Islamic Thought in Early Modern India : History and Legacy

A wide-ranging new history of Islamic thought and practice in India from the early eighteenth century to the presentFocusing on one of the most influential families in Indian Islam, this history provides a broad yet intimate view of Islamic thought and practice in India from the early eighteenth century to the present. As Muhammad Qasim Zaman shows, the imprint of Shah Wali Allah of Delhi (1703–1762) and his descendants on Islam in South Asia extends from political and social thought to law, theories of ritual practice, sectarian polemics, Qur’anic hermeneutics, historiography, and mysticism. The sheer breadth of the family’s intellectual engagements and their afterlives provide an unparalleled perspective on changing visions of Islam and their interconnections over the past three centuries. Based on new manuscript research, Islamic Thought in Early Modern India describes the tumultuous events through which the Wali Allah family and their associates lived, and to which they responded, including the decline of the Mughal empire, invasions and famines, the rise of the British East India Company, and the establishment of British colonial rule. It was an age that saw great debates within the Muslim community about questions of religious authority and proper Islamic belief and practice. The book also tells the story of numerous people, many now forgotten, who curated the legacy of the Wali Allah family from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Chronicling how Muslims in India and beyond have understood their past and present, India, and the world, Islamic Thought in Early Modern India helps explain how Islam has become what it is today.