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Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī and Muslim-Christian Controversy in India in the Mid-19th Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

A. A. Powell
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Extract

During the 1850's a prolonged encounter took place in the city of Agra between a Muslim ‘ālim, Maulānā Raḥmat Alläh Kairānawī, and a German evangelical missionary, the Reverend K. G. Pfander. The early Mughal emperors had developed Agra as the capital of their expanding empire, and even after the transfer of the court in 1648 to nearby Delhi, the city had retained some importance as a centre of Muslim culture and learning. But the period of the decline of the Mughal fortunes in the 18th century culminated in the capture of Agra in 1803 by the forces of the East India Company, and the next half-century saw the transformation of the city into a key administrative centre in the expansion of British control over north India. In 1836 Agra was made the headquarters of a new unit of administration—the North-Western Provinces. Hence the phase of active religious encounter which began shortly after that date should be examined in terms of the impact which British rule, Western culture, and the Christian religion had effected on the people of the province since its annexation. Indeed in the eyes of missionary as well as ‘ālim, the generating force behind the new confrontation was a fear that the beginning of Christian preaching activity in Agra was a threat to the hold of Islam on the uneducated Muslims of the city and the surrounding region.

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Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 108 , Issue 1 , January 1976 , pp. 42 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1976

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References

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7 K. G. Pfander, “Wage der Wahrheit”, MS No. Ha 42, Basel Mission Archive, first published in Persian as the Mizān al-ḥaqq, Shusha, 1835.

8 ‘Usmānī, Muḥammad Taqī, Bā'ibil se Qur'ān tak, Karachi, 1968, 179–184Google Scholar. For biographical details about Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh see also Ṣabrī, Imdad, Āsār-i Raḥmat, Delhi, 1967Google Scholar, and Salīm, Muḥammad, Ek mujāhid me‘mār, Mecca, 1952.Google Scholar

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26 “Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away”, Luke 21: 23 (King James's version).

27 Ḥarām is defined in the Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, 133, as anything “forbidden by the Sacred Law”. An example of Wazīr Khān's application of the term ḥarām to the contents of the Bible was his argument that according to the Torah many things were ḥarām, but by the time of the apostles only meats offered to idols, blood, things strangled, and fornication were considered ḥarām; St. Paul, on the other hand, said nothing could of itself be ḥarām, whereas contemporary Christians consider only fornication to be ḥarām. In the opinion of the Muslim doctor these changes in the application of the term meant that abrogation must have taken place.

28 Muḥammad Taqī ‘Umānī, op. cit., 186–9.

29 op. cit., 191.

30 ibid.

31 “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”, First Epistle General of John, 5: 7. 19th-century and modern commentators agree that this verse is an interpolation which is not to be found in any manuscript earlier than the 4th century A.D. It has been omitted from the revised versions of the Bible but is included in the A. V. from which were made the translations into Persian and Urdu which were circulating in India in the 19th century.

32 Muḥammad Taqī ‘Umāni, op. cit., 192.

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41 Miyān, op. cit., 337–41.

42 Muḥammad Taqī ‘Umānī, op. cit., 201.