Shah Waliullah Dehlawi

A Delhi scholar who studied hadith in Madinah, he translated the Quran into Persian, wrote Hujjat Allah al-Balighah and al-Fawz al-Kabir, and renewed the study of hadith in India.

Shah Waliullah Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-Rahim al-Dehlawi was born in Shawwal 1114 AH (1703) near Delhi, in the last years of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. His father, Shah ʿAbd al-Rahim, was a respected scholar and Sufi who had founded the Madrasa Rahimiyyah in Delhi and taught him himself. He memorised the Quran by seven and completed the standard course of study at fifteen.

When his father died in 1131 AH, he took over teaching at the Madrasa Rahimiyyah. In 1143 AH he travelled to the Hijaz for Hajj and stayed more than a year, studying hadith in Madinah, especially with Shaykh Abu Tahir al-Kurdi al-Madani. He returned to Delhi in 1145 AH determined to make the Quran and hadith central to learning in India.

He translated the Quran into Persian, the language of educated Muslims in India, as Fath al-Rahman, and wrote al-Fawz al-Kabir on the principles of tafsir. His Hujjat Allah al-Balighah explains the wisdom and purposes behind the rulings of the Shariʿah, and he wrote commentaries on the Muwattaʾ of Imam Malik (al-Musawwa and al-Musaffa), as well as Izalat al-Khafaʾ on the rightly guided caliphate. He wrote during a time of political decline and called Muslims to unity, to the Quran and Sunnah and to moral renewal.

He died in Delhi on 29 Muharram 1176 AH (1762) and was buried in the Mehndiyan graveyard. His sons Shah ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, Shah Rafiʿ al-Din and Shah ʿAbd al-Qadir carried on his work; Shah Rafiʿ al-Din and Shah ʿAbd al-Qadir produced early Urdu translations of the Quran. Most later scholarly traditions of South Asia trace their hadith chains through him.