Rahmatullah Kairanawi (also known as Rahmatullah Kairanawi Al-Hindi; 1818–1891) was a

Sunni Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a dis ...

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researche ...

and

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

who is best known for his work, '' Izhar ul-Haqq''.

Background

Kairanawi was born in

Kairana Kairana is a city and a municipal board in Shamli district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is approximately from Shamli city. Demographics As of 2011 Indian Census, Kairana had a total population of 89,000, of which 47,047 were male ...

Muzaffarnagar Muzaffarnagar is a city under Muzaffarnagar District in the Indian State of Uttar Pradesh. It is situated midway on the Delhi - Haridwar/Dehradun National Highway (NH 58) and is also well connected with the national railway network. It is ...

in 1818. He is a descendant of the third Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, his full lineage is mentioned in family sources. Abd al-Rahmānn Gazruni is a forefather of Kairanawi, was the military Chief Justice in Mahmood Ghaznavi Armies. Abd al-Rahmān Gazrūni is buried near the Panipat fort. (Qur'an se Bible Tak
Kairanvi Biography in Arabic
, Madrasa Saulatia website. Part of the family wealth, a large property in Kairana, was granted by

Akbar the Great Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (25 October 1542 – 27 October 1605), popularly known as Akbar the Great ( fa, ), and also as Akbar I (), was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Hum ...

. Many family members held high positions and/or were intellectuals. Sheikh Hakeem Abdul Kareem who was an 8th great grandfather of Rahmatullah was the Emperor Akbar's physician. Kairanwi began receiving traditional Islamic education at the age of 6, memorizing the Qur'an at 12. He also learned

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

and Persian. Later he moved to

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

where he studied different disciplines including

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...

. Working as a

Mufti A Mufti (; ar, مفتي) is an Islamic jurist qualified to issue a nonbinding opinion (''fatwa'') on a point of Islamic law (''sharia''). The act of issuing fatwas is called ''iftāʾ''. Muftis and their ''fatwas'' played an important role ...

and

Sharia Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the H ...

teacher, he founded a religious school in Kariana.

Name and lineage

His ism (

given name A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a ...

) was Rahmatullāh. His ''

nasab Arabic language names have historically been based on a long naming system. Many people from the Arabic-speaking and also Muslim countries have not had given/ middle/family names but rather a chain of names. This system remains in use throughou ...

'' (

patronymic A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor. Patronymics are still in use, including mandatory use, in many countries worldwide, alt ...

) is: Rahmatullāh ibn Khalīlullāh ibn Najībullāh ibn Habībullāh ibn Abd al-Rahīm ibn Qutb al-Dīn ibn Fuzail ibn Abd al-Rahīm ibn Abd al-Karīm ibn Hasan ibn Abd al-Samad ibn Abu Ali ibn Muhammad Yūsuf ibn Abd al-Qādir ibn Jalāluddīn Muhammad ibn Mahmūd ibn Yaqūb ibn Īsā ibn Ismā'īl ibn Muhammad Taqi ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ali Naqi ibn Usmān ibn Abdullāh ibn Shihābuddīn ibn Abd al-Rahmān Gāzrūni ibn Abd al-Azīz Sarkhasi ibn Khālid ibn Walīd ibn Abd al-Azīz ibn Abd al-Rahmān ibn Abdullāh Sāni ibn Abd al-Azīz ibn Abdullāh Kabīr ibn Amar ibn

Uthman Uthman ibn Affan ( ar, عثمان بن عفان, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān; – 17 June 656), also spelled by Colloquial Arabic, Turkish and Persian rendering Osman, was a second cousin, son-in-law and notable companion of the Islamic prop ...

Debate with Pfander

In 1837 the

Church Mission Society The Church Mission Society (CMS), formerly known as the Church Missionary Society, is a British mission society working with the Christians around the world. Founded in 1799, CMS has attracted over nine thousand men and women to serve as mission ...

appointed Karl Gottlieb Pfander, described by Eugene Stock as "perhaps the greatest of all missionaries to Mohammedans", to

Agra Agra (, ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra ...

Northern India North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central ...

, where in 1854 he engaged in a famous public debate with leading Islamic scholars. The main Muslim debater was Kairanawi, being assisted by

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

-speaking Muhammad Wazîr Khân and influential Islamic writer Imad ud-din Lahiz.Schirrmacher, Christine
"The influence of German Biblical criticism on Muslim apologetics in the 19th century"
''Contra Mundum'', 1997. Accessed 27 September 2007. Kairanawi used arguments from recent European theologically critical works that Pfander was unfamiliar with, having left Europe before these were published, though his main source of reference was the apocryphal sixteenth-century

Gospel of Barnabas The Gospel of Barnabas is a non-canonical, pseudepigraphical gospel reportedly written by the early Christian disciple Barnabas, who (in this work) is one of the apostles of Jesus. It is about the same length as the four canonical gospels comb ...

, which he held to be authentic.

Indian Rebellion of 1857

Following armed uprisings against the British in which he personally took part, Kairanawani (his property was confiscated by the Imperial British Raj) had to leave all his property (auctioned later), and board a ship in

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

. Arriving at the port of

Mocha, Yemen Mokha ( ar, المُخا, al-Mukhā), also spelled Mocha, or Mukha, is a port city on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. Until Aden and al Hudaydah eclipsed it in the 19th century, Mokha was the principal port for Yemen's capital, Sanaa. Long known fo ...

, he walked to

Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow v ...

. The journey took two years.

Author

Kairanawi wrote books in Arabic, Persian and Urdu.

Izhar ul-Haq (Truth Revealed)

Written originally in Arabic, the book Izhar ul-Haqq in six volumes was translated later into Urdu, and from Urdu into a summarized English version published by Ta-Ha. The book aims to respond to Christian criticism of Islam. It is the first Muslim book to use Western scholarly works in order to ascertain the errors and contradictions of the Bible. The doctrine of Trinity is purportedly contested using biblical, Christian and other sources. Christine Schirrmacher, a German scholar of Islamic Studies, states in an article on the Pfander-Kairanawi debate: "The Demonstration of the Truth' (izhâr al-haqq) served as a summary of all possible charges against Christianity and was therefore used after al-Kairânawî's death as a sort of encyclopaedia since al-Kairânawî extended the material of former polemicists like 'Ali Tabarî, Ibn Hazm or Ibn Taymiyya to a great extent."

The Madrasa Sawlatia

While residing in Mecca, Kairanawi founded a religious school there named Madrasah as-Sawlatiyah. Rahmatullah Kairanawi was appointed as a lecturer at the Masjid-e-Haram by the Sheikh-ul-Ulama (The Leading Scholar) Sheikh Ahmad Dahlan As-Shafiee. Kairanawi started teaching and realized that lessons were delivered as sermons, rather than, planned academic lectures. He gathered some of the Indian Muslim immigrants, wealthy benefactors to establish an authentic Islamic Law School to teach the Islamic sciences through a sound curriculum. He established the Madrassah in 1290 hijrah corresponding to 1874 A.D. The major contributor was a lady of Calcutta by the name of Sawlat-un-Nisa, on whose name the Madrassah is named. The Madrassah is still in existence and has well known alumni around the world. Madrasah as-Sawlatiyah.

Death

Kairanwi died in 1891 (22

Ramadan , type = islam , longtype = Religious , image = Ramadan montage.jpg , caption=From top, left to right: A crescent moon over Sarıçam, Turkey, marking the beginning of the Islamic month of Ramadan. Ramadan Quran reading in Bandar Torkaman, Iran. ...

1308 AH) in

and was buried in

Jannat al-Mu'alla Jannat al-Mu'alla ( ar, جَنَّة ٱلْمُعَلَّاة, Jannah al-Muʿallāh, lit=The Most Exalted Paradise), also known as the "Cemetery of Ma'la" ( ar, مَقْبَرَة ٱلْمَعْلَاة, link=no ') and ''Al-Ḥajūn'' ( ar, ٱل ...

References

Bibliography

مولانا رحمت اللہ کیرانوی کی علمی و دینی خدمات کا تحقیقی جائزہ
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kairanawi, Rahmatullah Hanafis Maturidis 19th-century Muslim theologians Sunni Sufis Scholars from Uttar Pradesh Indian Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam 19th-century Indian non-fiction writers 1818 births 1891 deaths Critics of Christianity Burials at Jannat al-Mu'alla People from Shamli district