The Response of the Shi‘i Ulama to the West

European domination in North India provoked a severe crisis of identity for the Muslim notable classes who formerly ruled the area. Sunni landholders and administrators in Delhi watched helplessly as the British extended their rule to the former capital in 1803. Religious spokesmen for these classes in decline, such as the Sunni Sufi Shah ‘Abdu'l-‘Aziz Dihlavi, declared in exasperation that India had become a Realm of War (daral-harb ) for Muslims. The commands of the Mughal emperor were ignored, Christians controlled taxes and criminal justice, municipal authorities could level mosques, and Muslims like Vilayati Begam of Farrukhabad could come to the capital only with the permission of the Christian British authorities. In Hyderabad, Awadh, and Rampur Muslim rulers had capitulated to the British. Dihlavi admitted that the British allowed Friday congregational and holy day prayers to be held, but said this alone could not make British India a Realm of Peace (daras-salam ) for Muslims. Shah ‘Abdu'l-‘Aziz, in redefining the political environment, did not call for holy war against the British, something some of his young disciples would later consider.^[15] Rather, he seems to have aimed primarily at allowing Sunnis to charge interest on loans, which they could do in a Realm of War.

The Shi‘i ulama in what was left of Awadh perceived the situation differently. First, they continued to see the nawabs of Awadh as Muslim rulers (and, until the 1819 declaration of independence, as first ministers of the Mughal Empire). The Imami jurists rejected the notion that they were under de facto British rule. Lucknow's chief Shi‘i ecclesiastic, Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi, divided the lands of India into three sorts, those under the dominion of the Sunni Mughal emperor (including Awadh), those ruled by unbelievers against whom Muslims must war (e.g., Punjab under the Sikhs), and those ruled by the Christian British. He commended the British for dealing with Muslims according to Muslim, including Shi‘i, laws. Although this paragraph described the actual situation, it might be noted that the three areas mentioned conformed to the traditional Muslim legal categories of the Realm of Peace, where Muslims ruled, the Realm of War, where defiant infidels held sway, and the Realm of Truce (dar as-sulh ), where People of the Book ruled and were in treaty relations with Muslims. Nasirabadi, however, did not explicitly use this last term.^[16]

Since Shi‘is believed contact with non-Shi‘is to be polluting, the Euro-

[15] Shah ‘Abdu'l-‘Azlz, Fatava-yi‘Azizi , vol. 1 (Lucknow: Fakhru'l-Matabic, 1906) 32-34. For a useful survey of Muslim intellectual currents in this period, see B Metcalf. Islamic Revival (Princeton, 1982), chaps. 1 and 2; a detailed but not analytical treatment is Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shah ‘Abdu'l-‘Aziz (Canberra, 1982).

[16] S. Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi, "Risalah fi ahkam al-aradin," Fiqh, MS 2842, fol 54a; see also Ann K. S. Lampton, State and Government in Medieval Islam (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981), ch. 12.

pean presence in North India presented them with social difficulties. Nasirabadi, asked about the propriety of attending a banquet (sur ) thrown by Christians or Jews, said to avoid it. A believer asked him if one might pray in stockings (muzah ) brought from Europe. He equivocated, saying that the most renowned stance on this issue was that anything received from an unbeliever is ritually impure, but he added that the question was not altogether resolved. But in another case he ruled that one might buy a cloak from foreigners, and might pray in it before washrag it.^[17]

Was it permissible, someone queried, to usurp the belongings of Christians, People of the Book, or unbelievers, through ruse and fraud, causing them financial damage? Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali replied that one could not use the wealth of others without strong grounds. He said he had seen no evidence for such behavior with the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) and other sorts of unbeliever in the time of the Imam's Occultation. The Lucknow prayer leader's conservative attitude toward private property even overruled his conviction of Muslim superiority.

When Nasirabadi's upper-class friends pressed him for a ruling on the legality of working for the British as tax collectors, secretaries, police, attorneys, and physicians, he expressed reservations, though he did not absolutely forbid it. A man asked him whether it was permitted to keep the company of and enter into the employ of Christians. He pointed out that the British surrounded and dominated them, and the notables found it difficult if not impossible to get along without their favor. Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali responded that the employment must not involve the commission of forbidden acts, such as murder or the purchase of liquor or pork. If the work simply consisted of performing a service for a Christian, such as writing a book for him or tailoring his clothes, it was entirely proper. But he found it difficult to sanction full-time salaried employment with a European, owing to the Qur'an verse "And God will not grant the unbelievers any way over the believers" (4:140). Yet he could not pronounce such employment altogether forbidden (haram ).^[18]

This answer, given in the first decade of the nineteenth century, demonstrates the ambivalence Awadh's Shi‘is felt in seeking employment with the East India Company. Economic necessity forced many notables and small landholders into such a career, particularly after the cession of 1801. Some preferred to work for the nawab. The brothers Taju'd-Din Husayn Khan and Subhan ‘Ali Khan collected revenue for the East India Company at Agra in the opening years of the nineteenth century, acquiring a knowledge of British procedures. Nawab Sacadat ‘Ali Khan requested that Taju'd-Din Husayn Khan come to Awadh, where he hired him at Rs. 300 per month.

[17] S. Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi, "Najat as-sa'ilin," Fiqh Shi‘ah, MS 256, foll. 6a-6b, 9a, Nasiriyyah Lib., Lucknow.

[18] Ibid., foll 23a-24a.

Subhan ‘Ali Khan, envious, asked some notables at Lucknow to intercede with him for the Nawab, who at length offered him a smaller salary of Rs. 200 per month because he asked for the job.^[19]

The Shi‘i families that were clustered in Banaras division and in the upper Doab, living under British rule, had more incentive than the subjects of the nawabs to establish links with the East India Company. Mawlavi Zakir ‘Ali Jaunpuri (d. 1796) tutored one of the residents in Lucknow. Sayyid Gulshan ‘Ali Jaunpuri (1800-74), trained in Lucknow by Usuli students of Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali, served as a judge in British-ruled Jaunpur, then as a revenue collector in the area. He subsequently took a post with the local government of the Maharaja of Banaras. He visited Iraq twice, in 1844 and 1864-71, the second time serving as the deputy resident for the British in Baghdad. His youngest son, Sayyid Muhammad Hashim, went to England to study mathematics in 1872, serving for a time as a revenue collector (tahsildar ) for the British government in Jalaun and Agra.^[20]

Even religiously committed Shi‘is from within nawabi Awadh often had dealings with the British or emigrated to find employment with them. Mir Hasan ‘Ali (d. 1858) of Lucknow, whose father led prayers in the household of Awadh administrator Almas ‘Ali Khan, taught British officers Arabic in Calcutta, then taught Urdu in the Military College, Addiscombe, in England in 1810-16, where he married an Englishwoman. They lived in Lucknow for a while, then he served as revenue collector for the British in Kanauj. He later took up employment briefly with Hakim Mihdi ‘Ali Khan, an Awadh notable who had indigo interests in Farrukhabad. Mir Hasan ‘Ali's English wife divorced him when she discovered that he had another wife. A pensioner of the British government, he moved back to Lucknow in 1843, where he accepted a post with the Awadh rulers.^[21]

An even more striking example of this phenomenon, S. Muhammad Quli Kinturi (1773-1844), derived from a landed family in the small town of Kintur in Bara Banki. He traveled widely as a youth, in search of knowledge, and trained in Lucknow with Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali as an Usuli mujtahid. In 1806 he hired on with the British government of Delhi in the parganah of Meerut as a court official. Ultimately rising to principal sadramin (able to judge property disputes up to Rs. 5,000), he gave legal .judgments in criminal cases accord-

[19] Sayyid Abbas Ardistam, "Al-hisn al-matin fi ahwal al-wuzara' wa's-salatin," 2 vols MSS 235a, 235b, 1:54, New Delhi, Nat'l Archives of India.

[20] For Zakir ‘Ali, see Muhammad Mihdi Lakhnavi Kashmiri, Nujum as-sama ' takmilah , 2 vols (Qumm, 1397/1977), 1:26-27; for Gulshan ‘Ali, see S. Muhammad Husayn Nauganavi, Tazkirah-i be-bahafitarikhal-‘ulama ' (Delhi: Jayyid Barqi Press, n.d ), p. 304; and ‘Abdu'l-Hayy al-Hasani, Nuzhat al-khawatir , 8 vols. (Hyderabad, 1959), 7:401; for Muhammad Hashim, see Kashmiri, NujumT 2:207-9

[21] Copy of Public Letter to Bengal dated 28 Mar 1817 sent per William Pitt. FDFC, 14 Dec. 1842, no 99, Sec. to Gov. Gen. to Resident, 16 May 1843, FDFC, 31 May 1843, nos. 49-51, al-Hasani, Nuzhat al-khawatir 7 133-36, also Mrs Meet Hassan Ali, Observations on the Mussulmans of India (London O\ford Unis Press, 1917), pp x-xv and passim

ing to Shi‘i law—something he could not have done at that time even in Awadh. At his peak he earned Rs. 400 per month at the post, retiring in 1841.^[22]

Shi‘i clerics expressed few anti-British sentiments as long as the East India Company respected Shi‘i law and maintained all alliance with the Shi‘i nawab of Awadh. In Bengal, ulama teaching at the Hooghly College, in-eluding Shi‘is, actively sought m attend the government's public audiences (darbars ) and m receive robes of honor from the East India Company. In contrast, Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali forbade ulama in Awadh m accept robes of honor from the nawab's government, claiming that this practice befitted soldiers but demeaned the high station of mujtahids, the general representatives of the hidden Twelfth Imam.^[23]

Perhaps because of the increasing number of Shi‘is who worked for the British, one of Lucknow's chief mujtahids gave a ruling in the 1830s that strongly justified taking employment with foreigners. Asked to what extent one might earn one's living through Christians, he replied that as long as one did not become an accomplice m any forbidden act, working on a salaried basis for the British in such fields as revenue collection was permitted. (Note that Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali had not sanctioned taking a salary from Christians.) The mujtahid ruled that although disapproval attaches to performing even permitted acts for unjust rulers (hukkam-ijawr ), the disapproval is lifted if one does so to aid Shi‘is.^[24] The attitude of the Shi‘i hierarchy on this issue changed over time. They originally questioned its propriety, but allowed it in the 1830s.

The religious scholars also changed their position on loaning money on in-

[22] S. Icjaz Husayn Kinturi, "Shudhur al-ciqyan fi tarajim al-acyan," 2 vols. (MSS 278-279, Buhar Coll. Nat'l Lib., Calcutta), 2:164a-165b, Ardistani, "al-hisn al-matin," 1.8-7; Muhammad ‘Ali Kashmiri, Nujumas-samafilarajimal-‘ulama ' (Lucknow Matha'-i Ja'lari, 1302/1884-85), pp 420-23, Nauganavi, Tazkirah , p. 292, for Kinturi's British employment record, see Off. Sec. Govt. N.-W P. to Register, Sudder Dewanny Adawlut, N.-W. P, 9 Jan. 1842, FDFC, 31 Jan 1842, no. 9 British superiors awarded him a pension equaling half his salary and commended him, saying, "The applicant has always borne a good character for integrity and industry." His records described him thusly: "Dark complexion, forehead broad, eyebrows divided, black eyes, nose prominent, face clear of all marks, Mustachios or Beard Grey with a few black hairs. Mingled, thick lips, rather corpulent in person." For the social and administrative context, see Major Edward C Archer, Tours in Upper India , 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1833), 2.319-21, and C. Sinha, "Personnel of Indian ,Judges in Bengal Presidency under the East India Company's Administration, 1793-1833," Bengal Past and Present 87 (1968): 204-16

[23] Principal, Hooghly College, to Sec. Gouncil, ol Education, 10 Mar. 1842, FDFC, 30 Mar 1842, no. 164, cf "A'inah-'i haqq-nama," Rijal Shi‘ah, MS L fol 60b, Nasirivvah Lib, Lucknow

[24] In Musharraf ‘Ali Khan Lakhnavi ed, Bayaz-imasa'il , 3 vols (Lucknow n p., 1251/1835-36), 3.102-3. This collection of rulings consists for the most part of those given by S Muhammad and S Husayn Nasirabadi, sons of Dildar ‘Ali, but not all are individually attributed.

terest to Christians. Someone asked Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali if he might take interest on loans to idolaters (Hindus) and to the People of the Book (Jews and Christians).^[25] Nasirabadi replied that Shi‘i scholars had reached a consensus that interest could be taken from idolaters. But they differed over whether it could be charged People of the Book. He offered his own ruling that the most cautious path was therefore not to take interest from Jews and Christians. The influx of British capital into North India, first through private traders in 1785-95, and then through the East India Company as well from 1801, created many opportunities for local bankers and moneylenders. British insistence that bank credit secure revenue assignments likewise strengthened these classes.

Shi‘i merchants and moneylenders also wished to profit from these opportunities, the more scrupulous of them with pangs of conscience. Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali refused to assuage their guilt. Unlike the Shi‘i high ulama in Iraq and Iran, who had increasingly close ties with the bazaar classes, in Awadh the clerical establishment subsisted on the patronage of large landholders, responding mostly to their concerns.

Many Shi‘i long-distance merchants regularly lent and borrowed on interest, but the practice could cause them problems if cases went to Muslim religious courts. An example is the case of Mirza Riza, the son of Hajji Karbala'i Muhammad Tihrani, versus the heirs of Hasan Riza Khan, the former chief minister of Awadh. In the late 1780s Hajji Karbala'i lent Hasan Riza Khan Rs. 228, 436 as part of the Rs. 700,000 Awadh government donation for the building of the canal to Najaf. Mirza Riza presented letters in court, appearing to be from the chief minister, promising to repay the loan in November of 1792. Both debtor and creditor died before any further transaction took place.^[26] Mirza Riza attempted to recoup the loss from the late chief minister's estate through the government courts of Nawab Sacadat ‘Ali Khan in 1806. He asked the Iranian ruler Fath-‘Ali Shah to intervene with Awadh's nawab on his behalf, and the Qajar monarch wrote to his fellow Shi‘i ruler supporting Mirza Riza's claims^[27]

Nawab Sacadat ‘Ali Khan turned the case over to the mufti of the religious court, probably the Farangi-Mahalli Mawlavi Zuhuru'llah (d. 1840). Mirza Riza claimed the principal of Rs. 228,436, in addition to Rs. 150,010 interest. The mufti of the court rejected the claim on several grounds. First, he said, the dates of the copies of the letters and the replies presented as evi-

[25] Nasirabadi. "Najat as-sa'ilin," fol 23b

[26] Hasan Riza Khan to Hajji Karbala'i Muhammad, 26 Rabic I 1213, end no. 55 in Resident to Vazir, 22 Nov 1806, FDPC, 22 Nov. 1806. no 53 For further details, see J Cole, "'Indian Money' and the Shi‘i Shrine Clues of Iraq, 1786-1850," Middle Eastern Studies 22, no 4, (1986).

[27] King of Iran to Vazir of Oudh, n.d., end m Pers. Sec. Govt. India to Resident, Lucknow, 14 Ocr 1806, FDPC, 16 Oct 1806. no. 25.

dence were confused and therefore they were of suspect authenticity. Second, the precise kind of money loaned was not specified. Third, the taking of interest on loans was prohibited according to Islamic law.^[28]

Especially in the period 1815-30 developments occurred among the propertied Shi‘is that impelled them to accept interest on loans to Europeans, though no Islamic court would have permitted interest charges among Usuli Shi‘is. The changes in the relationship between the British economy and that of India brought about by the Industrial Revolution, creating a world-dominating textile industry, strengthened the hand of the East India Company. The company, formerly merely a government-backed enterprise of circulating merchant capital, evolved into an instrument in the expansion of industrial imperialism. The terms of the game changed radically. Awadh's landed classes, sensitive to this evolution, began to perceive the insecurity of their traditional landholding forms of wealth in the new environment.

At the same time, the East India Company began its costly war in Nepal in 1814-16. Nawab Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar acquiesced in November of 1814 to the company's request for a loan of Rs. 10 million to help defray the expenses of the war. Ten individuals or families, mostly relations of the nawab, received the Rs. 600,000 in interest payments each year. Four months later Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar agreed to second loan of Rs. 10 million on similar terms. In 1825 the same ruler responded favorably to the governor-general's request for yet another loan of Rs. 10 million at the low rate of 5 percent interest, again payable by the resident to notables and relatives of the court.^[29]

These arrangements began the creation of a class of rentiers depending on payments from interest to supplement the income from their less stable landed wealth (which took the form of jagirs that could be expropriated at will by later Awadh rulers). The: British government guaranteed the stipends to the recipients and their descendants. The creditors hardly demonstrated much business sense by the low, fixed interest rates they charged. The recipients, transformed into a strange mixture of Mughal-style nobility and new bourgeoisie, passively subsisted on the periphery of the growing world market.

Although Ghaziyu'd-Din Haydar earlier showed no scruples about making the loans, in contravention of Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali's ruling. when Iris treasury got low he suddenly evinced pangs of conscience. In May 1826 Lord Amherst informed the resident in Lucknow that yet another five million rupees would be needed to wind up the Nepal war. Ricketts pledged to open

[28] Decision of the Mufti of the Adawlut, end no 54 in Resident to Vazir. 22 Nov 1806, for Zuhuru'llah, see Rahman ‘Ali, Tazkirah-'i `ulama-yiHind (Lucknow. Naval Kishor. 1914), pp 99-100: ‘Abdu'l-Bari Farangi-Mahalli, Atharal-awwal min 'ulamaFaranjiMahall (Lucknow al-Matba cal-Mujtaba'i. 1321/1903), p 16

[29] Resident to Sec. Govt India, 21 Nov. 1814, FDPC, 13 Dec. 1814, no 10, Resident to Sec. to Govt. India Sect. Dept, 18 Apr 1815. FDPC. 18 Apr. 1815, no. 58, Resident to Sec. Govt India, 12 Aug. 1825, FDPC, 16 Sept 1825, nos 35-37

negotiations, warning that drought and recalcitrant landholders (who for the first time in years did not have to worry about facing British troops in aid of government revenue collectors, owing to a policy change) had impoverished the Awadh treasury. Ricketts's talks proved successful, but Amherst felt he was doing the nawab a favor in any case. Ricketts wrote on 25 July, "Your remark that the money has been drawn from unproductive coffers is strictly correct, and so far His Majesty in point of fact is a gainer by the transaction; but the Sacrifice of his Religious tenets, which forbid interest being received, throws this advantage completely into the Shade in His eyes."^[30]

Later Awadh governments continued the practice of making loans to the East India Company, investing the interest received in religious grants to the Shi‘i shrine cities of Iraq or in public works in Awadh. Muhammad ‘Ali Shah, whom the British resident placed on the throne by armed force in 1837, initiated an ambitious building program. Soon after he acceded to the throne he spent Rs. 200,000 to have the Husaynabad Imambarah built not far from the Great Imambarah. Fearing that his good deed might fall into disrepair after his death, he wished to place the Imambarah and mosque complex under the guarantee of the British government so as to ensure the regular payment of the religious functionaries.^[31]

Finding the British unwilling to give such guarantees gratis, the king proposed to sweeten the deal by putting Rs. 900,000 in a 4.5 percent loan in perpetuity. The resident, Lt. Col. Caulfield, enthusiastically recommended that the governor-general accept the proposition, the interest demanded being so low that it was unlikely to embarrass a powerful state in the future. Moreover, part of the interest would go to Muhammad ‘Ali Shah's sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, and other dependents and relatives. Caulfield reasoned that to have a large number of notables financially dependent on the British Government would assure their loyalty and help insure more information from the interior of Awadh. Of the interest, Rs. 19,200 would pay servants to attend the Imambarah and keep its road in repair, and Rs. 6,000 per month was set aside to maintain the canals. With the sums devoted to relatives and servants, the total came to Rs. 36,000 per annum.^[32]

The deal was finally concluded, with the terms slightly altered in favor of the British. Muhammad ‘Ali Shah invested Rs. 1,200,000 at only 4 percent interest, yielding dividends of Rs. 48,000 per year to be divided between the persons named and the Husaynabad Imambarah, Rs. 24,000 being car-

[30] Resident to Sec Govt. India, 25 July 1826, FDPC, 18 Aug. 1826, no. 8; see also Gov. Gen. to Resident, Lucknow, 6 May 1826, FDPC, 23 June 1826, no. 6; Resident to Gov. Gem, 18 and 20 May 1826, FDPC, 23 June 1826, nos 7-8.

[31] Kamalu'd-Din Haydar Husayni Mashhadi, Savanihat-i salatin-iAvadh (Lucknow: Naval Kishor, 1896), p. 355, Off. Resident to Off. Sec. Govt India, 11 Jan 1839, FDPC, 22 May 1839, nos. 63-65

[32] King of Oudh to Act. Resident, 26 Feb. 1839, encl. with Act. Resident to Off Sec. Govt. India, 13 Mar. 1839, FDPC, 12 June 1839, nos. 38-40

marked for the edifice. The king did not name Shi‘i ulama as trustees of the Imambarah and its mosque, that honor going to the high notables Sayyid Imam ‘Ali Khan and ‘Azimu'llah Khan, and their descendants after them.^[33]

The new forms of wealth available to members or the Awadh ruling class had the slight disadvantage of being forbidden by their religion. But they apparently felt they had little alternative. The British blocked Awadh's prospects of territorial expansion, and social and economic structures within the country tended to inhibit both commercial agriculture and new industrial enterprises. Most of the soil was unsuited to cash crops like cotton, and tacal-luqdar , landholders imposed high duties on the transport of goods. Awadh notables found making loans at 5 percent interest, however religiously illicit, an attractive way of investing the wealth they extracted from Hindu peasants and rural landholders. Other Muslim governments in this period, such as Egypt, invested state funds in military modernization, state-owned industries, and in the expansion of cash-crop cultivation through irrigation works. Awadh rulers demonstrated no such dynamism, perhaps because they had already been too constricted by the British presence.

Some few Awadh notables, dissatisfied with being rentiers, sought to enter the ranks of the new bourgeoisie. Hakim Mihdi ‘Ali Khan Kashmiri, from a family in Kashmir that came to Delhi early in the eighteenth century and married into a clan of Sufi leaders, joined the circle of the new businessmen. Mihdi's father went to Faizabad from Delhi in the time of Asafu'd-Dawlah, and after his death Mihdi emerged as a renowned physician catering to Lucknow's notables. He saved enough money to begin contracting as a revenue collector, taking on the district of Muhammadi under Nawab Sacadat ‘Ali Khan. Growing wealthy in Muhammadi, Hakim Mihdi began taking on other districts, including Khayrabad, Bahraich, and Gonda. In 1819 he fell out with Ghaziyu'd-Din .Haydar's chief minister, Agha Mir, who ordered him from the capital to Khayrabad. He went, fearful of treachery, buying up land in neighboring British Farrukhabad and remitting Rs. 800,000 over the border. At an opportune time he slipped across, escaping the mulcting he would otherwise have faced had Agha Mir deposed and arrested him.^[34]

In Farrukhabad, the indigo market beckoned:

The prospect of quick profit attracted fortune-hunters. To mention a few names, there was George Mercer who had one or two indigo factories in Aligarh in 1810. By 1826 Mercer and Co. had extended their general trading activities to the districts of

[33] Husaynabad Deed of Trust, 23 Nov. 1839, FDFC, 1 Jan 1840, nos. 71-74; for ‘Azimu'llah Khan, daroghah of the divankhanah , see Safi Ahmad, Two Kings of Awadh (Aligarh P C Dwadash Shreni, 1971), p. 30

[34] Ardistani, "Al-hisn al-matin" 2:183-82; Edward C. Archer, Tours in Upper India , 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1833), 1 · 50-51, W H Sleeman, A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude in 1849-1850 , 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley), 2:77.

Meerut, Agra, Moradabad, Farrukhabad, Bareilly, and Etawah; the total value of the assets of this firm was estimated at about a crore [ten million] of rupees. In 1820 Harm Mehdi Ali Khan, Nawab of Fatehgarh, formed a partnership in the indigo business with William Morton.^[35]

Morton probably brought Hakim Mihdi in as a means of raising money, an alternative to simply borrowing it. Mihdi ‘Ali Khan also set up a shawl factory employing three hundred workers and brought in wool from Kashmir.^[36] The transformation of this Kashmiri family, over three generations, from Sufi leader to physician to tax-farmer to agricultural capitalist and textile magnate was so sudden that it left intact many traditional values. The Hakim maintained great respect for Shi‘i ulama, building a congregational prayers mosque in Farrukhabad and giving patronage from 1824 to Shi‘i ulama from a Kashmiri background.^[37]

Both the move of the ruling class into the role of banker for the East India Company and the involvement of some notables in the British-ruled Ceded Provinces in cash-crop agriculture created a new economic atmosphere, presenting difficulties for the Shi‘i ulama who served these classes in transition. Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali, writing before most of these developments, had cautioned against taking interest on loans to Europeans. But in the early 1830s his son Sayyid Muhammad, the chief mujtahid in Lucknow, resolved the issue by reversing his father's ruling. Asked if interest might be taken from Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Sufi Muslims, Sayyid Muhammad replied that interest could be taken from polytheists by consensus and that Sufis could be considered polytheists. As to Jews and Christians, he added, jurists differed, but the clearest view in his opinion was that they could be charged interest.^[38] Since most Sunnis were Sufis in Awadh, according to this ruling wealthy Shi‘is could loan on interest to almost the entire population of the country, excluding only a small minority of other Shi‘is.

The ideas about society borne by Shi‘i mujtahids were thus neither traditional (Usulism was a new school in Awadh) nor static. Like Christianity in Europe's own age of commercial expansion, Imami Shi‘ism demonstrated an ability to adapt itself to modern capitalism. As the patrons of the jurisprudents became more bourgeois, so too did the social ideology proclaimed by the clerical establishment.^[39]

[35] Asiya Siddiqi, Agrarian Change in a North Indian State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 142, see also pp. 164-65.

[36] Fanuy Parkes, Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque , 2 vols. (London Pelham Richardson, 1850), 2.16-17

[37] Kashmiri, NujumT 1:388-90, 2.129-30; Nauganavi, Tazkirah , pp. 220-22; al-Hasani, Nuzhat al-Khawatir 7:332.

[38] Musharraf ‘Ali Khan ed., Bayaz-imasa'il 3.26; the fatwa is signed by S Muhammad.

[39] Cf. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spent of Capitalism , trans. Talcott Parsons (New York. Scribner's, 1958), and R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York. Penguin, repr. 1947), esp pp. 91-115 Clearly, this particular case supports the view of Tawney rather than Weber. For ideological accommodation to merchant capitalism in Muslim countries, see S. D. Goitein, "The Rise of the Middle Eastern Bourgeoisie m Early Islamic Times," in Goitein, Studies in Islamic History and Instilutions (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968), pp. 217-41; Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism , trans. Brian Pearce (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1978); and Peter Gran, The Islamic Roots of Capitalism (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1979). For a critique of Goitein and Rodinson (and, implicitly, Gran) for either confusing circulating merchant capital (abdundantly present in premodern Muslim regions) with industrial capital or incorrectly assuming that the first must give birth to the second, see Bryan S. Turner, Marx and the End of Orientalism (London George Allen & Unwin, 1978), ch. 3, esp p. 48

Shi‘i clerics accommodated themselves to many things Western, but the professional clergy rejected modern science. On the other hand, as we have seen, upper-class Shi‘i intellectuals, such as Tafazzul Husayn Khan Kashmiri or Sayyid Muhammad Hashim Jaunpuri, often took an interest in Western learning. Some scientific works were translated into Persian, one Mazhar ‘Ali receiving a prize from the Asiatic Society of Bengal for his Persian treatise on cosmography, which contained a section on Western, Copernican conceptions. But one of Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi's sons, Sayyid ‘Ali Akbar, wrote a tract entitled "The Firm Proof in Refutation of the Motion of the Earth," which typified the attitude of the clerical establishment. Sayyid Muhammad himself felt secular sciences to be secondary, holding the religious sciences the most important of all. The attitude of many in Awadh was summed up by the Moradabad notable who told Colonel Sleeman that telescopes were nonsense if they revealed things contrary to the Qur'an. When in the 1850s rumors of the telegraph swept Awadh, the Shi‘i ulama openly derided the invention as impossible, to their later embarrassment."^[40]

Some Muslim reformers in North India, of course, did accept European science. The Sunni reformist thinker Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who began by rejecting the Copernican revolution, later in life firmly adopted modern scientific views, espousing a thoroughgoing rationalism that opponents stigmatized as "naturism." Another of Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi's sons, Sayyid ‘Ali Muhammad "Taju'l-‘Ulama'," vigorously attacked Sayyid Ahmad Khan's rationalist Qur'an commentary.^[41]

[40] Asiatic Society, Bengal. to Mazhar ‘Ali, 11 Aug. 1845, Lucknow File 62. Board of Revenue, Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Lucknow [Persian]. For S. ‘Ali Akbar's anti-Copernican composition Ad-dalil al-matinfiibtalharakat al-ard , see S Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Kazimi, Ahsan al-wadicahfi tarajimmashahirmujtahidiask-Shi‘ah (Najaf al-Haydariyyah Press, 1969). pp. 44; for S Muhammad on ranking the sciences, see Abu'l-Fadl ‘Abbas Yamani Shirvani, ed, "Rawdat as-saha," Arabic MS in the private collection of Mr. Jalal Uddin of Allahabad, fol. 32a; W. H Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official (Karachi. Oxford Univ. Press, reprint 1793), pp 539-44; S. Ghulam Husayn Kinturi, "Life " (Yacnisavanth-icumri ) (Lahore Khadim at-Taclim Steam Press. n.d ), pp. 15-16

[41] See C W. Troll, Sayyid Ahmad Khan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1979), and Alessandro Bausani, "Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) e il moto della Terra," Rivista degli Studi Orientali 54 (1980): 303-18. The Shi‘i work, which I failed to locate, was entitled "Havashi-yi Qur'an dar radd-i Sayyid Ahmad Khan-i naychari" See Kashmiri, NujumT . 2 153-64, esp. p. 161. That such indigenous Shi‘i attacks on S. Ahmad Khan existed provides a novel context for considering the celebrated polemics of the Iranian Shi‘i pan-Islamic activist Jamalu'd-Din Asadabadi "al-Afghani." Of course, S Jamalu'd-Din's attack on Sir S. Ahmad Khan had political as well as theological motives, among them the Indian reformer's acceptance of British rule. S Jamalu'd-Din, first impressed with the need to fight British imperialism when living in Bombay during the revolt in Awadh by Shi‘is, Sunnis, and Hindus against British annexation, made this struggle central to his career. Whether similar ideological motives accompanied the polemics of Lucknow's ulama against the founder of Aligarh Muslim University can only be ascertained when the manuscripts are found and studied. See Jamalu'd-Din Husayni ["al-Afghani"], Mazhab-i naychariva bayan-i hal-inaychariyyin (Hyderabad. n.p., 1298/1880). for an English translation, see Nikki R Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din "al-Afghani " (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ of California Press. 1968), pp 130-80, and for analysis. Nikki R. Keddie, Sayyid Jamalad-Din "al-Afghani " A Political Biography (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ of California Press, 1972), ch 7.

Ulama engaged in intellectual contest with the West an another front: polemics against Christian missionaries. Most of these polemics, written in Arabic or Persian in a rationalist, Usuli style, have yet to be rediscovered or analyzed. One incident does shed light on the sorts of encounters Shi‘is had with Christians in Awadh. The missionary Joseph Wolff in 1833 told Awadh king Nasiru'd-Din Haydar that Christ would return in only a few years, and that he knew the date (1847). The sovereign arranged a public debate between the missionary and Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi, in which Wolff interpreted the Book of Daniel to show the imminence of Christ's coming. Sayyid Muhammad, who knew the Gospels in Arabic, replied that Christ had said that no man knew the hour or the day of his return. Wolff cleverly retorted that he did not claim to know the hour and the day, only the year. Sayyid Muhammad insisted that the phrase denied all such precise knowledge. This inconclusive encounter prompted the writing of several defenses of Shi‘ism from Christianity from a rationalist Usuli perspective in the late 1830s that influenced the terms of Christian-Muslim debate for the rest of the century.^[42]

In contrast to the fiery anti-British polemics produced by some Muslims, the attitude of the Shi‘i high ulama in Awadh to the Europeans was one of gradual accommodation, Some of those trained in Lucknow as mujtahids worked for the British directly as judges or even revenue officers. Even official clerics of the Awadh government slowly allowed more interaction with the foreigners, legitimizing loans to them and ultimately permitting salaried work for them. The families of the high ulama often acquired stock in the East India Company, or depended for patronage upon notables whose stipends derived from interest on loans to it. They appear to have considered the British honorable treaty allies, a view reflecting the policy of state. They rejected some British ways and nineteenth-century European science, even forbade some kinds of imported manufactures. But the xenophobia of a non-European clerisy did not extend to the political sphere before the 1840s.

[42] S Muhammad 'Abbas Shushtari, "Al-ma'adin adh-dhahabivyah," Adab ‘Arabi, MS 4446, pp. 105-6, Raza Lib, Ramput, see A A Powell, "Muslim Reaction to Missionary Activity in Agra," in C. H. Philips and M. D. Wainwright, eds, Indian Society and the Beginnings of Modernisation, c 1830-1850 (London. School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976), pp. 141-57