عوامل و زمینه‌های ورود عبدالحق دهلوی به سیاست و تأثیرات آن بر شبه‌قارۀ هند

ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Dihlawī, a prominent hadith scholar and Sufi of the Indian subcontinent in the tenth and eleventh centuries AH, was one of the earliest reformist Sufis to take a political stance toward rulers and write on politics, in contrast to the prevailing Sufi tradition of the subcontinent, which maintained a strict separation between spiritual-ethical and political-social hierarchies and regarded Sufi virtue as incompatible with engagement in the political sphere. Nevertheless, in most studies of the Indian subcontinent, his name remains primarily associated with hadith scholarship and the Qādirī-Naqshbandī orders. Because of the moderate and conservative nature of his political activities, his role in the political sphere has received comparatively little scholarly reconsideration. The present study aims to explain the factors and circumstances that led ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Dihlawī to move from Sufi practice into politics and to examine his influence on the Indian subcontinent. The significance of this study can be understood in relation to four considerations. First, it addresses the still-unresolved question of the relationship between religion and politics in the contemporary Islamic world. Second, it relates to the religious-political movements active in the Indian subcontinent today, insofar as ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq’s intellectual legacy helped lay the foundations for the school of Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī and, consequently, for the Deobandi and Ahl-i Hadith movements. Third, the topic is methodologically significant because it challenges conventional boundaries between Sufism, hadith scholarship, and political thought. Fourth, it addresses an existing gap in the literature, as previous studies have focused primarily on ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq’s position in hadith scholarship and the Sufi orders, while the political dimension of his thought has received comparatively little independent examination. The central research question is: What factors and circumstances led ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq to enter the political sphere while remaining faithful to the Sufi path? What was the nature of his political activity, and what were its principal concerns? What consequences did his political engagement have for subsequent religious-political movements in the Indian subcontinent? This study adopts the intellectual history approach of Henry Stuart Hughes. Unlike the history of ideas or thought, which examines phenomena independently of their contexts and the individuals involved, Hughes’s intellectual history is both context-oriented and individual-centered. It regards thought as the product of a particular mind responding to the shared intellectual climate of its time. On the basis of this methodology, the study proceeds in three stages: the background (emergence), which examines the religious and political-social conditions in which ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq’s political thought took shape; the activities (process), which explains the nature and principal concerns of his political engagement; and the consequences (outcomes), which explores the results and effects of this thought. In terms of its purpose, the study is basic research; in terms of its subject matter, it employs textual analysis. It draws primarily on ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq’s own works, including Akhbār al-Akhyār fī Asrār al-Abrār, Tanbīh al-Ghāfilīn li-Fanāʾ al-Dunyā wa-Arbābihā, Risāla Nūriyya Sulṭāniyya, and al-Makātīb wa-al-Rasāʾil ilā Arbāb al-Kamāl wa-al-Faḍāʾil, while referring to secondary sources to clarify historical and ancillary issues. The study hypothesizes that a combination of political and religious factors drew ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq into the political arena.
The findings indicate that the second half of Akbar Shah’s fifty-year reign was marked by religious deviation and political corruption, and that ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq encountered these challenges in practice upon his return to India from the Hijaz. Three measures undertaken by Akbar Shah played a decisive role in creating these conditions. First, in 1579 CE, he issued the “Decree of Infallibility,” which transferred the ultimate authority to interpret religion and exercise ijtihād from the religious scholars to the monarch, paving the way for his religious and political autocracy. Second, he promoted nationalist ideas and sought to establish political unity between Hindus and Muslims, a policy that came at the expense of certain Islamic legal injunctions, including the prohibition of cow slaughter and the permissibility of eating pork. Third, he introduced the “Divine Faith” (Dīn-i Ilāhī), or the unity of religions, an eclectic synthesis of Islamic, Hindu, and Zoroastrian teachings that positioned Akbar Shah as both the god and the prophet of an emerging religion. In his political and mystical treatises, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq criticized these measures, albeit subtly and indirectly. In response to these circumstances, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq adopted a cautious strategy within a critical-reformist framework, and there is no record of his visiting Akbar Shah’s court. Acknowledging the cautious nature of his own approach, he stated that he spoke only on matters of religion and the Sharīʿa and did not depart from the bounds of moderation. Following Akbar Shah’s death, and recalling the guidance of his own Naqshbandī master, Shaykh Muḥammad Bāqī bi-llāh, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq began seeking to reform Jahangir Shah through the composition of advisory epistles. He began by writing Tanbīh al-Ghāfilīn, which was delivered to Jahangir through Shaykh Farīd, a scholar at the court. These efforts contributed, during Jahangir Shah’s reign, to the establishment of a form of “super-law” that repealed many of Akbar Shah’s laws, including the requirement to prostrate before the king and the prohibition on cow slaughter. During the reign of Shah Jahan and, subsequently, Aurangzeb, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq’s reformist counsel and correspondence helped foster a more religiously oriented political order and the stricter implementation of Ḥanafī legal rulings. Within this same discourse, a more pronounced confrontation with the East India Company and the development of an anti-colonial discourse also took shape. In terms of long-term consequences, the intellectual legacy of ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Dihlawī influenced later reformist movements in the Indian subcontinent, albeit indirectly and through the mediation of subsequent generations of scholars, along three distinct but interconnected paths: (a) the spiritual-network path, through his and Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī’s connection with Shaykh Bāqī bi-llāh within the Naqshbandī order, a connection that was subsequently carried forward by Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī; (b) the methodological-scholarly path, through his prioritization of hadith scholarship, which provided a model for the Ahl-i Hadith movement; and (c) the historiographical and identity-forming path, through the compilation of Akhbār al-Akhyār as an alternative historiography of religious identity, which movements such as Deoband reproduced during the period of British colonial rule in order to preserve Islamic identity. In conclusion, unlike the earlier Sufi tradition, which promoted political withdrawal and fatalism and often served to legitimize rulers’ autocracy, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Dihlawī transformed fatalism into a strategy of prudent action and offered a subtle and cautious redefinition of the relationship between religion and politics, making no distinction between these two spheres. His critical-reformist approach, despite its conservatism and avoidance of open confrontation with the sultans, offers a middle-ground model for interaction between religious institutions and political power. This approach had a profound and lasting influence both on the rulers of his own time and on subsequent reformers and religious-political movements. Reexamining his legacy may help foster a more precise understanding of contemporary religious scholars’ experiences in dealing with modern Muslim states.