The Efforts of the scholar Muhammad Siddiq Hasan Khan in service of the Sunnah

Abstract

Abu al-Tayyib Siddiq Hasan Khan was an imam, scholar, and researcher. He was known as the reviver of the Sunnah and the suppressor of heresy. God granted him an astonishing level of religious knowledge and virtuous morals for his era. He was famous among his peers for his adherence to the Quran and the Sunnah and for abandoning blind following. He was particularly famous for his efforts in clarifying the status of the Sunnah to people and highlighting its importance. He did this through explanations, summaries, and translations with great care and respect. When God facilitated his affairs, he used his wealth and status to serve Islam and disseminate knowledge of hadith in three languages, Arabic, Persian and Urdu. He called the people to correct belief and action according to the Book of Allah and the correct Sunnah (authentic ‘way’ of the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him). He assisted scholars and writers to spread Islamic legal sciences. He compiled a huge library full of valuable books and generously distributed some of the most important hadith books and their explanations, at his personal expense, to students from India, Egypt, and Turkey.
This article details his books that were written on hadith sciences in Persian. We have found that he sometimes presents his own opinions and mentions problematic issues and provides a response to them. It is clear that he was mostly influenced by Yemeni scholars. His knowledge base in those written works is large, and their contents have not been made completely clear. They have not been studied carefully enough or adequately disseminated among scholars in this field. We note the importance of these written works, and we recommend that scholars undertake a detailed study of them and republish them to benefit people on a wide scale.