This is a book mostly based on Islamic research in the seats of Islamic learning in the United Kingdom. Prof Netton of University of Leeds has accomplished a difficult job with great caution, allowing into the volume an enormous amount of information without being controversial, which is another way of saying that he has presented the work without offending an increasingly narrow-minded, bigoted and divided Muslim community. For instance, Kulayni’s Shia hadith Al-Kafi has been given the space it deserves but no reference has been made to the content, perhaps knowing that Kulayni’s work figures in the Sunni fatwas of apostatisation of the Shia today. And the other Shia collector Majlisi has been ignored! For instance, Goddard of University of Nottingham avoids telling us that Ahmad Sirhindi also viewed the Shia as a threat together with Sikhism and Akbar’s Din-e-Ilahi.
Prof Hulme of Durham University who has done a lot of entries in the book has given us a very good article on Abu Sufyan, an opponent of Prophet Muhammad PBUH who converted after the Prophet’s entry into Mecca. He notes that it was Abu Sufyan’s son Muawiya who later became caliph of Islam but leaves out the fact that his daughter Umme Habiba was also one of the Prophet’s wives.
Rippen of University of Victoria in Canada, has given a brief but able note on Hafsa, daughter of Umar, who became the Prophet’s wife as a widow and became famous for preserving the most authentic copy of the Quran which enabled Caliph Abubakr to preserve the true revealed text. At Lal Masjid of Islamabad, the madrassa that taught the Quran to girls was named after her.
Kafur is given a terse explanation by Newman of University of Edinburgh: ‘a well in paradise’. One can’t say it is wrong because there can be diverse interpretations of a Quranic reference, but exegetes in South Asia take kafur from a verse of the Quran defining two types of wine in paradise: one with a ‘downer’ ingredient described as kafur and an ‘upper’ described as zanjbeel (ginger). Verse 76:5 explains the quality of the wine in Paradise: it will smell of kafur. We know the word camphor in English. Some etymologists derive it from the Arabic root ‘kfr’. If Kafur was selected, why not zanjbeel too? Great Indian scholar Syed Suleiman Nadvi wrote about the two paradisal ‘additives’ in his book Arab-o-Hind kay Ta’aluqaat (Indo-Arab Relations) but he is not included as an entry. Considering that the Encyclopaedia will be mostly read in South Asia, this is an omission.
The note on the Ibadis (read as Ibazi in Pakistan) is interesting and adds to the importance of the book as does the long note on the concept of the imam and those who follow Shia and Sunni imams in our day. Ibadis are old kharijis although in Oman they deny the label. They are found in Oman (57 percent) and Algeria (0.42 percent) but in Oman, Ibadism is the official religion accepting the mutazila tradition of considering the Quran as created, much like the Shia, and have their own hadith, again like the Shia. But the Zaidis of Yemen are not like the Shia although they follow the imamate of Zaid bin Ali, a great grandson of Ali. (The book doesn’t tell us the name of Zaid’s father, but it was Ali the son of Hussain bin Ali, the martyr of Karbala.) The Zaidis of Yemen were not accepted as Shia by Iran and therefore not supported, but these days, as they stage their uprising against the Yemeni government, they are.
The Encyclopaedia is strong on explaining movements and individuals of great religious significance in the world of Islam, and no less in South Asia too. The note on Barelvism by McLoughlin is of great value because it explains the fundamental beliefs of Ahmad Raza Khan Barelvi, who didn’t mind the mysticism of the wali, while carefully separating it from Syed Ahmad of Rae Bareli who led a jihad against the British and hated the Sufis. The note tells us about the anti-Shia faith of Ahmad Raza Khan — which explains why he figures in the apostatising fatwas against the Shia from the Deobandis in Pakistan. Yet it is a fact that Barelvism in Pakistan is not hostile to the Shia because of the Sufi link and the Barelvi leaders have been suicide-bombed in the context of the sectarian war in Pakistan. It is rightly noted that the Barelvi ulema don’t call themselves Barelvi, but Ahle-e-Sunnat.
Without being too censorious, one must remark on a forgivable error in the entry on the Barmakids also written as Barmecides in old English sources. The note is so good one doesn’t feel like finding fault, but the original name of the great family was not the Baramaka of Balkh but Paramaka. Just as Barmecides was coined because of the lack of a ‘k’ in Latin, Baramaka was formed because of the lack of a ‘p’ in Arabic. One should be grateful for a note on Abdullah Yusuf Ali the great translator and interpreter of the Quran from Gujarat in India. But one could add that he transcended his Ismaili family background to become acceptable to Muslims of all sects although the footnotes were expurgated before his Quran was allowed into Saudi Arabia. No note is given on Ali Shariati, the great Iranian scholar who is controversial in Revolutionary Iran but is highly regarded by Muslims at large.
Peter Clark a former officer of the British Council has contributed a fascinating account of Marmaduke Pickthall whose career followed the same kind of trajectory as Muhammad Asad, who has not been allotted a separate note. Pickthall was British and embraced Islam after travelling to the Middle East; Asad was a Jew from Austria who did the same. But both travelled to India and became famous because of their work there. Pickthall was more monumental in his genius and wrote novels as well, and landed in Khilafat-crazy India after his fiction had dried up, to find employment in Hyderabad with the Nizam who gave him time off to translate the Quran, without doubt the most popular English version now in South Asia. He edited Islamic Culture whose back issues have been issued in bound volumes by a library in Lahore. The Encyclopaedia is worth keeping in one’s library. *