Author Biography

چند سطور بحرالعلوم کے بارے میں

بِسْمِ اللّٰهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِیْمِ

A Few Lines about Baḥr al-ʿUlūm (may Allah have mercy on him)

Shams al-Mufassirīn (Sun of the Qurʾān commentators), Shaykh al-Muḥaddithīn (master of the hadith scholars), Ustādh al-ʿUlamāʾ (teacher of the scholars), Bahrul Uloom Hazrat Sheikh Abdul Qadeer Siddiqui Rahmatullah Alaih — Ḥaḍrat Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qadīr Ṣiddīqī "Ḥasrat" of Hyderabad Deccan (may Allah have mercy on him) — was a scholarly personality of Hyderabad Deccan who is rightly remembered by the titles Baḥr al-ʿUlūm (Ocean of the Sciences) and Ustādh al-ʿUlamāʾ. He was born on Friday, 27 Rajab 1288 AH (13 October 1871 CE), into a well-known scholarly family of Hyderabad Deccan. He passed the Mawlawī Fāḍil and Munshī Fāḍil examinations of the Punjab University with distinction and won gold medals. At first he was appointed at the Dār al-ʿUlūm, which in that period was the well-known seminary of Hyderabad Deccan. When the Osmania University (Jāmiʿa ʿUthmāniyya) was established, he was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Theology (Dīniyyāt). By royal decree (shāhī farmān), his term of service was extended continuously for ten years.

He wrote a complete commentary (tafsīr) of the Qurʾān Majīd, which has been published in India and in Pakistan under the name "Tafsīr-e Ṣiddīqī". In 1941 his research treatise "Masʾala-e ʿAdam-e Naskh-e Qurʾān" (The Question of the Non-Abrogation of the Qurʾān) was printed by the Hyderabad Academy, in which he established that no verse of the Noble Qurʾān is abrogated (mansūkh). His work "al-Dīn", in the Arabic language, was part of the fiqh syllabus of Jāmiʿa ʿUthmāniyya. In it he established that the foundation of the Ḥanafī school rests on the Qurʾān and hadith, and not on analogy (qiyās) as people imagine. He translated ʿAllāma Shaykh-e Akbar Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī's celebrated work "Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam", which was published by the Dār al-Tarjama (Translation Bureau) of Jāmiʿa ʿUthmāniyya and is quite well known. In taṣawwuf (Sufism) he has several works, among which are "Ḥikmat-e Islāmiyya", "al-Maʿārif", "al-ʿIrfān", "al-Tawḥīd" (in Persian) and "Makātīb-e ʿIrfān".

He used the pen-name (takhalluṣ) "Ḥasrat" and composed poetry in Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Hindi. His collected poetry has been adorned with print under the name "Kulliyyāt-e Ḥasrat".

He departed this transient world on Saturday, 17 Shawwāl 1381 AH (24 March 1962 CE), at the time of ʿAṣr.

Muḥammad ʿAbbās ʿAlambardār Ṣiddīqī Muhtamim (Director), Ḥasrat Academy and Kutub-khāna (Library) Baḥr al-ʿUlūm Ṣiddīq Gulshan, Hyderabad