3 - The ʿUlama on Hajj

Summary

Chapter 3 considers the pilgrimages and polemics of religious scholars: the ʿulama. Highlighting their intellectual exchanges with counterparts in the Hijaz, it contends that Mughal decline encouraged the interventions of scholars of Islam in debates over moral-political suasion, even though they had hitherto stood at the wings of state affairs. In particular, the chapter illustrates how the rise of Sunni “revivalism” or tajdīd – which saw the ʿulama attempt to reverse perceived social-political degradations by arguing for a “return” to the original precepts and principles of Islam – was intensely indebted to intellectual interactions on hajj. Beginning with a social history of knowledge formation among the ʿulama, the chapter first reconstructs the thoughts, travels, and far-flung networks of a towering Indian theologian, Shah Waliullah of Delhi (1703–1762). Situating his ascendance in clerical circles within India against the backdrop of scholarly connections with the Hijaz, the chapter then diminishes the focus. Through microhistorical methods, it reconstructs the career of a little-known judge or qāzī entangled in these same webs of reform and renewal. It thereby shows how the qāzi’s revivalism, developed as a pilgrim-student in Arabia, informed his later career as a judicial authority at a fledgling post-Mughal state seeking legitimacy through Islam.