HAJI SHARIATULLAH (

Shariatullah,1781-1840)
Haji (1781-1840) was an
eminent Islamic reformer of Bangladesh. The
district of Shariatpur is named after him. He
was born in 1781 in a petty Talukdar family at
the village Shamail under the then Madaripur
sub-division of greater Faridpur district. He
emigrated to Makkah in 1799, returned to
Bangladesh in 1818 and started an Islamic
revivalist reform movement, akin to the
contemporary Arabian Wahhabism
HAJI SHARIATULLAH
 FARAIZI MOVEMENT
• The movement he started came to be
popularly known as the faraizi movement.
His reform movement was basically
religious; but it touched upon various other
aspects of the society. He may be
characterized as an Islamic revivalist, a
social reformer and a populist peasant
leader.
SHARIATPUR
 FARAIZI MOVEMENT
• The movement he started came to be
popularly known as the faraizi movement.
His reform movement was basically
religious; but it touched upon various other
aspects of the society. He may be
characterised as an Islamic revivalist, a
social reformer and a populist peasant
leader.
 STATE OF PEOPLE &
COUNTRY
• While going to the holy Makkah in 1799 at
the age of 18, he left behind a demurred,
anguished, thrown over, unprotected
people bemoaning at the suppression and
repression of the indigo planters who
lorded over them. The planters had by the
side of them an equally outlandish
corporation of marwaris who purchased
large-scale zamindari estates under the
terms and conditions of the permanent
settlement of 1793.
 EXPLOITERS
• A third group of agents, popularly called gomastas
of the private businesses of the officers of the
East India Company, who were also mainly
Marwaris and their Bengali associates, took under
their monopoly control river ports and markets all
over the country.
• The combined perpetration of violence and
extortion turned the people into serfs and slaves
of the type of Medieval Europe; the violent social
change was termed by the contemporary annual
report of the English Police Commissioner as a
'loathsome revolution'.
 REVIVALIST ATTEMPTS
• When Shariatullah returned home in 1818,
educated in religious learning and Arabic
literature, schooled under the supervision of
the great Islamic theologians of the time at
Makkah with unbroken scholarships for nearly
two decades, he entertained high hopes for a
good and respectable career. He also
entertained the hope of reviving Islam in India
as was then going on in Saudi Arabia.
Shariatullah came back with a burning sparkle
of the same revivalist fire, which he tried to
introduce in Bangladesh.
FAILURES & ACHIEVEMENTS
• At the beginning Haji Shariatullah's mission in his
home district Shariatpur proved unsuccessful. His
preaching of pure doctrines failed to attract
audience. He, thereupon, went back to Makkah to
seek advice from his teachers. Taher Sombal, his
teacher, initiated him into the Qadiriyah Tariqah of
Sufism and sent him back to Bangladesh in 1820
with spiritual blessings. The new Sufi element with
a call to hold the iman in the qalb (heart) worked
like a magnet. This time, his reform movement,
which came to be known as the Faraizi, spread far
and wide and became popular also in the
neighbouring areas of greater Dhaka, Barisal and
Comilla districts during the lifetime of the Haji.
 FARAIZI MOVEMENT
• Shariatullah emphasized on holding correct faith
in the Tawhid (Unity of Allah) and the Prophethood
of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be
on him) as well as on abstaining from associating
any false gods and goddesses with Him (shirk).
Secondly, he laid extraordinary emphasis on
performing the compulsory religious duties of
Islam, by which he meant all necessary and
mandatory duties, such as five times daily prayers
(salat), payment of poverty alleviation religious
taxes (zakat), fasting in the month of Ramadan
(saum) and performance of Hajj, which are Faraiz
(compulsory duties) and hence the movement
was known as 'Faraiz'i
 REFORMS
• Besides, he emphasised the unity and brotherhood of
the Muslims and equality of mankind; he condemned
caste discrimination, which had contaminated the
Muslim society. He vehemently condemned numerous
un-Islamic customs, usage and polytheistic accretions
that had crept into the Muslim society by contagion of
the practices of the non-Muslim neighbours. Following
the Wahhabi reforms of Arabia, he also condemned the
performance of Fatiha, Urs and Milad, which were and
still are popular social usage of the Muslims of the
sub-continent, and tried to abolish them by stigmatising
them as bid'at (irreligious and sinful innovations). This
evoked conservative reaction against his movement
from the Muslim society around 1831 that resulted into
a riot at Nayabari in the district of Dhaka
 PROGRESS OF REFORMS
• Following the classical doctrines of the Muslim legal
experts as noted down in Hedaya, he declared British
India as a Dar- al- harb (an enemy state); in view of the
inability to wage a war of freedom against the
occupation power, he gave the lesser verdict that the
absence of Muslim administration deprived the
Muslims of India from holding the congregational
prayers of Juma' and Eids. This evoked vehement
reaction of the conservative Ulama who continued to
perform these prayers fearing lest their abolition should
disunite, deharmonise and eventually demolish the
Muslim society. His contemporary religious preacher
Maulana karamat ali jaunpuri vehemently opposed him
on this point and condemned him as the Khariji of
Bengal.
 SOCIO-ECONOMIC FIELDS
• In the socio-economic field, following the
injunctions of the Quran to the effect that
there is nothing due to man except the fruits
of his own strivings, he declared that
zamindars created under the Permanent
Settlement had no right to a share of the
agricultural crops produced by the tillers of the
land. He instructed his followers not to
participate in the Puja festivities of the
polytheistic Hindu neighbours, pay any
crop-levy imposed on them by the zamindars,
besides the legal revenues fixed by the
rent-roll of the government
CLIMAX OF THE MOVEMENT
• This policy aroused the opposition of the
newly created Hindu landlords against his
movement. They shrewdly combined their
patronising forces with the conservative
Muslim peasantry and also took into their
arms the forces of the Indigo Planters and
their combined forces of opposition
gradually came to a loggerhead about the
year 1840, when he died and was
succeeded by his son dudu miyan.