Renewing Muslim Knowledge Traditions: The Sufi Path of Shah Wali Allah Dihlawi (1703-1762)

In this dissertation, I will explain the essential influence of the Indian Sufi scholar, Shah Wali Allah Dihlawi (d. 1762) on the trajectory of the Indian Islamic tradition, and simultaneously, show how central his Sufi tradition was to a broader Islamic tradition in the Arabia peninsula, while being grounded in the very particular Indian indigenous setting. As Wali Allah has typically been read as a reformer with an eye towards modernity, this dissertation largely ignores the reception of Wali Allah by other later important Indian scholars to show the worldview of Sufi scholars in India, their practical daily interactions, and the intellectual contributions they made to a wider conversation about the connection of God to the world. In doing so, Wali Allah systematized several different traditions, from that of the Islamic philosophers to the Sufi tradition, the disciplines of Prophetic reports, and Islamic legal theory. His wide-ranging exploration of the disciplines of the Islamic sciences are lauded until today by very different scholars, some modernist, some traditionalists, and they emphasize very different aspects of his work depending on which Wali Allah they find in the early

modern sources. Thus, he is a critic of Sufi practice for some, a jurisprudential theorist for others, but all South Asian Muslims agree that he is the epitome of the South Asian Islamic tradition. However, the overall emphasis on Islamic legalism as the core or essence of Islamic thought by Western scholars and traditional scholars alike has diverted attention from what may seem obvious after reading this dissertation: Sufism was the center of Wali Allah’s world, and this was largely due to an affective interest in interacting with God and the metaphysical realities whereby one could get to know God as Reality. Through the figure of the Prophet Muhammad, Sufis like Wali Allah were able to connect to the Unseen Realm and come to know God. All worldly disciplinary knowledge was secondary to this ultimate goal. Sufis did participate in disciplines like history, law, and exegesis that had their own rules, but this time period is uniquely interesting for the self-possessed way Sufis like Wali Allah waded into contemporary intellectual debates in a wide range of disciplines that are seen as beyond the purview of Sufism.

The “irrationality” of these ideas has been ignored by modern scholars due to a series of anachronistic readings and political projects that have used Wali Allah’s thought in ever more materialist scholarly settings. Frankly, the Sufi mentality that animates his interests became too embarrassing to engage. This dissertation attempts to give credence to the social and scholarly Sufism that produced intellectual works in the eighteenth century, and did so without being interested in European scholarly innovations at the same time. It was not only that Sufis had their own worldview that they were interested in expounding, they also did not need to respond to Europeans because they were not intellectually challenged by European ideas as of yet. These circumstances would quickly change in 1803 after the British took over Delhi, the symbolic center of many layers of meaning for South Asians living in Hindustan, from sovereignty of the Mughal emperors, to the layers of sacred geographies that ensconced the subcontinent in divine grace accessed by holy men for efficacious worldly spiritual benefits.