Defending the Sufis in Nineteenth Century Hyderabad

Abstract

As India gradually fell into British hands, Hyderabad State became the last great bastion of traditional Indo-Muslim social and intellectual life. The old families of court and religious notables sought to maintain a metaphysical and moral order which vanished elsewhere in the dust clouds of the Rebellion. But the reformist versions of Islam that emerged in British India did find their way to Hyderabad, splintering its Muslims into polemical and defensive factions. In order to examine the strategies by which members of the old elite sought to defend the old order, this article reconstructs the biography of a major Hyderabadi Sufi, Iftikhār 'Alī Shāh Waṭan (1249/1833—1324/1906). In a period generally framed as one of religious change and reform, the article explores the patterns of continuity and 'counter reform' which are no less important to understanding Indian Muslim history in the late nineteenth century.