A Few Lines About Bahr-ul-Uloom

چند سطور بحرالعلوم کے بارے میں

Shams al-Mufassirin (Sun of the Exegetes), Shaykh al-Muhaddithin (Master of the Traditionists), Ustadh al-Ulama (Teacher of the Scholars), Bahr-ul-Uloom (Ocean of the Sciences) Hazrat Muhammad Abdul Qadeer Siddiqui Hasrat (may Allah have mercy on him) of Hyderabad was one such scholarly personality of the Deccan that he is rightly remembered by the titles 'Bahr-ul-Uloom' and 'Ustadh al-Ulama.'

He was born on Friday, 27 Rajab 1288 AH (13 October 1871) in Hyderabad, into a renowned scholarly family of the line of Ali. He passed the examinations of Maulvi Fadil and Munshi Fadil from Punjab University with distinction. Initially he was appointed to Dar al-Uloom, which in that era was a very famous seat of learning in Hyderabad, Deccan. When Osmania University was established, he was brought onto its faculty as Professor and Head of the Department of Religious Studies (Diniyat). By royal decree (firman) his service was continually extended for a period of ten years.

He wrote a complete tafsir (commentary) of the Noble Qur'an, which is published from Pakistan under the name Tafsir Siddiqui. The work of printing the tafsir is ongoing in the Deccan, and — God willing — it will reach completion in three volumes. In 1934, on behalf of the Hyderabad Academy, his research treatise 'Masala Adam-e-Naskh-e-Quran' (The Question of the Non-Abrogation of the Qur'an) was published, in which he established that no verse of the Noble Qur'an is abrogated (mansukh). His composition 'al-Din,' in the Arabic language, was part of the Jamia Osmania curriculum. He produced a celebrated, well-annotated translation of the work 'Fusus al-Hikam' by Shaykh al-Akbar Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi, which was published from Dar al-Tarjuma of Jamia Osmania and gained considerable fame. In the field of Sufism (tasawwuf) he has several compositions, among them Hikmat-e-Islamiyya, al-Ma'arif, al-Irfan, al-Tawhid (in the Persian language), and Makatib-e-Irfan. His pen-name (takhallus) was 'Hasrat,' and he wrote poetry in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Hindi; his collected poetry has been adorned in print under the name 'Kulliyat-e-Hasrat.'

He departed this transient world on 18 Shawwal 1380 AH (24 March 1961), on a Saturday, at the time of the afternoon ('Asr). His funeral prayer was offered at the historic Makkah Masjid of Hyderabad the next day after the Zuhr prayer, in which nearly a hundred thousand devotees took part. His burial took place within the precincts of the Siddiq Gulshan, near Bahadurpura.

Siddiq Gulshan, Hyderabad. — Muhammad Abbas Alamdar Siddiqui, Supervisor, Hasrat Academy and Library, Bahr-ul-Uloom.