The influence of Shihabaddin Mardjani on the Hanafism of the Middle East and South Asia

Abstract

This paper explores the influence of Shihabaddin Mardjani on Ḥanafī scholars in the Middle East and South Asia. It examines the impact of Mardjani’s discussion of ijtihād and taqlīd in his famous work, Nāẓūrat al- Ḥaqq on four specific scholars. Much scholarship on Mardjani has focused on his important role as an innovative Tatar Muslim thinker of the Volga-Ural region. This paper, however, shifts attention to his stature as an influential transregional Ḥanafī thinker by outlining the impact of his work on Muslim scholars writing in the Middle East and South Asia. Though they were first taken up by the “dissident” ḥadith-centric Ḥanafism of ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al- Laknawī, Mardjani’s ideas on ijtihād and taqlīd later became naturalized within mainstream Ḥanafī thinking by the Egyptian mufti Muḥammad Bakhīt al-Muṭīʿī, and by the critic of Modernism, Muḥammad Zāhid al- Kawtharī. Later, it was incorporated into a textbook written by Mufti Taqī al-ʿUthmānī of Pakistan, further embedding it in the dominant expression of Ḥanafism.