement of this unlettered man
and had wanted to be instructed in Sufi method by Shah Abdul Aziz. They both began to

42 He took this idea from Shah Abdul Aziz. See Muhammad al-Ghazali, The Socio-Political Thought of Shah Wali
Ullah (Islamabad, 2001), p. 197.
43 Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem, p. 48. This was what Sayyid Ahmed’s companion Shah Ismail considered to be
the most important of reformist principled and he wrote at length about what comprised bid’at. Shah Ismail was
developing a line of thinking which had been proposed by Shah Abdul Aziz in his fatwas. Rizvi, Shah Abdul
Aziz.and al-Ghazali, The Socio-Political Thought of Shah Wali Ullah.
44 Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem. pp. 65–69, 70–72, 73–80, 90, 104.
45 Ibid., p. 176 the event is recorded as being of great significance, God is referred to as Hazrat-i Haq, and the
exact statement is that whoever takes a bay’at on God’s hand, (apparently in reference to Sayyid Ahmed himself),
no matter how prodigal he may be, he will be taken care of.’ Also related in Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, p. 20 in almost
exactly the same words. In both versions, this is a moment of transformative thinking of divine and guidance as not
being limited but bountiful. Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem, p. 176. See also Nadvi’s interpretation of this anecdote in
Nadvi, Sirat Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed, pp. 155–156.
46 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, pp. 95, 98.
47 Nadvi, Sirat Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed, p. 152.
48 Shah Mohammad Ismail and Sayyid Ahmed Bareilvi, “‘Khatmah’, Sirat Al Mustaqeem” in Hazrat Sayyid
Ahmad Shaheed Say Hazrat Haji Imdadullah Muhajir Makki Kay Ruhani Rishtay, (ed.) Sayyid Nafees al-Hussaini
(Lahore, 2003).
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 189

change their minds when Sayyid Ahmed woke up day after day, having dreamed prophesies
which quickly proved correct, and speaking of meeting with the Prophet and with God in
his dreams.49 They became finally and forever ‘slaves’ of Sayyid Ahmed when he met their
challenge to make him feel the glory of worship that the Prophet’s own companions had
felt. Late one night Sayyid Ahmed called his friends to prayer in a voice that made them turn
cold – Abdul Hai testified that he kept repeating his simple two-rakat prayer all night long
in a terror and awe of God – a terror that he later realised was akin to what the Prophet’s
companions were said to have felt before God.50 They were followed by a number of other
members of the Waliullahi line including Abdur Rahim Wilayati, himself one of Abdul
Aziz’s students, and Shah Ahlullah, Shah Waliullah’s brother.51 Sayyid Ahmed then went
on to administer the bay’at widely, to communicate a greatly simplified and individualized
system of personal practice.
Shortly after the bay’ats by Waliullahis at Sayyid Ahmed’s hand, Sayyid Ahmed decided
to return to Rai Bareilly – in time for Ramadan 1234 AH.52 He spent a year organising his
followers and then returned to the Akbarabadi mosque in Delhi, where he spent a few years
practicing tasawwuf. And it was at exactly this time that Sayyid Ahmed initiated his most
unique and religiously transformative acts – widely, without reservation, accepting pledges of
studentship in communal public settings. This was the foundation on which Sayyid Ahmed
would go on to widely disseminate the principles of faith and spirituality. The teaching
that he imparted was premised in the fundamentals of Sufism, the individualised teaching
from teacher to student, actual demonstration of the method of meditational exercises and
invocations of God’s name in zikr. But it deviated from the established system of mystical
training in a number of ways. Students did not learn individually from their teacher, but in
congregational settings, making it possible to induct and teach many students at once. They
did not travel many miles and many years and deny all worldly rights and responsibilities to
seek their training. Rather their teacher came to their village, created inclusive spaces within
which they could, after their working day and alongside their womenfolk, be trained in the
technique of prayer, the performance of meditation and the invocation of God’s name.
The process by which Sayyid Ahmed began to enact this vision, the events which gave
such significance to the teachings of Sirat-i Mustaqeem, began shortly after Sayyid Ahmed
receiving the sanction from his teacher and accepted the bay’at from his colleagues. He then
decided to do two things: to perform Hajj, and then to undertake the jihad in which he had
predicted that he would die. This agenda took him east to Calcutta then on a ship to the
Hijaz in a journey that took a few years, then back to Calcutta and then directly on to the
Pakhtun north-west. The years of travel were conducted at an unhurried pace. He stopped
at serais or rest houses on the way, and each stop was made remarkable by his interactions

49 See: Nadvi Sirat, p. 176.

50 Maulana Muhammad Ali Jaunpuri, Makhzan-i Ahmedi, excerpt in Nadvi, Sirat Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed.
pp. 155–156.
51 This re-centering of the Waliullahi line around the figure of Sayyid Ahmed meant that his teachings have
great bearing on its pedagogy and its posterity.
52 This dora is described somewhat differently in Nadvi’s biography as a direct response to the requests of
intending devotees who could not present themselves at Delhi. Nadvi says that Sayyid Ahmed began a tour of the
Doaba region of northern India, beginning at Delhi and continuing through Meerut, Muzafarnagar and Deoband,
was greeted by hosts at each stop, and inducting thousands of murids along the way. Nadvi, Sirat Sayyid Ahmad
Shaheed. pp. 160–182.
190 Sana Haroon

with locals in the capacity of a renowned sage. The feature which distinguished him on his
travels was that he tapped into local systems of authority wherever he went. During his time
in the UP, he normally sought introductions to residents of the small Muslim townships,
the qasbahs, through respected members of the communities. In Muradabad, the local Qazi
hosted him – an association which made locals realize that he was not a ‘dewana fakir’ or
a mad ascetic seeking alms.53 The Qazi suggested that Sayyid Ahmed convene meetings at
several different locations in the city in order to maximise the influence he could have, and
was asked by the Nawab Muhammad Khan of Muradabad to remain in the town for a week
because it was possible that under his influence the discord between the people of the town
might be resolved.54
Sayyid Ahmed made easy alliances with the sharifs – the old Muslim nobility – of the
towns he visited, and the religious leaders of note – alliances which were based on his
demonstrations of miraculous power. In Bareilly, he made a local Nawab’s sick oxen well
again through prayer. The Nawab and his entire extended family came that evening and took
bay’at at Sayyid Ahmed’s hand.55 In Lucknow he went to Shah Pir Muhammad mosque
and was admitted to its private quarters, inhabited by a well known local ascetic who had
not been seen by anybody in almost forty years. After many hours of intense, supposedly
telepathic discussions with this ascetic, he made it known that the ascetic had taken the bay’at
at his hand, and that this was the culmination of an alliance ordained by God and shown
to him in a vision many years prior.56 The ease with which these alliances were created,
and their reliance on miraculous demonstration suggest that Sayyid Ahmed did not present
a highly aberrant persona but used a familiar public guise, that of the wandering ascetic. As
he told a follower who was worried about how they would feed their growing retinue –
‘hum fakir log hain’ – ‘we are ascetics’ – we will make do.57
The first phase of these travels was a ‘dora’ or a tour around Lucknow and the United
Provinces. At each stop at small qasbahs or townships around the area, despite his purported
hurry to return to Rai Bareilly before the start of Ramadan, and despite receiving news of
the death of his brother, Sayyid Ahmed took bay’ats from people and communicated the
principles of mystical method to them.58 In Amroha, Sayyid Ahmed met with and talked
secretly and at length with powerful and well known mystic called Abdul Sami, making him a
murid and a staunch proponent of his own method.59 When visiting these townships, Sayyid
Ahmed accepted dinner invitations at the homes of local notables (never accepting twice at
any one home), shared a meal with all in attendance, then gave a sermon and led everyone in
namaz or prayer. The details of this practice are not described in accounts of the movement,
but it is probable that following the prayer, a brief introduction to exercises in contemplation
and invocation of God’s name followed, in the manner described in Sirat-i Mustaqeem. The
evening invariably ended by Sayyid Ahmed giving the bay’at to everyone present, including,

53 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi” p. 167.

54 Ibid., p. 169.
55 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, pp. 177–178.
56 Ibid., pp. 206–208
57 Ibid., p. 192.
58 Ibid., p. 161.
59 Ibid., p. 164.
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 191

very often, the women of the home.60 In these intensely personal settings, his position
strengthened by the etiquette that his host had to exhibit and the competitiveness between
locals desiring to also have associations with this traveller of note, Sayyid Ahmed established
a reputation and connections in a number of different towns between Delhi and Rai Bareilly.
When Sayyid Ahmed came to Calcutta for three months on his way to Hajj in 1819–20,
an observer among Sayyid Ahmed’s companions stated that the bay’at was conferred in a
mass gathering of five hundred to one thousand men, loudly, with several of Sayyid Ahmed’s
unraveled turbans stretched through the crown in order that each man could touch them as
they took the pledge to learn from him.61
In the most important instance of Sayyid Ahmed’s religious and social experiment, his
time in the Pashtun ‘tribal’ regions, Sayyid Ahmed continued to widely receive the bay’at.
When camped at Hashtnagar, a town close to the city of Peshawar, news of Sayyid Ahmed’s
presence and leading tawajju in local mosques spread, so much so that the youngest brother of
the newly crowned Afghan King Dost Mohammad Khan, encamped at the Bala Hissar Fort
in Peshawar, came to participate in the prayers and meditation along with his large retinue.
The afternoon ended with all present taking bay’at at Sayyid Ahmed’s hand in such numbers
than he had to once again spread a length of cloth to include everyone simultaneously in his
induction.62 Local religious leaders also took the bay’at at Sayyid Ahmed’s hand, and were
briefly tutored in his mystical method, after which they were authorised to guide devotees
on their own authority. One of these men was Sayyid Akbar Shah who would later become
the King of the small local state of Swat.63
Sayyid Ahmed’s method was further enhanced by the fact that he could, within days,
often the very night of the initial induction, authorise new murids to guide other initiates in
contemplations owing to the simplicity of the zikr and contemplations, and the purpose of
instilling awareness of divinity rather than teaching mystical ascension. In Hapar he led new
initiates in the contemplation just once before allowing them to lead other new initiates
in these exercises. They were able to do this so effectively that some of those whom the
new initiates were teaching were able to successfully undertake the exercise of divination.64
Sayyid Ahmed gave the bay’at to a man who demonstrated tremendous spiritual power of
his own and immediately conferred the title of khalifa or official representative on him and
allowed him to lead all members of the town in tawajju’.65 Hence Sayyid Ahmed’s teachings
were self propagating, extending even in his absence, under the authority of those whom he
deputized to take his place.
Khalifas or deputies were community-based leaders who were authorized to guide their
communities in the Rah-i Nabuwwat, and to induct new devotees on their own. This feature
created longevity and the ability to self-propagate to Sayyid Ahmed’s mass-inductions and

60 For example the Qazi of Muradabad’s home, a Nawab of Muradabad’s home, a Nawab of Bareilly’s home, A
Hafiz Sahib of Ghaziabad’s home.
61 Quoted in Sheikh Muhammad Ikram, Mauj-I Kausar, ed. Sheikh Muhammad Ikram, 3 vols., vol. 3, Mauj-I
Kausar (Lahore, 2003), p. 22. In Naqvi, “Tarikh-I Ahmediyya.”particular bay’ats are named including Shaikh Ghulam
Ali Allahabadi.
62 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, pp. 1094–1100.
63 See Muhammad Asif Khan, Tarikh-I Riyasat-I Swat, Reprint ed. (Swat, 1960?), pp. 64–84
64 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, p. 161
65 Ibid., p. 176. This was a man called Hussaini whom Sayyid Ahmed re-named Hidayatullah.
192 Sana Haroon

demonstrations of religious worship which otherwise would not have been sustained. Initiates
included the imam of Akbarabadi mosque in Delhi,66 Pir Sibghatullah Rashidi ‘on the
banks of the River Indus in Sindh’, Agha Shah in Shikarpur,67 Sayyid Mohsin Shah among
the Baloch,68 Shah Ramzan Rurki in Saharanpur,69 a religious leader from Kabul,70 and
followers in Bengal who created a new base of the movement which Sayyid Ahmed got news
of in the year of the Battle of Balakot and his death, 1831.71 Inevitably, the question arises
as to how this leadership operated in Sayyid Ahmed’s absence, often without any further
direct contact with the order at all. A possible answer lies in the notion of ‘fana-i iradah’ –
‘the extinguishing of personal will’ described in Sirat-i Mustaqeem as the spiritual conclusion
of the Rah-i Nabuwwat. While the core principles of the practice of Rah-i Nabuwwat outlook
were premised on systems of personal conduct and the individual’s path to mystical union
with divinity, the contemplations forced practitioners to dwell on the nature of God’s will,
and to make their own will an instrument of God’s design. This precept, forming the core of
individual devotion, suggested that those very accomplished in the Rah-i Nabuwwat would
at once act autonomously and in pursuance of ‘God’s will’ which was generally defined by
the teachings of the order – worship by shari’a.
Tenets of Sayyid Ahmed’s ideology and its perpetuation were inscribed through the
congregational domain.72 Sayyid Ahmed turned to mosques in locales as the inclusive and
open domain of religious practice by the people. When he found that the central Jama’ Masjid
in Bareilly had no regular imam, he took it upon himself to appoint one in consultation with
local people.73 After a vision about a mosque whose roof had not been cleaned in over one
hundred years, an climbing the to the roof of that mosque to clean it himself, he told locals
that because he had done so, God had given him a reward for which there were no words
to even utter thanks. On another occasion Sayyid Ahmed took extra pains to save the floor
of the Akbarabadi mosque from being befouled, Sayyid Ahmed similarly described being
given an indescribable ‘prize’.74 When he met the imam of a mosque who worried that the
quality of his voice did not please people hearing him give the call to prayer, Sayyid Ahmed

66 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, p. 125.

67 Naqvi, “Tarikh-I Ahmediyya.” folios 308a-310a.
68 Ibid., folio 315a.
69 Nadvi, Sirat Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed, p. 175.
70 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, p. 1380. Before a Pashtun congregation, Sayyid Ahmed pointed to a local religious
leader next to him who was educated in Farsi and Arabic as well as local languages of Turkic, Dari and Pashto, and
explained that whatever they needed to know, they could learn from him.
71 Naqvi, “Tarikh-I Ahmediyya” folio 615b.
72 This was not the only influence on him to create community spaces for worship. Sayyid Ahmed had an
illustrious ancestor in the Naqshbandiyya line – Shah Alamullah – who had ‘reformed’his Sufi practices many decades
prior when he met a mystic who asked him to build a masjid in his hometown of Rai Bareilly. Shah Alamullah
later renounced the dynastic Sufi practice of appointing a one spiritual successor to be revered. See Jang, “Waqai
Ahmadi”, pp. 4–5.
73 Ibid. p. 180.
74 Ibid., pp. 99–106, In another story it was said that in Delhi, shortly after beginning to teach the Mulla
Bukhara, Sayyid Ahmed had announced to a group of men that some days earlier the Mulla had gotten sick in the
mosque, but that he, (Sayyid Ahmed) had been so keen to preserve the purity of the mosque that he had used his
own hands and shirt to prevent anything falling on the ground. He told the listeners that God had been so pleased
with his ‘respect for God’s masjid’ that God rewarded him with a vision which allowed him to prevent the death of
a woman. ———, “Waqai Ahmadi”, pp. 94–95
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 193

recited prayers which made the imam’s voice sonorous and he began to draw people to the
mosque.75
When visiting other townships across north India, Sayyid Ahmed sought out spaces in
which he could lead the prayer which were big enough to accommodate his cohort and
local inductees into his order.76 Where it was possible, he asked for spaces to be designated
for use by the community as in Lucknow where they were given a haveli by a well wisher
in the Qandahari quarter. This compound was used as a mosque and a hujra or living
accommodation by the group. Locals from the city were encouraged to come and listen
to the sermons conducted there.77 In the one place he was able, his own hometown of
Rai Bareilly where he had personal wealth and authority as a landowner, Sayyid Ahmed
established two new mosques and appointed imams to each for those ‘observant worshippers
who had trouble always presenting themselves at Sayyid Ahmed’s own mosque’, located on
his ancestral property.78
This use of mosques was an innovation – not the fact of congregational prayer, but for
the structured use of mosques as platforms for communication. It was this space which
could be appropriated or recreated anywhere, allowing pedagogy and religious authority to
flourish outside of the confines of the seminary within the community of worship. After
the ritual prayer and the recitation of verses from the Quran in a sequence prescribed by
religious scholars. The author of Waqai Ahmedi notes that Sayyid Ahmed or his companions79
would then lead people in zikr.80 Owing to the very limited time that Sayyid Ahmed
spent on his proselytising tours, it seems necessary that these should have only been the
meditational exercises prescribed for the Rah-i Nabuwwat such as contemplation of divinity,
and contemplation of verses from the Quran.81 In addition to prayer, Sayyid Ahmed also
ensured that he gave a sermon after each prayer, or nominated one of his companions – often
Shah Ismail or Abdul Hai – to do so, wherever he was.82 These sermons were on points of
shari’a – the incorrectness of worship at Sufi shrines, the nature of heresy, and recitations of
anecdotes from the Quran.83

75 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, pp. 118–119.

76 As in Hapar, the first stop on his dora,he initiated many of the elite (sharifs) and poor of the town and then
read his afternoon prayers. It was the same in Ghaziabad, where the group arrived at the local Jam’a mosque where
they prayed and were then offered dinner, and in Rampur Ibid., pp. 160, 159, 181.
77 Ibid., pp. 280–291.
78 Ibid., pp. 228–229.
79 Naqvi, “Tarikh-I Ahmediyya” folio 32b.
80 In the description in Sirat-i Mustaqeem, Sayyid Ahmed in fact described in detail the exercises in all the
three tariqas, Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya, Qadiriyya and Chishtiyya, before outlining particular contemplations and
invocations of God’s name in his Rah-i Nabuwwat. See a summary exposition in Ahmad, “Risala-I Ashghal”, and
also Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem, pp. 111–154.
81 Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem, pp. 162, 163, 165.
82 See accounts of Shah Ismail’s sermons, Mirza Hayrat Dehlvi, Hayat-I Tayyaba (Lahore, 1984, reprint, 1984),
pp. 71–97, Mention of Shah Abdul Hai and Shah Ismail giving incendiary sermons against Shias in Naseerabad
in Tarikh-i Ahmadiyyah quoted in Rizvi, Shah Abdul Aziz, p. 478, Shah Ismail’s waz in Paskhtun regions, Jang,
“Waqai Ahmadi”, pp. 1383, Abdul Hai’s waz in Lucknow after which many ulama and Sufis took the bay’at at
Sayyid Ahmed’s hand, Nadvi, Sirat Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed, p. 211, Abdul Hai’s sermon in Delhi, Naqvi, “Tarikh-I
Ahmediyya”, folio 30b.
83 A Christian convert called Abdul Masih reported encountering Sayyid Ahmed himself during this preaching
tours. Account of Abdool Masih, January 28, 1825. Church Missionary Society, “India within the Ganges”,
Missionary Register (1826). Dr Avril Powell brought this account to my attention.
194 Sana Haroon

In an essay on congregational prayer, with its obligatory supplications, prayers and

invocations of God, Shah Ismail stated that this must be the form of worship taken by
Muslims in order that they be distinguishable– not from others, but to one another. If a
Muslim saw another Muslim in prayer, he would know that this man considers him to be
a brother, and he should consider him faithful.84 While this idea is not expressed in Sirat-i
Mustaqeem, it has great value for it establishes that concrete thinking about community and
identity was taking place within the order. Shah Ismail’s essay has a deep resonance with
Sayyid Ahmed’s ideas which was not, I believe, purely abstract. Communities of practice
were created to be self-consciousness and to sustain themselves as differentiated devotional
and ideological entities.
Sayyid Ahmed’s time in the Pashtun regions and the system of local bay’ats exemplify
his belief in community-based religious practice. Implications of community-based Muslim
identity are deeply political – suggesting a pre-history of communalism – but to understand
their logic as part of the movement, we must first think about community-identification
and practice as a system of metaphysical thinking. A set of tenets, purported to be the bay’at
conferred on people in the Pashtun areas, offer a rare insight:

Bay’at Ahl-i Suffah (Bay’at of the descendants in study of the Prophet’s teachings)
Any man, whether his poverty is greater or lesser, will not satisfy his need through anyone but
God.
That which he has pledged he will consider necessary and binding on himself. Nor will ever ask
any Muslim brother to act against the principles of that pledge. That which he prefers for himself
he will prefer for his Muslim brothers.
Those that take the pledge will consider the poverty and need of Muslim brothers’ superior to
their own poverty and need.
Every act will only be undertaken by the leave of God.
A prayer follows.85

Sayyid Ahmed confronted the most material determinant of the human condition –
poverty. The commitment which Sayyid Ahmed elicited from his murids in the Pakhtun
regions acknowledged the debilitating effects of economic deprivation, but pointedly placed
this as secondary to devotion, fraternal consciousness, the suffering of others, and belief
in God’s own grace, asking them to only satisfy their poverty by means acceptable to
God, and to deem the suffering and faith of their fellow men as superior to their own.
This did not dismiss the fact of poverty or make little of the need of individuals to cut
carnal need and want out of their own psyche, as classic Sufi asceticism did. Rather, it
rationalised forbearance in the face of poverty and personal suffering by joining systems of
participation – in God’s service and in the unity of men – participation which could
emotionally mitigate the effects of extreme personal deprivation or a sense of injustice.86

84 Shah Mohammad Ismail, “Taqwiyatul Iman Ma Tazkirul Ikhwan”, (Lahore, Shamma Book Agency; reprint,
2001). pp. 141–142.
85 Muhammad Khwas Khan, Roedad Mujahidin-I Hind (Lahore, 1980), pp. 56–57.
86 This opens up a new question – that of the human condition in a time of the removal of power and
political responsibility out of the locale to military and economic centres being created in the modern, colonial era.
Human suffering and feeling of disenfranchisement could have been mitigated by such structures of localisation,
individualisation, of personal experience and power.
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 195

Faith and its associated hope were channelled into a daily system of participation in worldly
affairs. Devotees did not have to separate their understanding of divinity from the exigencies
of living, rather they had to subordinate hunger, anger and fear to faith, compassion and
camaraderie.

Conclusion: personal agency, proselytising and the survival of Sayyid Ahmed’s

movement

Embedded in Sirat-i Mustaqeem are descriptions of city-based polities, the rule of law, political
leaders of communities, and the place of scholars and studies in fiqh and hadith as had been
defined in the Waliullah family scholarship.87 Sayyid Ahmed, trying to enunciate what
this structure meant for communities of individual practitioners, privileged those trained in
Arabic language and as scholars of the Quran and hadith and sunnat as a scholarly support
system for individuals who wanted assistance in interpreting religious prescription. These
were referred to as the Ahl-i Hadith, the people of the hadith – who could most accurately
guide people in their daily personal discipline.88 In addition to religious leaders he nominally
named the political leader as the ‘King’ or Badshah who was to create courts of justice and
law, and should better be thought of as a Khalifa-Badshah who privileged religion over
worldly glory.89 The role of the sages or pirs was the prophetic divination of events past
and yet to come.90 Together these leaders were to afford individual worshippers protection,
guidance and encouragement in their mystical quests. Yet despite this reiteration of Shah
Waliullah’s imagined ideal political order, the core of Sayyid Ahmed’s teachings privileged
individual agency and independence in faith in a manner which superceded any political or
social hierarchy.
Practitioners of the Rah-i Nabuwwat were accorded the right to interpret tenets of the
faith and conduct practice for themselves, so once in practice the aspect of Sayyid Ahmed’s
message which most immediately began to fashion a political objective was not the one
which accorded ultimate authority in faith to the learned, as in the Waliullah tradition of
political thinking, but the paradoxical tenet which accorded such authority to all who had
taken the teachings of the order and who were not necessarily learned. The significance of
the autonomy vested in the individual was elaborated in Sirat-i Mustaqeem itself under the
principle of what was called amr-bil maruf wa nahi anal munkir, ‘do that which is celebrated, and
to prohibit that which is deviant’, more commonly translated as ‘the promotion of virtue and
the prevention of vice’. This charge, reiterated a few times in the treatise, obligated individuals
with a social responsibility to communicate the moral apparatus of shari’a more widely ‘to the
trans-regional community of the Prophet Muhammad’s followers’.91 In spiritual terms, this
led distraught, needy seekers of communion with the divine, despite their own desperation
in their search for God, to sacrifice of themselves to make the search for God easier for other,

87 Marcia K. Hermansen, Shah Wali Ullah of Delhi’s Hujjat All Al-Baligha: The Conclusive Argument from God
(New Delhi, 2005), pp. 129–40, 340–44, Rizvi, Shah Abdul Aziz, pp. 174–244.
88 Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem., p. 76. These interpreters are referred to as ‘ulama’ in an earlier section – those
.‘markers of the truth, famous for sagacity and experience’. See: p. 25.
89 Ibid., p. 76
90 Ibid., p. 25.
91 The ‘ummat-i Muhammadi’.
196 Sana Haroon

less spiritually astute people.92 In practical terms this was a system to widely disseminate
principles of reformist conduct such as widow remarriage, communal prayer and recitation of
the Quran at masjids and disallowing Sufi worship.93 Both the spiritual and the social mandate
worked through the community, encouraging spiritual-fraternal thinking, and regularisation
and control of observable religious practices.
That Sayyid Ahmed’s followers took up the charge of amr bil maruf was established in
colonial records of Bengal, Patna, and the post-mutiny trials in India which point to their
preaching of reformist practices.94 In the Pashtun regions, local religious leaders who were
inducted into the Rah-i Nabuwwat explained principles of social conduct and ritual according
to ‘shari’a’ to their communities while passing on the bay’at more selectively.95 Among these
was the Akhund Ghaffur, a local religious leader in his own right, already inducted into
the Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya Sufi lines. Akhund Ghaffur became a close ally of Sayyid
Ahmed, and went on to transmit the principles of amr-bil maruf to his own murids who
passed them on to their murids, enshrining Sayyid Ahmed’s teachings in a system of bay’ats.
The descendents in Akhund Ghaffur’s line went on to established mosques, encourage
congregational worship, and emphasise their knowledge of Quran and hadith and their own
legitimacy as enforcers of public morality. In later years these local religious leaders openly
referred to their mission among the Pakhtun clansmen as ‘amr bil maruf wa nahi anal munkir’
– testimony that it was the direct legacy of Sayyid Ahmed’s teachings.96
Among the Pashtun religious leadership were varying levels of training in the religious
sciences. Akhund Ghaffur was a Sufi mystic in a local Naqshbandiyya line. While he had
great acclaim, he did not have detailed linguistic training in Arabic or Persian, nor in fiqh or
hadith. The same was true of many of Sayyid Ahmed’s deputies in the Rah-i Nabuwwat. Din
Muhammad, an earnest companion and one of the primary informants in Waqai Ahmedi,
had converted from Hinduism, and soon after became an important emissary of Sayyid
Ahmed.97 Sayyid Ahmed himself assumed an innate understanding of the faith and a right
to comment upon it. Investing the authority to personally conduct inquiry into the tenets
of the faith, and to communicate that understanding to others created the layman’s right
to ownership over religious interpretation and preaching which had until now belonged
to the ulama and the learned Sufis. While Sirat-i Mustaqeem charged individuals to seek
guidance and interpretation from the more learned, it allowed individuals the discretion to
decide which interpretation they would seek, what they would highlight and what they
would choose to carry forward and enforce upon others. From being a closely controlled
intellectual sphere and system of interpretation, authority in matters of faith could accrue
to individual practitioners through mere inclination to claim it. This principle of personal

92 Dehlavi, Sirat-I Mustaqeem, pp. 24–25.

93 Unlike the bay’at, these teachings did not confer membership in the order, nor did they necessarily involve
teaching the mystical principles of contemplation or zikr. See also Mehr, p. 836.
94 See: Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-Century India: The Tariqah-I Muhammadiyah., pp. 177–
188.
95 See: Ghulam Rasul Mehr, Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed (Lahore1952, reprint), pp. 392–402 ‘Buner aur Swat ka
Daura’.
96 I trace the legacy of this movement from 1880 to 1950 in the study Frontier of Faith. During this time, the use
of the term ‘amr bil maruf’ continued among religious leaders descended in piri-muridi lines from Sayyid Ahmed.
See: Sana Haroon, Frontier of Faith : Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland (New York, 2007), pp. 57–64.
97 Jang, “Waqai Ahmadi”, Din Muhammad.
 Reformism and orthodox practice in early nineteenth-century Muslim north India 197

interpretation has remained preserved in and is a central feature of contemporary Islamic

revivalist practice and organisation.
The link between the contemporary revivalism and Sayyid Ahmed’s representation of
the proselytizing principle and agency and personal authority in matters of faith is not
accidental. It is in fact the very basis for the survival of Sayyid Ahmed’s teachings. Several
of his devotees took up his exhortations to personal ownership of faith, its interpretation
and its spread. Among these were the Shah Mohammad Ishaq and Shah Mohammad Yaqub,
grandsons of Shah Abdul Aziz, who created the group known as the Ahl-i Hadith, scholars
of Arabic who organised community based study of the Quran, prayer and proselytisation.
The proselytizing movement of the Tablighi Jamaat, deeply influential across South Asia,
attributes an intellectual and pedagogic debt to Sayyid Ahmed. Both of the groups which
took up the exhortation to jihad – one in the Pashtun north-west and the other in Bengal –
touted the principles of autonomous community based practice, leadership and governance.
Other inheritors of Sayyid Ahmed’s ideas and practices have come to the fore of socially and
politically coercive sectarian, anti-imperialist and anti-state movements in the more recent
past. All of these movements assume authority over interpretation of religion on the basis of
faith and piety and a right to interpret the words of the Quran and Hadith irrespective of
scholarly training while sustaining the principle of devotion within a worldly existence.

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