¹ ‘Ali Nadwi, Abu'l-Hasan, Glory of Iqbal, Series No. 71, (trans.) Kidwai, Muhammad Asif (Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research and Publications, 1973)Google Scholar, Preface.

² Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 12Google Scholar.

³ White, Hayden V., The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Although many of Iqbal's biographers portray him as only, or at least primarily, revering the Islamic past, Dr Mohammad Aslam Jawed challenges this view, stating, ‘His [Iqbal's] devotion to Islam did not take precedence over his devotion to his motherland’: Jawed, Mohammad Aslam, The Unknown Iqbal (New Delhi: Kitab Publishing House, 1996), p. 41Google Scholar.

⁵ Jawed also comments that Iqbal's message was not specific to Muslims—it was for all Indians in particular, and all mankind in general. He writes, ‘The fanatical Muslim communalists used his teachings for their own communal interests. They ignored his teachings of humanism, universalism and his love for his motherland and portrayed him mainly as Pan-Islamist': ibid.

⁶ Ibid., p. 55.

⁷ See: Khamene'i, ‘Ali and Shariati, ‘Ali, Iqbal: Manifestation of the Islamic Spirit, Two Contemporary Muslim Views: Ayatullah Sayyid Ali Khamene'i and Ali Shariati, (trans) Qara'i, Mahliqa and Bakhtiar, Laleh (Albuquerque, NM: ABJAD and Open Press (Holdings) Limited, 1991)Google Scholar.

⁸ For more information on the Nadwat al-‘Ulama, see: Nadwi, Muhammad Ishaq and Khan, Shams-i Tabriz, Ta'rikh-i Nadwat al-‘Ulama, 2 vols (Lucknow: Nizamat-i Nadwat al-‘Ulama, 1983–84)Google Scholar.

⁹ Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, ‘A Venture in Critical Islamic Historiography and the Significance of its Failure’, Numen, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan. 1994), p. 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Ahmad, Aziz, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857–1964 (London: issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs by Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 109Google Scholar.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 37.

¹² Hefner, Robert W., ‘Introduction: The Culture, Politics and Future of Muslim Education’, in Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education, (eds) Hefner, Robert W. and Zaman, Muhammad Qasim (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 19Google Scholar.

¹³ Ahmad, Islamic Modernism, p. 37.

¹⁴ For a history of this movement, see: Metcalf, Barbara Daly, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 266CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other rival movements of this era include the Ahl-i Hadith movement and the Barelawi movement. Barbara Metcalf describes the Ahl-i Hadith movement as ‘one of the most visible of the Muslim intellectual movements of the late nineteenth century’: ibid., p. 268. ‘The Ahl-i Hadith rejected Sufism, medieval jurisprudence … insisting that the only path forward was a strict commitment to the law, which believers could discover for themselves through study of the Qur'an and Hadith’: Hefner, ‘Introduction’, p. 19. Like the Deobandi and Ahl-i Hadith movements, the Barelawi movement also arose in the second half of the nineteenth century. Contrary to the beliefs of the Ahl-i Hadith and the Deobandis, ‘the Barelawis affirm the authority not just of the Prophet but also of the saints and holy people, whom they revere as sources of religious guidance and vehicles of mediation between God and human beings’: Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 11Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, ‘Religious Education and the Rhetoric of Reform: The Madrasa in British India and Pakistan’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Apr. 1999), pp. 303–4Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Ernst, Carl W. and Lawrence, Bruce B., Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 106–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Ahmad, Islamic Modernism, p. 112.

¹⁸ Ibid. The reasons for this transition will be explored later in this article. For another source on this subject, see: Malik, Jamal, ‘The Making of a Council: The Nadwat Al-‘Ulama’, Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 144, No. 1 (1994), pp. 60–91Google Scholar, particularly p. 91.

¹⁹ Ahmad, Islamic Modernism, p. 112.

²⁰ Metcalf, Islamic Revival, p. 140.

²¹ White, The Content of the Form, p. 9.

²² Ibid., p. 9.

²³ Ibid., p. 18.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 1.

²⁵ The Urdu version of this work is called Khutbat-i Ahmadiyya: Ahmad, Islamic Modernism, p. 39. Gottlob, Michael (ed.), Historical Thinking in Modern South Asia: A Handbook of Sources from Colonial Times to the Present (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 124Google Scholar.

²⁶ Ahmad, Islamic Modernism, p. 39. Moreover, we are informed that this piece was written to refute ‘Sir William Muir's scholarly but highly polemical Life of Mahomet (1858)’: ibid., pp. 39–40.

²⁷ Qasim Zaman writes, ‘The concern to acquaint the Muslims of India with the earliest history of Islam, and to help them become better Muslims, has characterized the Nadwat al-‘Ulama's historical scholarship since its inception in 1984’: Zaman, ‘A Venture’, p. 26.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 27.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ White, The Content of the Form, p. 14.

³¹ Taylor defines a social imaginary as ‘the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations’: Taylor, Charles, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² Ibid., p. 28.

³³ Tweed, Thomas A., Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ Zaman, ‘A Venture’, p. 27. For more information on Shibli Nu‘mani, see: Nadwi, Sayyid Sulayman, Hayat-i Shibli (Azamgarh: Dar al-musannifin, 1943)Google Scholar.

³⁵ Zaman, ‘A Venture’, p. 27.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 29.

³⁷ Ibid. In January 1912 Shibli Nu‘mani announced his intention of writing this sira in al-Nadwa, the Nadwat al-‘Ulama's monthly journal.

³⁸ Ibid. Also see: Gottlob (ed.), Historical Thinking, pp. 134–5.

³⁹ Nadvi, Sayyid Sulaiman, Iqbal, Sayyid Sulaiman Nadvi ki Nazar Men, (comp.) Rahi, Akhtar (Lahore: Bazm-i Iqbal, 1978), p. 47Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Ibid., pp. 116–17.

⁴¹ Zafarul-Islam Khan, ‘Nadwi’, in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn, (eds) P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (Brill Online, 2008). In the wake of his initiation by the Sufi murshid Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi in 1940, Sulayman is said to have renounced his earlier views and become a conservative traditionalist.

⁴² Sayyid Sulayman Nadwi's association with Sayyid Ahmad Khan's Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College continued until almost the end of his life. In 1941 the institute conferred on him the degree of ‘Doctor of Letters’. See: ‘Founders’, Darul Musannefin Shibli Academy: Research Center of Islamic Studies & Oriental Learning, www.shibliacademy.org/founders, [accessed 5 April 2019].

⁴³ Zaman, ‘A Venture’, p. 26.

⁴⁴ Nadvi, Iqbal, Sayyid Sulaiman Nadvi, p. 83.

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 85.

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 86.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 116.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 118.

⁴⁹ Sulayman writes that such an ‘erudite philosopher, Prophet-loving poet, interpreter of Islamic philosophy, serenader of the nation's caravan was only born after centuries and will probably not be born again until many centuries’: ibid., p. 116.

⁵⁰ Nadwi, Glory of Iqbal, p. 13. The Arabic book, Rawa'i‘ Iqbal, was later translated into Urdu and English. The Urdu version is called Naqush-i Iqbal and the English version, Glory of Iqbal.

⁵¹ Ibid., p. 15.

⁵² Ibid., p. 11.

⁵³ Ibid., pp. 18–19.

⁵⁴ For example, we see chapters titled: ‘Satin's Advisory Council’, ‘To the Saqi’, ‘Prayer of Tariq’, and so on.

⁵⁵ Nadwi, Glory of Iqbal, p. 19.

⁵⁶ Zaman, ‘Religious Education’, pp. 308–9.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Nadwi and Khan, Ta'rikh-i Nadwat al-‘Ulama, Vol. 1, pp. 311–12.

⁵⁹ In his preface to the book ‘Abd al-Salam explains that Sayyid Sulayman Nadwi suggested the book's title.

⁶⁰ Nadvi, Abdul Salam, Iqbal-e Kamil (Lahore: Maktaba-i Adab Urdu, 1965), p. 75Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Ibid., p. 69.

⁶² Ibid., p. 64. ‘Abd al-Salam also uses Mawlana Abu'l A‘la Mawdudi's narrations on Iqbal to emphasize this point. In the chapter titled ‘Actions and Worship’, ‘Abd al-Salam quotes Mawdudi as saying that, contrary to popular opinion, Iqbal was indeed a practising Muslim. ‘In actuality, he [Iqbal] wasn't so un-practicing. He had a special and unbounded love for the recitation of the Qur'an and he used to perform his prayers with special ardor and to the extent of crying—however, he did so in secret’: ibid., p. 61. At another point ‘Abd al-Salam writes, ‘People become bereft of Islam and Islamic principles on journeying to Europe. However … on traveling to Europe, Iqbal became a staunch Muslim’: ibid., p. 54.

⁶³ More details of these aspects of Iqbal's life are provided later in this article.

⁶⁴ A small vessel with a spout. It is used widely in South Asia and the Muslim world to pour water onto one's private parts to ensure personal hygiene after a call of nature.

⁶⁵ Nadvi, Iqbal-e Kamil, p. 63.

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ Ibid., p. 56.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 57.

⁶⁹ A less intense account of Iqbal's attachment to the Qur'an emerges from another one of his biographers, Mumtaz Hasan, who, in 1957, interviewed Iqbal's lifelong servant, Mian Ali Bakhsh, who recounted that Iqbal used to read the Qur'an every morning. Hasan pressed him, asking, ‘In what manner did he read the Qur'an?’ and Ali Bakhsh replied, ‘Before his throat was affected, he used to recite the Qur'an in a clear and melodious voice. Even after he got the throat disease he used to read the Qur'an but not loudly.’ Hasan, Mumtaz, Tribute to Iqbal, (ed.) Moizuddin, M. (Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 1982), pp. 24–25Google Scholar. Iqbal's devoted servant makes no mention of Iqbal being moved to tears by the Qur'an.

⁷⁰ Nadvi, Iqbal-e Kamil, p. 68. In contrast to ‘Abd al-Salam's mention of Iqbal's daily ritual of crying upon reading the Qur'an, the only time that I encountered another one of Iqbal's biographers mention the poet weeping is with reference to the poetry of the Punjabi mystic Bulleh Shah. Aslam Jawed writes, ‘At the closing hours of his time on earth, he [Iqbal] asked his friend Diwan Ali who was with him to sing a few verses of the mystic poet of Punjab, Bulleh Shah. The verses seemed to touch a very tender chord in Iqbal's heart and tears trickled down his cheek’: Jawed, The Unknown Iqbal, p. 55.

⁷¹ In an interesting paradox, Iqbal vehemently denounced the Ahmadiyya movement. Although he had initially viewed the movement in a positive light, from 1934 onwards he began to understand it as a threat to the ‘solidarity of Islam’ and the ‘integrity of [the Muslim] community’. Vahid, Syed Abdul (ed.), Thoughts and Reflections of Iqbal (Lahore: Ashraf Press, 1964), pp. 249Google Scholar and 253. Iqbal wrote that the circumstances of India were such that the future of each religious community depended upon its solidarity. Thus he appealed to the British to bend their policy of non-interference in religion and declare the Ahmadis to be a separate community that exists outside the fold of Islam. Iqbal, Muhammad and Asi, Na‘im, Iqbal aur Qadiyani (Sialkot: Muslim Academy, 1974), p. 51Google Scholar.

⁷² Akbarabadi, Sa‘id Ahmad, Khutbat-i Iqbal par ek Nazar (Srinagar: Iqbal Institute, Kashmir University, 1983), pp. 49–65Google Scholar.

⁷³ Iqbal's belief in miracles can be contrasted with that of Sayyid Ahmad Khan who believed that miracles had no place in the Qur'an and for whom Muhammad's Night Journey was neither a physical nor a spiritual experience, but merely a dream. Lawrence, Bruce B., The Qur'an: A Biography (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007), p. 148Google Scholar. The point to note is that given the early Nadwa social imaginary, which situated itself as a mean between the Anglo-Muhammadan Oriental College and Deoband, Sayyid Ahmad Khan's disbelief in miracles was not deemed to be completely heretical by the earlier Nadwa ‘ulama. Consequently, the need was not felt to elucidate Iqbal's differences with such a view.

⁷⁴ Nadvi, Iqbal-e Kamil, p. 58.

⁷⁵ For more information on Mawdudi, see: Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ For example, another one of Iqbal's biographer writes that Iqbal ‘was a full blooded man who despite having a succession of wives at home, had a long love-affair with a Bombay socialite and a fleeting one at the time he was in Heidelberg University. There is enough material on record in the way of correspondences between him and his lady friends to establish that these relationships were not platonic. Biographers have unfairly—in my view, dishonestly—tried to ignore, gloss over or explain away these associations and create an image of an anemic, ascetic-like figure totally absorbed in philosophical speculation and writing poetry’: Singh, Khushwant, ‘Introduction’, in Zakaria, Rafiq, Iqbal: The Poet and the Politician (New Delhi, India: Viking, 1993), p. xGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁷ ‘One of Iqbal's closest friends, Abdul Majid Salik, had admitted that the poet sometimes visited Hiramandi, a center of dancing girls in Lahore’: Zakaria, Iqbal: The Poet, p. 18.

⁷⁸ In his The Unknown Iqbal, Mohammad Aslam Jawed narrates the following incident about Iqbal: a man by the name of Mulk Raj came to Iqbal with his beloved and said, ‘I was born a Hindu … and she is a Muslim.’ Upon hearing this Iqbal gave the couple his blessing by presenting them with a collection of his poetry and saying, ‘This is just the kind of union I want’: Jawed, The Unknown Iqbal, p. 49.

⁷⁹ Jawed writes, ‘He attacked the customs of child marriage and also attacked polygamy permitted in the Muslim community and characterized it as a “religious sanction of rape”’: ibid., p. 47. Iqbal's actions and comments mentioned in the last few footnotes serve as an interesting contrast to the anecdotes selected by ‘Abd al-Salam that emphasize Iqbal's firm belief in traditional Islamic regulations regarding purity rituals and the consumption of meat.

⁸⁰ In his book Tribute to Iqbal, Mumtaz Hasan describes sitting on Iqbal's veranda with the poet; Hasan writes, ‘There were other chairs too. And of course the well-known “hookah,” the poet's inseparable companion.’ Hasan, Tribute to Iqbal, p. 19.

⁸¹ Malik, ‘The Making of a Council’, p. 69.

⁸² Zaman, ‘Religious Education’, p. 309.

⁸³ Ibid., p. 305.

⁸⁴ Malik, ‘The Making of a Council’, p. 62.

⁸⁵ Zaman, ‘Religious Education’, p. 309.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Zaman, ‘A Venture’, p. 28.

⁸⁸ Ibid.

⁸⁹ Malik, ‘The Making of a Council’, p. 91. At another place Malik comments, ‘The Nadwa was an elitist avant-gardist movement primarily concerned with integration with the colonial public and secondarily with a change in Islamic scholarship and the unity of religious scholars’: ibid., p. 90.

⁹⁰ Zaman, ‘Religious Education’, p. 309.

⁹¹ Ibid., p. 306.

⁹² Becker, Mary Louise, The All-India Muslim League: 1906–1947: A Study of Leadership in the Evolution of a Nation (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 64Google Scholar.

⁹³ Ibid., p. 137.

⁹⁴ Ibid., p. 141.

⁹⁵ Ibid., p. 182.

⁹⁶ Ibid., p. 183.

⁹⁷ Ibid., p. 182.

⁹⁸ Ibid., p. 202.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., p. 189.

¹⁰¹ Ibid.

¹⁰² Dhulipala, Venkat, Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 195CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰³ Ibid., p. 128.

¹⁰⁴ Schimmel uses this phrase as the title of one of her chapters: Schimmel, Annemarie, Islam in the Indian Subcontinent (Leiden: Brill, 1980), p. 216Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Sevea, Iqbal Singh, The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., p. 209.

¹⁰⁸ Husain, Abdul, ‘Impact of Iqbal on Bengali Muslim Thought’, Iqbal Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Apr. 1960), pp. 54–62Google Scholar. For the impact of Iqbal on Bengali literature, see: Hai, Muhammad Abdul, ‘Bengali Translations of Iqbal and his Impact on Bengali Literature’, Iqbal Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (April 1963), pp. 5–10Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ Asad, M. N. M. Kamil, ‘Muhammad Iqbal: His Influence among the Muslims of Sri Lanka’, Iqbal Review, Vol. 43, No. 2 (April 2002), pp. 130–1Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Hussain, Riaz, ‘American, West European and Soviet Attitudes to Iqbal’, Iqbal Review, Vol. 26, No. 3 (October 1985), pp. 144–50Google Scholar. For a summary of Iqbal's impact on the Muslim world, see: Iqbal, Javid, ‘Iqbalian Idealism and its Impact on the Muslim World Today’, Iqbal Review, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Oct. 1997), pp. 4–13Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ For Iqbal's impact on Pakistan's Islamists, see: Nasr, S. V. R., ‘Iqbal's Impact on Contemporary Understandings of the Islamic Polity’, Iqbal Review, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Oct. 2001), pp. 2–22Google Scholar.

¹¹² Sevea, The Political Philosophy, p. 203.

¹¹³ Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), p. 255Google Scholar.

¹¹⁴ Zaman, ‘A Venture’, p. 26.

¹¹⁵ Zaman writes that, unlike the Sirat al-Nabi of Sulayman Nadwi, the Siyar-i Sahaba does not show a critical evaluation of facts. It contains only ‘essential, non-controversial, invariably edifying information’, on the companions. Moreover, it omits embarrassing traditions or reports: ibid., p. 40.

¹¹⁶ Nora, Pierre, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations, No. 26 (Spring 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, p. 9.

¹¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 8–9.

¹¹⁸ White, The Content of the Form, p. 3.

¹¹⁹ Ibid., p. 4.

¹²⁰ Ibid., p. 36.

¹²¹ Ibid., p. 25.

¹²² Commenting on Iqbal, Jawed writes, ‘His devotion to Islam did not take precedence over his devotion to his motherland’: Jawed, The Unknown Iqbal, p. 41.

¹²³ Benjamin, Illuminations, p. 254.

¹²⁴ Ibid., p. 255.

¹²⁵ Zaman, ‘A Venture’, p. 42. He echoes a similar understanding at another point in his essay when he writes that the sira of Muhammad authored by Shibli and Sulayman Nadwi is dotted with echoes of contemporary concerns and the response to them. Zaman finds this to be ‘reminiscent of another, and a more elaborate, effort by Shibli and Sulayman Nadwi to address some pressing problems of their own day by writing a biography of the Prophet’: ibid.

¹²⁶ Benjamin, Illuminations, p. 255.

¹²⁷ Nadwi, Glory of Iqbal, p. 11.

¹²⁸ For example, the book examined in this article: Nadvi, Iqbal, Sayyid Sulaiman Nadvi. Other books include: Taunsvi, Tahir, Iqbal aur Syed Sulaiman Nadvi (Lahore: Maktabah-i ‘Aliyah, 1977)Google Scholar and Caghta'i, Muhammad ‘Abdullah, ‘Allama Iqbal aur Sayyid Sulaiman Nadvi: Lahaur ki ‘Ilmi Majlis ki ek Yaddasht (Lahore: Kitab Khanah-i Nauras, 1956)Google Scholar.

¹²⁹ Robinson, Francis, ‘Strategies of Authority in Muslim South Asia in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Jan. 2013), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁰ Ibid., p. 4.

¹³¹ Ibid., p. 5.

¹³² Quddusi, I‘jaz ul-Haq, Iqbal aur ‘Ulama-i Pak-o-Hind (Lahore: Iqbal Academy, 1977), p. 332Google Scholar.

¹³³ Ibid., p. 168.

¹³⁴ For example, in the Javid Nama Iqbal writes, ‘Woe to the constitution of the democracy of Europe! The sound of that trumpet renders the dead still deader; those tricksters treacherous as the revolving spheres, have played the nations by their own rules, and swept the board!’ This incredible essentialization and refutation of the West is in stark contrast with Iqbal's engagement with Western scholarship in his Reconstruction. Not only does Iqbal open himself up to the West in this work, he also praises select Western influences, and even pressures, on the Muslim world. He writes, ‘It is, however, extremely satisfactory to note that the pressure of new world forces and the political experience of Western nations are impressing on the mind of Modern Islam the value and possibilities of the idea of Ijma.’ Iqbal, Muhammad, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Dubai: Kitab al-Isamiyyah, 1995), p. 173Google Scholar.

¹³⁵ White, The Content of the Form, p. 4.