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Biography

Purāne Chirāgh, Volume 1

The Old Lamps

Mawlānā Sayyid Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī Nadwī

Eighteen people the author knew, written down as each of them died: scholars, shaykhs, his own teachers, a poet, a doctor, and men of standing nobody outside a small circle had heard of.

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Contents

  1. Preface: Something About the Book The book before the reader is a collection of those essays of mine which were written about a number of my contemporaries after their death. Among...
  2. Mawlānā Sayyid Sulaymān Nadwī Mawlānā Sayyid Sulaymān Nadwī had with our family such manifold ties and such affectionate connections that at no period was he a stranger or an...
  3. Mawlānā Sayyid Manāẓir Aḥsan Gīlānī It is always difficult to say of some famous and illustrious figure of one's own time when his name first fell upon the ear. When one comes to think...
  4. Mawlānā Sayyid Ḥusayn Aḥmad Madanī It was in 1928. The All Parties Conference was in session in Lucknow's well known White Baradari, and the Nehru Report was before it. In the general...
  5. Ḥakīm al-Ummat Mawlānā Ashraf ʿAlī Thānawī The revered name of Ḥakīm al-Ummat Mawlānā Ashraf ʿAlī Thānawī fell upon my ears, with reverence and devotion, from childhood itself. His book...
  6. Mawlānā Aḥmad ʿAlī Ṣāḥib Lāhorī It was a greatly blessed day in my life, and a most fortunate hour, when I was given the honour of coming to know Mawlānā Aḥmad ʿAlī Ṣāḥib Lāhorī...
  7. Mawlānā Waṣīullāh Ṣāḥib Fatḥpūrī It was some date in February 1954. I had come with a large party to my own district of Azamgarh on a preaching tour (tablīghī dawrah), and I resolved...
  8. Shaykh al-Ḥadīth Mawlānā Ḥaydar Ḥasan Khān Ṭonkī From 1923 to 1940, for nearly seventeen years, the fortunate citizens of Lucknow (who in every age have had the chance of seeing scholars of the...
  9. Mawlānā Khalīl ʿArab In India every native of the Arab lands, even one holding no rank whatever in learning or in religion, is called 'ʿArab Ṣāḥib' by way of respect....
  10. Mawlānā Sayyid Ṭalḥah Ṣāḥib Ḥasanī, M.A. In May 1970, when the eighth and last part of Nuzhat al-Khawāṭir came from the press of the Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif, Hyderabad, there came with it the...
  11. Mawlānā Shāh Ḥalīm ʿAṭā Salonī One day a gentleman came to that religious school (madrasah) of my teacher Mawlānā Khalīl ʿArab Ṣāḥib which was established in his house in Bāzār...
  12. Mawlānā Ḥakīm Sayyid Ḥasan Muthannā Ṣāḥib Amrohawī Two of my near kinsmen are of about the same age. The name of the elder brother is Ḥasan Muthannā and that of the other is Muḥammad Muslim. In our...
  13. Sayyid Ṣiddīq Ḥasan, I.C.S. For a quarter of a century it has been the way of this pen to count it always its own good fortune to set forth the excellences and merits of the...
  14. al-Ḥājj Sayyid Muḥammad Khalīl Ṣāḥib Nahṭawrī Among the special favours of Allāh upon my honoured father, Mawlānā Ḥakīm Sayyid ʿAbd al-Ḥayy , was this too, that in his own lifetime he was given...
  15. Mawlānā Masʿūd ʿĀlam Nadwī At the beginning of 1929 I first came to know the late Mawlānā Masʿūd ʿĀlam Nadwī . He was a young student of Dār al-ʿUlūm Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ, about...
  16. Jigar Murādābādī Jigar Murādābādī was a very great poet of his age. In the last period, or rather one should say in the period that begins after Ghālib and Momin, the...
  17. Dr Sayyid Maḥmūd Though I press my memory hard, I cannot recall when and where I saw Dr Ṣāḥib for the first time. It is possible that I saw him first of all at the...
  18. Dr Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Jalīl Farīdī It was, in all likelihood, 21 or 22 May 1974. I was staying at that time in Madīnah Ṭayyibah, and a message reached me by telephone from Makkah...
  19. Mawlānā Shāh Muʿīn al-Dīn Aḥmad Nadwī My book Purāne Chirāgh was in the press, and I had thought that before it came out of the press no new lamp would be added to these old lamps: a lamp...
  20. Glossary