Preface
Never before that fateful day had he ever arrived late in class-a delay of just half an hour. The delay was caused by no ordinary incident: his mother had expired and he was obliged to stay back to attend his dear mom's funeral. However, once the burial was over, the grief-stricken lad rushed to attend his class. This dedicated student who had all the makings of a future scholar was none else but Dr Muhammad Hamidullah whose life and works were the subject of intellectual discussions at a two-day international seminar held in New Delhi the proceedings of which make up the volume you have in your hand. In all, we received some forty abstracts in English and nearly 35 scholars attended and intellectually enriched the seminar with their scholarly papers. As could be expected, some of the papers presented dealt with the same theme which resulted in repetitions and compelled us not to include over a dozen papers in this volume. It must be emphasized, however, to the credit of their respective authors that most of the left-out papers are academically valuable and may be published in our periodicals later.
Excellence in any field requires total dedication and submission. Great scholars are not born great, carrying knowledge from their mothers' wombs. They attain knowledge through hard work, by never missing an opportunity to learn and by burning the midnight oil. Many scholars who presented papers in the seminar were in the twilight of their academic career but a great majority consisted of young men who were just stretching their wings to take to the sky. Sometimes, we search for icons. The 94 year-young scholar, Dr Muhammad Hamidullah, who breathed his last in 2002, should indeed be the icon of the young research scholars who studied him and wrote articles about his life and works.
Dr Hamidullah has been called the first and last Muslim Orientalist. Orientalists have been of three varieties. There were ones who approached and studied Islam with a negative mindset.
The tradition of attacking Islam maliciously and baselessly was started by St. John of Damascus, a contemporary of our Tabi'een. St. John's tradition of maligning Islam was subsequently carried on by large numbers of Western scholars, diplomats and travellers and continues unabated till date. The Orientalists of second variety were those who, with passing time, were forced to bring about changes in their outlook and approach. They criticized and abandoned the abusive negativity of earlier Orientalists and seemingly adopted objectivity in their works.. Some of them were even hailed as scholars and authors sympathetic towards Islam. However, some of their views, especially regarding the Quran being God's final revelation and Muhammad (SAW) being the last Messenger of Allah, are contestable. Finally, there were the Orientalists who were just pure scholars. They loved scholarship and focused mainly on searching rare manuscripts which they analysed and edited with painstaking efforts, published and preserved for posterity. Dr Hamidullah was an Orientalist in this tradition. Following in the footsteps of the 19th century Orientalists, he hunted for manuscripts and documents in libraries, dug out the rare ones, edited and translated them into the living international languages of our time. Not only Muslims researchers but, in fact, the entire fraternity of scholars of Islamic Studies owes Dr Hamidullah a huge debt for his monumental works on Islamic manuscripts.
Dr Hamidullah was a specialist on early Islam. A large number of Orientalists have written on the origin of Islam and sought to create doubts in the minds of readers. Dr Hamidullah's 'Muslim. Orientalism' was unique. To make such a huge and great statement that the collection and preservation of Hadith did not begin in the second century of Islamic calendar, he unearthed Sahifah Hammam ibn Munabbih and impressed upon one and all that the tradition of writing the Hadith had started well during the Prophet's time itself. He also unearthed, edited and translated Kitab al-Maghazi by Ibn Ishaq, the first work on the life of the Prophet and thus silently but cogently impressed upon his readers that efforts to preserve the sayings and works of the Prophet did not start in second or third century of the Islamic calendar as claimed by some Orientalists but this noble exercise had begun during the lifetime of the Prophet himself.
Dr Hamidullah is rightly hailed as a great biographer of the Prophet in modern times. He wrote a two-volume biography of the Prophet in French. Besides, he unearthed and edited Kitab al-Maghazi by Ibn Ishaque. He also wrote on several other aspects of Prophet Muhammad's life including his political and economic concepts and actions, etc. It also appears that for Hamidullah Seerah was not only about describing or writing on the Prophet's life, personality and mission. He was equally concerned with exposition of how various institutions were developed by the Prophet. So, he hailed and introduced Mithaq-e-Madina as the first written constitution of the world which was drafted to govern the multi-religious city state of Madinah. Similarly, through the lectures he delivered in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, Dr Hamidullah proved beyond doubt that the Islamic system of education had started evolving during the time of the Prophet. His views on the origin of the Islamic jurisprudence, likewise, are thought-provoking and highly valuable.
Hindu (943)
Agriculture (137)
Ancient (1130)
Archaeology (824)
Architecture (578)
Art & Culture (946)
Biography (737)
Buddhist (547)
Cookery (168)
Emperor & Queen (587)
Islam (313)
Jainism (345)
Literary (887)
Mahatma Gandhi (396)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Visual Search
Manage Wishlist