The Ulama of Deoband and the Ottoman Khilafah The Indian subcontinent is currently home to approximately one quarter to a third of the Muslim Ummah, numbering more than half a billion Muslims, with approximately 250 million Muslims in India, 160 million in Pakistan and 120 million in Bangladesh. History of the Khilafah in India In the year 711 C.E., Muslim traders were sailing in the Indian Ocean from Ceylon near the coast of Sind. Their ship was looted and the Muslims were captured and imprisoned. The news reached the capital of the Islamic state, which was under the rule of Walid ibn Abdil Malik. He sent a message to Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, the governor of Baghdad, to demand the apologies from the ruler of Sind and rescue the Muslims. An army was dispatched, led by one of the most brilliant sons of this Ummah. The name of this man was Muhammad ibn Qasim Thaqafi, the conqueror of Hind. When the Muslim army reached Debal (near modern day Karachi), Muhammad ibn Qasim presented his demands to Raja Dahir. The Raja resisted the demand and thus was inevitably defeated by the Muslims and his kingdom captured. After this, Muhammad ibn Qasim followed up his initial success with further encounters. The Muslim Army penetrated as far as Multan. Within three years, by 714 CE, the whole of Sind and lower Punjab were brought under the rule of the Khilafah. In the conquest of the north-western part of Indian subcontinent, the army brought the idol-worshippers from darkness into the light of Islam. It was during the time of Hisham ibn Abdil Malik from 724 to 743 CE that the Khilafah conquered the regions of Kashmir and Kangra. And during 754-775 under the ‗Abbasid Khalifah Abu Ja‘far Al-Mansur, Kandahar was conquered and efforts were made to consolidate and spread the frontiers of the Khilafah in the Indian subcontinent. It was between 786 and 809 CE, during the Khilafah of Harun ar-Rashid that the Islamic Army extended the frontiers of Sind westwards into Gujarat (now presently in India). During this time, Muslim soldiers decided to settle down there and new cities began to flourish. From this time onwards, large numbers of the Indians were guided from the darkness of ignorance and kufr to the Nur of Tawhid and Islam. Islam ruled over most of what is known today as India, Pakistan, Kashmir and Bangladesh for over a thousand years. We have to be careful where we take our history from, as much of the history of India and the Islamic rule was written by the Orientalists. Contrary to how the Orientalists portray the history of India, we must realize that it was a Wilayah of the Khilafah. The Indian subcontinent was given Wilayah Aammah (General Governorship) by the Khulafa. We do admit that some of the Muslim rulers of India misapplied some of the Islamic rules and committed some injustices. However, under their rule, the Indian subcontinent remained part of Darul Islam (the lands of Islam) and the Islamic Shari‘ah was implemented, until the British colonized it. The court records which still exist in some of the major cities show that there was no other source of law referred to other than the Islamic Shari‘ah. It is true that the Khulafa became negligent in their responsibilities of inquiring about the Wilayaat (provinces) and directly appointing and removing the governors, and it became a norm for them to accept whoever came to power in different provinces rather than directly select them, due to which it was unsupervised in some periods and left to run by itself. Nevertheless the fact that the Khulafa accepted those who came into power means that their authority was validated by the Khalifah. The Muslim historian Ibn Kathir Dimashqi (who passed away in 774 AH), in his famous work al-Bidayah wan-Nihaya, mentioned India as part of Darul Islam. India remained as a province of the Khilafah throughout the Delhi Sultanate (1205-1526 CE) and Mughal period (1526-1857 CE), except during Akbar‘s rule (1556-1605 CE) as he apostatized from Islam and formed a new religion called Deen-e-Ilaahi. The fact that India remained as part of the global Khilafah has also been discussed by non-Muslim authors such as the Hindu author Shashi S. Sharma in his book ‗Caliphs and Sultans – Religious ideology and political praxis‘ who admits this. He says: “Throughout its existence, the Delhi Sultanate (1205-1526), remained a legal part of the worldwide Muslim empire functioning under the de jure suzerainty of the Abbasid (or Ottoman – compiler) caliphs. Sultans considered themselves the deputies of the caliph and derived their validity of their administrative and legal authority only on the basis of delegation. Since the supreme authority of the community legally remained with the caliph, every king and potentate claimed to exercise governmental power for, and on behalf of the Imam of Islam.” [Shashi S. Sharma, Caliphs and Sultans – Religious ideology and political praxis, pg. 247] “Muhammad Shah Bahamani III (1463-82), paid tributes to the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad II as the one deserving to be the Khalifah. The kingdom of Bijapur adopted the Turkish (Uthmani) symbol as its royal emblem. Malik Ayaz, one of the leading nobles of Gujarat addressed Sultan Salim I as „Khalifah on earth‟. Subtle evidences of the great esteem in which Mughal rulers held the Sultan of Turkey can also be gleaned from the few correspondences that flew between Delhi and Istanbul…In a letter to Sultan Suleiman, Humayun (ruler of India) addressed him as the „Khalifah of the highest qualities‟ and prayed for eternal perpetuation of his caliphate. He quotes a Quranic verse to indicate to the Sultan that „He (God) has sent thee as the Khalifah on the earth‟…Sultan Ibrahim sent a letter to Shahjahan in which he proclaimed himself as the „Refuge and asylum of the monarchs of the world‟ who has been bestowed the good fortune to occupy the throne of Khilafat. Ahmad Aqa, the Turkish envoy brought a missive from his Sultan to the court of Aurangzeb in 1690 which was thick with Quranic quotations and references to the Sultan as the Khalifah of Islam. In 1723, Muhammad Shah (1719-1748) resumed Mughal correspondence with the Porte in Istanbul. In his letter, Muhammad Shah styles the Sultan „the asylum of the greatest Sultans‟, „the protector of the most honoured kings‟, the „adorner of the exalted throne of Khilafat‟, and the „spreader of the precepts of shariat‟”. [Shashi S. Sharma, Caliphs and Sultans – Religious ideology and political praxis, pg. 248-249] As a result of the constant conspiracies by the Colonialists and a decline in the Muslim Ummah at large, in 1600 CE, the East India Company was established. It was the beginning of a painful era where the British and other European colonialists looted the lands and pillaged the resources of the Ummah, and they also ignited flames of hatred between the Muslim and non-Muslim citizens. The British invaded the Indian subcontinent in 1819, where it was faced with strong resistance from the Muslims. The war continued with alternate success between the Islamic authorities in the subcontinent and invading Britain with the help of some forces of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others. Britain could not achieve stability and control over it except after 27 years of vigorous wars with the Muslims, i.e. in 1846. During this period, as the authority of the Mughal rulers was weakening over different parts of India, some of the rulers of other parts started to seek support and legitimacy from the Khalifah in Istanbul. For example, the Queen of Cannore sent a diplomatic message to Sultan Abdul Hamid I in 1779, in which she ―petitioned the Khalifah to protect her against the aggression of the East India Company‖. Tippu Sultan of Mysore sought and received a letter of recognition from the Khalifah that recognized him as the ruler of Mysore. After the British colonialists removed the Islamic rule from India the Muslims remained loyal to the Khalifah in Istanbul. The Ulama of Deoband had always held the Ottoman empire in the highest regard, and worked selflessly to support and assist the Ottomans. We will endeavor in the following pages to present just a few glimpses of the loyalty and support to the Uthmani Khilafah by some of the well-known personalities of Darul-Uloom Deoband: Maulana Muhammad Qasim Nanotwi Qari Muhammad Tayyib , the grandson of Maulana Muhammad Qasim Nanotwi , writes regarding his grandfather: Maulana Qasim Nanotwi and other teachers of the Darul Uloom, along with their supporters, established ties of loyalty and love with the Khalifah of the Muslims, the Sultan of Turkey, and practically supported and assisted the Turks in various ways. He wrote poems in praise of the Sultan of Turkey. They established a fund to assist the Turks in battle expeditions, for which they collected hundreds of thousands of rupees and dispatched it to Turkey. Maulana himself donated all his household possessions and all his wife‘s wedding gifts for this cause. He encouraged all Muslims to uphold the ties of loyalty with the Khilafah (and oppose the opponents of the Khilafah). For this purpose, he himself undertook numerous journeys and even sent his associates (students, disciples and supporters) on such missions for this very purpose. This demonstrates that one of the objectives of Darul-Uloom Deoband was to also preserve an international Islamic brotherhood, to protect and defend the existing Islamic Khilafah and to ensure the stability of the central headquarters of the Muslims to the best of one‘s ability.