163-529: The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam , ( Urdu : احمدیہ انجمنِ اشاعتِ اسلام لاہور , romanized : Aḥmadiyyah Anjuman-i Ishāʿat-i Islām Lahore ) is a separatist group within the Ahmadiyya movement that formed in 1914 as a result of ideological and administrative differences following the demise of Hakim Nur-ud-Din , the first Caliph after Mirza Ghulam Ahmad . Members of
326-841: A Sufistic or mystical rather than theologically technical nature. Moreover, adherents of the Lahore Ahmadiyya movement do not profess allegiance to the Ahmadiyya Caliphate and are administered, instead, by a body of people called the Anjuman (Council), headed by an Amīr (President). According to estimates from the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada and author Simon Ross Valentine, there are between 5,000 and 10,000 Lahori Ahmadis in Pakistan and as many as 30,000 worldwide, thereby representing less than 0.2% of
489-642: A dialect continuum ranging from Persianised to Sanskritised vocabulary, but now they are more and more different in words due to politics. Old Urdu dictionaries also contain most of the Sanskrit words now present in Hindi. Mutual intelligibility decreases in literary and specialised contexts that rely on academic or technical vocabulary. In a longer conversation, differences in formal vocabulary and pronunciation of some Urdu phonemes are noticeable, though many native Hindi speakers also pronounce these phonemes. At
652-553: A khilāfah (caliphate) within the movement, preferring what they saw as a more democratic system established by Ghulam Ahmad himself and, accordingly, vested the Community's authority in the Council as an administrative body. No individual had the power to revoke the decisions reached by the majority of the Council that would remain paramount and binding, something which they believed was in keeping with Ghulam Ahmad's instructions for
815-595: A pīr's role is to guide and instruct his disciples on the mystical path. Hence, the key difference between the use of walī and pīr is that the former does not imply a saint who is also a spiritual master with disciples, while the latter directly does so through its connotations of "elder". Additionally, other Arabic and Persian words that also often have the same connotations as pīr , and hence are also sometimes translated into English as "saint", include murshid ( Arabic : مرشد , meaning "guide" or "teacher"), sheikh and sarkar (Persian word meaning "master"). In
978-473: A "[friend of God] marked by [special] divine favor ... [and] holiness", being specifically "chosen by God and endowed with exceptional gifts, such as the ability to work miracles ." Moreover, the saint is also portrayed in traditional hagiographies as one who "in some way ... acquires his Friend's, i.e. God's, good qualities, and therefore he possesses particular authority, forces, capacities and abilities." Amongst classical scholars, Qushayri (d. 1073) defined
1141-783: A belief in the existence and miracles of saints was presented as "a requirement" for being an orthodox Muslim believer. Aside from the Sufis, the preeminent saints in traditional Islamic piety are the Companions of the Prophet , their Successors , and the Successors of the Successors . Additionally, the prophets and messengers in Islam are also believed to be saints by definition, although they are rarely referred to as such, in order to prevent confusion between them and ordinary saints; as
1304-406: A core vocabulary of native Sanskrit and Prakrit derived words and a significant number of Arabic and Persian loanwords, with a consensus of linguists considering them to be two standardised forms of the same language and consider the differences to be sociolinguistic ; a few classify them separately. The two languages are often considered to be a single language (Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu) on
1467-483: A distinction between those who were neutral in the controversy and those who actively rejected and opposed Ghulam Ahmad, or pronounced him an infidel. The former could not in any sense be termed disbelievers ( kafirs ) while the latter were guilty only of rejecting a particular commandment of the Islamic faith—namely that pertaining to belief in the promised Messiah—which would render them fasiqun (those who depart from
1630-490: A heavy influence on both as a co-official language. According to Bruce (2021), Urdu has adapted English words since the eighteenth century. A movement towards the hyper-Persianisation of an Urdu emerged in Pakistan since its independence in 1947 which is "as artificial as" the hyper-Sanskritised Hindi that has emerged in India; hyper-Persianisation of Urdu was prompted in part by the increasing Sanskritisation of Hindi. However,
1793-518: A literary medium for Indian writers from the Bombay Presidency, Bengal, Orissa Province, and Tamil Nadu as well. As Urdu and Hindi became means of religious and social construction for Muslims and Hindus respectively, each register developed its own script. According to Islamic tradition, Arabic , the language of Muhammad and the Qur'an , holds spiritual significance and power. Because Urdu
SECTION 10
#17327722182081956-406: A manner akin to all those Christian saints who began to be venerated prior to the institution of canonization . In fact, a belief in the existence of saints became such an important part of medieval Islam that many of the most important creeds articulated during the time period, like the famous Creed of Tahawi , explicitly declared it a requirement for being an "orthodox" Muslim to believe in
2119-690: A master and a 'pole' by" Abu 'l-Ḥasan al-S̲h̲ād̲h̲ilī (d. 1258). It was this last figure who became the preeminent saint in Maghrebi piety, due to his being the founder of one of the most famous Sunni Sufi orders of North Africa: the Shadhiliyya tariqa . Adhering to the Maliki maddhab in its jurisprudence , the Shadhili order produced numerous widely honored Sunni saints in the intervening years, including Fāsī Aḥmad al-Zarrūq (d. 1494), who
2282-595: A notable novel being Umrao Jaan Ada . According to the Navadirul Alfaz by Khan-i Arzu, the "Zaban-e Urdu-e Shahi" [language of the Imperial Camp] had attained special importance in the time of Alamgir ". By the end of the reign of Aurangzeb in the early 1700s, the common language around Delhi began to be referred to as Zaban-e-Urdu , a name derived from the Turkic word ordu (army) or orda and
2445-405: A past one like Jesus, nor a new one. In contrast, Mahmud Ahmad posited that Ghulam Ahmad's messianic claim and role were qualitatively distinct to the claims of the saints preceding him in Islam and that his prophetic status, though completely subservient to Muhammad, being a mere reflection of his own prophethood and not legislating anything new, still made him technically a prophet irrespective of
2608-702: A phonological level, speakers of both languages are frequently aware of the Perso-Arabic or Sanskrit origins of their word choice, which affects the pronunciation of those words. Urdu speakers will often insert vowels to break up consonant clusters found in words of Sanskritic origin, but will pronounce them correctly in Arabic and Persian loanwords. As a result of religious nationalism since the partition of British India and continued communal tensions, native speakers of both Hindi and Urdu frequently assert that they are distinct languages. The grammar of Hindi and Urdu
2771-589: A policy continued by the Mughal Empire , which extended over most of northern South Asia from the 16th to 18th centuries and cemented Persian influence on Hindustani. Urdu was patronised by the Nawab of Awadh and in Lucknow , the language was refined, being not only spoken in the court, but by the common people in the city—both Hindus and Muslims; the city of Lucknow gave birth to Urdu prose literature, with
2934-498: A prophet in the technical sense of the word as used in Islamic terminology, amounted to nothing more than sainthood ( walāya ) and that Islamic mystics preceding Ghulam Ahmad had similarly described experiences of prophecy within Islam in the context of their relationship with Muhammad. Unlike the majority Muslim belief which expects the physical return of Jesus, the Lahore Ahmadiyya affirm the absolute cessation of prophethood, and believe that no prophet can appear after Muhammad, neither
3097-460: A prophetic status, though not independent, is nonetheless technically classed as prophethood in as much as it involves an individual who is given knowledge of the hidden, predicts future events and is called a prophet by Allah. A closely linked point of contention surrounded the status of Muslims who did not accept Ghulam Ahmad's claim. Muhammad Ali and his supporters, rejecting indiscriminate pronouncements of disbelief ( Kufr ) concerning them, drew
3260-516: A public role. Rasuls likewise have a mission of transformation of the world at large. The amount of veneration a specific saint received varied from region to region in Islamic civilization, often on the basis of the saint's own history in that region. While the veneration of saints played a crucial role in the daily piety of Sunni Muslims all over the Islamic world for more than a thousand years (ca. 800–1800), exactly which saints were most widely venerated in any given cultural climate depended on
3423-443: A rank below the prophets but are nevertheless exalted by God. The references in the corpus of hadith literature to bona fide saints like the pre-Islamic Jurayj̲, only lent further credence to this early understanding of saints. Collected stories about the "lives or vitae of the saints", began to be compiled "and transmitted at an early stage" by many regular Muslim scholars, including Ibn Abi al-Dunya (d. 894), who wrote
SECTION 20
#17327722182083586-535: A rank below the prophets. Later important works which detailed the hierarchy of saints were composed by the mystic ʿAmmār al-Bidlīsī (d. between 1194 and 1207), the spiritual teacher of Najmuddin Kubra (d. 1220), and by Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209), who evidently knew of "a highly developed hierarchy of God's friends." The differences in terminology between the various celestial hierarchies presented by these authors were reconciled by later scholars through their belief that
3749-507: A sectarian divide of "Urdu" for Muslims and "Hindi" for Hindus, a divide that was formalised with the partition of colonial India into the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan after independence (though there are Hindu poets who continue to write in Urdu, including Gopi Chand Narang and Gulzar ). Urdu had been used as a literary medium for British colonial Indian writers from
3912-481: A significant role in the development of the Urdu register. Hindi became the distinct register spoken by those who sought to construct a Hindu identity in the face of colonial rule. As Hindi separated from Hindustani to create a distinct spiritual identity, Urdu was employed to create a definitive Islamic identity for the Muslim population in India. Urdu's use was not confined only to northern India – it had been used as
4075-614: A symbol of their religious identity. Hindus in northwestern India, under the Arya Samaj agitated against the sole use of the Perso-Arabic script and argued that the language should be written in the native Devanagari script, which triggered a backlash against the use of Hindi written in Devanagari by the Anjuman-e-Islamia of Lahore. Hindi in the Devanagari script and Urdu written in the Perso-Arabic script established
4238-485: A system of divinely ordained caliphate to succeed him, similar to that believed to have commenced following the death of Muhammad , under whose authority the Council was to operate. Accordingly, he favoured centralised, singular authority through the system of caliphate which, in his view, was religiously indispensable and to which the Community's allegiance was necessary. Ghulam Ahmad's successors, according to him, continued to be divinely ordained and commanded obedience from
4401-419: A uniting language. Urdu was chosen as a symbol of unity for the new Dominion of Pakistan in 1947, because it had already served as a lingua franca among Muslims in north and northwest of British Indian Empire . Urdu is also seen as a repertory for the cultural and social heritage of Pakistan. While Urdu and Islam together played important roles in developing the national identity of Pakistan, disputes in
4564-465: A vehicle of poetry, (especially under the Bahmanids ), and is known as Dakhini , which contains loanwords from Telugu and Marathi . From the 13th century until the end of the 18th century; the language now known as Urdu was called Hindi , Hindavi , Hindustani , Dehlavi , Dihlawi , Lahori , and Lashkari . The Delhi Sultanate established Persian as its official language in India,
4727-615: A veritable secession and the formation of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement. Adopting a position more congruent with the mainstream of Sunni Islam regarding the issues of dispute, Muhammad Ali led the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement as Amīr (President) from 1914 until his death in 1951. Since then it has been led by four Amīrs , the current being Abdul Karim Saeed Pasha . Relative to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, some mainstream Muslim opinion towards
4890-464: A very significant number among the nearly 800 districts of India, there is a small Urdu-speaking minority at least. In Araria district , Bihar, there is a plurality of Urdu speakers and near-plurality in Hyderabad district, Telangana (43.35% Telugu speakers and 43.24% Urdu speakers). Some Indian Muslim schools ( Madrasa ) teach Urdu as a first language and have their own syllabi and exams. In fact,
5053-592: A work entitled Kitāb al-Awliyāʾ ( Lives of the Saints ) in the ninth-century, which constitutes "the earliest [complete] compilation on the theme of God's friends." Prior to Ibn Abi al-Dunya's work, the stories of the saints were transmitted through oral tradition ; but after the composition of his work, many Islamic scholars began writing down the widely circulated accounts, with later scholars like Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī (d. 948) making extensive use of Ibn Abi al-Dunya's work in his own Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ ( The Adornment of
Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement - Misplaced Pages Continue
5216-519: Is 'Purdah'. While the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community holds the view that Jesus born of the virgin Mary is a fundamental belief in Islam, many pioneer and prominent Lahori Ahmadi Muslims deny that the virgin birth indeed occurred and stated that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had no issues with his followers holding different opinions on such matters Reliable statistics on the worldwide Lahore Ahmadiyya movement do not exist. However, sources do suggest that in comparison to
5379-648: Is a Persianised register of the Hindustani language , an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia . It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan , where it is also an official language alongside English . In India , Urdu is an Eighth Schedule language , the status and cultural heritage of which are recognised by the Constitution of India ; and it also has an official status in several Indian states. In Nepal , Urdu
5542-668: Is a registered regional dialect and in South Africa , it is a protected language in the constitution. It is also spoken as a minority language in Afghanistan and Bangladesh , with no official status. Urdu and Hindi share a common Sanskrit - and Prakrit -derived vocabulary base, phonology , syntax , and grammar, making them mutually intelligible during colloquial communication . While formal Urdu draws literary, political, and technical vocabulary from Persian , formal Hindi draws these aspects from Sanskrit; consequently,
5705-521: Is most commonly used by Muslims to refer to a saint , or literally a "friend of God ". In the traditional Islamic understanding, a saint is portrayed as someone "marked by [special] divine favor ... [and] holiness", and who is specifically "chosen by God and endowed with exceptional gifts, such as the ability to work miracles ". The doctrine of saints was articulated by Muslim scholars very early on in Islamic history , and particular verses of
5868-410: Is no confusion, for Muslims, over their specific referents in Islam, namely: the reality of iman with Godwariness and those who possess those qualities." In Persian , which became the second most influential and widely spoken language in the Islamic world after Arabic , the general title for a saint or a spiritual master became pīr ( Persian : پیر , literally "old [person]", "elder" ). Although
6031-527: Is not officially recognised by the Government of Bangladesh . The Urdu spoken by Stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh is different from this dialect. Many bilingual or multi-lingual Urdu speakers, being familiar with both Urdu and English, display code-switching (referred to as " Urdish ") in certain localities and between certain social groups. On 14 August 2015, the Government of Pakistan launched
6194-488: Is one variety, is spoken much more widely, forming the third most commonly spoken language in the world, after Mandarin and English . The syntax (grammar), morphology , and the core vocabulary of Urdu and Hindi are essentially identical – thus linguists usually count them as one single language, while some contend that they are considered as two different languages for socio-political reasons. Owing to interaction with other languages, Urdu has become localised wherever it
6357-593: Is read and written as in other parts of India. A number of daily newspapers and several monthly magazines in Urdu are published in these states. Dhakaiya Urdu is a dialect native to the city of Old Dhaka in Bangladesh , dating back to the Mughal era . However, its popularity, even among native speakers, has been gradually declining since the Bengali Language Movement in the 20th century. It
6520-552: Is said to have arisen as the "language of the camp", or " Zaban-i-Ordu " means " Language of High camps " or natively " Lashkari Zaban " means " Language of Army " even though term Urdu held different meanings at that time. It is recorded that Aurangzeb spoke in Hindvi, which was most likely Persianized, as there are substantial evidence that Hindvi was written in the Persian script in this period. During this time period Urdu
6683-471: Is shared, though formal Urdu makes more use of the Persian "-e-" izafat grammatical construct (as in Hammam-e-Qadimi , or Nishan-e-Haider ) than does Hindi. The following table shows the number of Urdu speakers in some countries. Wali The term wali ( Arabic : وَلِيّ , romanized : waliyy , lit. 'friend'; plural أَوْلِيَاء , ʾawliyāʾ )
Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement - Misplaced Pages Continue
6846-729: Is spoken by large numbers of migrant South Asian workers in the major urban centres of the Persian Gulf countries. Urdu is also spoken by large numbers of immigrants and their children in the major urban centres of the United Kingdom , the United States, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, and Australia. Along with Arabic , Urdu is among the immigrant languages with the most speakers in Catalonia . Religious and social atmospheres in early nineteenth century India played
7009-492: Is spoken, including in Pakistan. Urdu in Pakistan has undergone changes and has incorporated and borrowed many words from regional languages, thus allowing speakers of the language in Pakistan to distinguish themselves more easily and giving the language a decidedly Pakistani flavor. Similarly, the Urdu spoken in India can also be distinguished into many dialects such as the Standard Urdu of Lucknow and Delhi , as well as
7172-481: Is used in education , literature , office and court business, although in practice, English is used instead of Urdu in the higher echelons of government. Article 251(1) of the Pakistani Constitution mandates that Urdu be implemented as the sole language of government, though English continues to be the most widely used language at the higher echelons of Pakistani government. Urdu is also one of
7335-557: The Balkans . Regarding the rendering of the Arabic walī by the English "saint", prominent scholars such as Gibril Haddad have regarded this as an appropriate translation, with Haddad describing the aversion of some Muslims towards the use of "saint" for walī as "a specious objection ... for [this is] – like 'Religion' ( din ), 'Believer' ( mu'min ), 'prayer' ( salat ), etc. – [a] generic term for holiness and holy persons while there
7498-575: The Bombay , Bengal , Orissa , and Hyderabad State as well. Before independence, Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah advocated the use of Urdu, which he used as a symbol of national cohesion in Pakistan. After the Bengali language movement and the separation of former East Pakistan , Urdu was recognised as the sole national language of Pakistan in 1973, although English and regional languages were also granted official recognition. Following
7661-671: The Central Hindi Directorate was established earlier in 1960, and the promotion of Hindi is better funded and more advanced, while the status of Urdu has been undermined by the promotion of Hindi. Private Indian organisations such as the Anjuman-e-Tariqqi Urdu, Deeni Talimi Council and Urdu Mushafiz Dasta promote the use and preservation of Urdu, with the Anjuman successfully launching a campaign that reintroduced Urdu as an official language of Bihar in
7824-687: The Dakhni ( Deccan ) of South India. Because of Urdu's similarity to Hindi , speakers of the two languages can easily understand one another if both sides refrain from using literary vocabulary. Although Urdu is widely spoken and understood throughout all of Pakistan, only 9% of Pakistan's population spoke Urdu according to the 2023 Pakistani census . Most of the nearly three million Afghan refugees of different ethnic origins (such as Pashtun , Tajik , Uzbek , Hazarvi , and Turkmen ) who stayed in Pakistan for over twenty-five years have also become fluent in Urdu. Muhajirs since 1947 have historically formed
7987-527: The Devanagari and Latin script ( Roman Urdu ) to allow its survival, or whether this will only hasten its demise and that the language can only be preserved if expressed in the Perso-Arabic script. For Pakistan, Willoughby & Aftab (2020) argued that Urdu originally had the image of a refined elite language of the Enlightenment, progress and emancipation, which contributed to the success of
8150-527: The Ilm Pakistan movement, with a uniform curriculum in Urdish. Ahsan Iqbal , Federal Minister of Pakistan, said "Now the government is working on a new curriculum to provide a new medium to the students which will be the combination of both Urdu and English and will name it Urdish." Standard Urdu is often compared with Standard Hindi . Both Urdu and Hindi, which are considered standard registers of
8313-610: The Khariboli dialect of the Delhi region). Dakhni (also known as Dakani, Deccani, Desia, Mirgan) is spoken in Deccan region of southern India . It is distinct by its mixture of vocabulary from Marathi and Konkani , as well as some vocabulary from Arabic, Persian and Chagatai that are not found in the standard dialect of Urdu. Dakhini is widely spoken in all parts of Maharashtra , Telangana , Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka . Urdu
SECTION 50
#17327722182088476-482: The Punjabi elite of Pakistan, have adopted Urdu as a mother tongue and identify with both an Urdu speaker as well as Punjabi identity. Urdu was chosen as a symbol of unity for the new state of Pakistan in 1947, because it had already served as a lingua franca among Muslims in north and northwest British India . It is written, spoken and used in all provinces/territories of Pakistan , and together with English as
8639-496: The Quran and certain hadith were interpreted by early Muslim thinkers as "documentary evidence" of the existence of saints. Graves of saints around the Muslim world became centers of pilgrimage – especially after 1200 CE – for masses of Muslims seeking their barakah (blessing). Since the first Muslim hagiographies were written during the period when the Islamic mystical trend of Sufism began its rapid expansion, many of
8802-752: The Quran , the concept of sainthood is clearly described. Some modern scholars, however, assert that the Quran does not explicitly outline a doctrine or theory of saints. In the Quran, the adjective walī is applied to God , in the sense of him being the "friend" of all believers (Q 2:257 ). However, particular Quranic verses were interpreted by early Islamic scholars to refer to a special, exalted group of holy people. These included 10:62 : "Surely God's friends ( awliyāa l-lahi ): no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow," and 5:54 , which refers to God's love for those who love him. Additionally, some scholars interpreted 4:69 , "Whosoever obeys God and
8965-522: The Salafi movement , Wahhabism , and Islamic Modernism , all three of which have, to a greater or lesser degree, "formed a front against the veneration and theory of saints". As has been noted by scholars, the development of these movements has indirectly led to a trend amongst some mainstream Muslims to resist "acknowledging the existence of Muslim saints altogether or ... [to view] their presence and veneration as unacceptable deviations". However, despite
9128-399: The de jure legal status and de facto political status of Urdu, how much Urdu is used as language of instruction and chosen by students in higher education, and how the maintenance and development of Urdu is financially and institutionally supported by governments and NGOs. In India, although Urdu is not and never was used exclusively by Muslims (and Hindi never exclusively by Hindus),
9291-456: The puritanical and revivalist Islamic movements of Salafism and Wahhabism , whose influence has "formed a front against the veneration and theory of saints." For the adherents of Wahhabi ideology, for example, the practice of venerating saints appears as an "abomination", for they see in this a form of idolatry . It is for this reason that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , which adheres to
9454-449: The walī ḥaḳḳ Allāh on the one hand and the walī Allāh on the other. According to the author, "the [spiritual] ascent of the walī ḥaḳḳ Allāh must stop at the end of the created cosmos ... he can attain God's proximity, but not God Himself; he is only admitted to God's proximity ( muḳarrab ). It is the walī Allāh who reaches God. Ascent beyond God's throne means to traverse consciously
9617-547: The 18th century and two similar standard forms came into existence in Delhi and Lucknow . Since the partition of India in 1947, a third standard has arisen in the Pakistani city of Karachi . Deccani , an older form used in southern India , became a court language of the Deccan sultanates by the 16th century. Urdu has a few recognised dialects, including Dakhni , Dhakaiya , Rekhta , and Modern Vernacular Urdu (based on
9780-483: The 1950s (particularly those in East Pakistan , where Bengali was the dominant language), challenged the idea of Urdu as a national symbol and its practicality as the lingua franca . The significance of Urdu as a national symbol was downplayed by these disputes when English and Bengali were also accepted as official languages in the former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh ). Urdu is the sole national, and one of
9943-479: The 1960s, the Urdu lobby and eventually the Urdu language in Pakistan has been associated with religious Islamism and political national conservatism (and eventually the lower and lower-middle classes, alongside regional languages such as Punjabi, Sindhi, and Balochi), while English has been associated with the internationally oriented secular and progressive left (and eventually the upper and upper-middle classes). Despite governmental attempts at Urduisation of Pakistan,
SECTION 60
#173277221820810106-663: The 1970s. In the former Jammu and Kashmir state , section 145 of the Kashmir Constitution stated: "The official language of the State shall be Urdu but the English language shall unless the Legislature by law otherwise provides, continue to be used for all the official purposes of the State for which it was being used immediately before the commencement of the Constitution." Urdu became a literary language in
10269-690: The 1979 Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent arrival of millions of Afghan refugees who have lived in Pakistan for many decades, many Afghans, including those who moved back to Afghanistan, have also become fluent in Hindi-Urdu, an occurrence aided by exposure to the Indian media, chiefly Hindi-Urdu Bollywood films and songs. There have been attempts to purge Urdu of native Prakrit and Sanskrit words, and Hindi of Persian loanwords – new vocabulary draws primarily from Persian and Arabic for Urdu and from Sanskrit for Hindi. English has exerted
10432-458: The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, the Lahore Ahmadiyya population is relatively very small. In particular, it is estimated that there may be between 5,000 and 10,000 Lahori Ahmadis in Pakistan and possibly up to 30,000 worldwide, thereby representing less than 0.2% of the worldwide Ahmadiyya population. Dr Zahid Aziz Urdu language Urdu ( / ˈ ʊər d uː / ; اُردُو , pronounced [ʊɾduː] , ALA-LC : Urdū )
10595-594: The Capital was relocated to Delhi and named Shahjahanabad and the Bazar of the town was named Urdu e Muallah. In the Akbar era the word Rekhta was used to describe Urdu for the first time. It was originally a Persian word that meant "to create a mixture". Amir Khusrau was the first person to use the same word for Poetry. Before the standardisation of Urdu into colonial administration, British officers often referred to
10758-620: The Community. This, he contended, was clearly indicated in The Will as well as Ghulam Ahmad's other works and was an arrangement which, according to him, had existed throughout the period of Nur-ud-Din's leadership who not only spoke of himself as the khalīfat al-masīh (caliph; lit. successor of the Messiah) but declared that he had attained this office by divine appointment rather than community choice. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, accordingly, vests its religious and organisational authority in
10921-465: The Delhi region of India the native language was Khariboli , whose earliest form is known as Old Hindi (or Hindavi). It belongs to the Western Hindi group of the Central Indo-Aryan languages. The contact of Hindu and Muslim cultures during the period of Islamic conquests in the Indian subcontinent (12th to 16th centuries) led to the development of Hindustani as a product of a composite Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb . In cities such as Delhi,
11084-426: The English liked to use the name "Moors" for Urdu: I have a deep knowledge [ je possède à fond ] of the common tongue of India, called Moors by the English, and Ourdouzebain by the natives of the land. Several works of Sufi writers like Ashraf Jahangir Semnani used similar names for the Urdu language. Shah Abdul Qadir Raipuri was the first person who translated The Quran into Urdu. During Shahjahan's time,
11247-420: The Heathens, or from the Persians, or other Nations. In 1715, a complete literary Diwan in Rekhta was written by Nawab Sadruddin Khan . An Urdu-Persian dictionary was written by Khan-i Arzu in 1751 in the reign of Ahmad Shah Bahadur . The name Urdu was first introduced by the poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi around 1780. As a literary language, Urdu took shape in courtly, elite settings. While Urdu retained
11410-405: The Indian government do not actively support the preservation of Urdu in professional and official spaces. Because the Pakistani government proclaimed Urdu the national language at Partition, the Indian state and some religious nationalists began in part to regard Urdu as a 'foreign' language, to be viewed with suspicion. Urdu advocates in India disagree whether it should be allowed to write Urdu in
11573-413: The Islamic world today, playing a vital part in the daily piety of vast portions of Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Senegal , Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Morocco, as well as in countries with substantive Islamic populations like India, China, Russia, and the Balkans . The general definition of the Muslim saint in classical texts is that he represents
11736-418: The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement and its literature has been more accepting, with some Orthodox Sunni scholars considering the members of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement as Muslims. Notwithstanding, the group was subsumed within Pakistan's anti-Ahmadi laws declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslims and prohibiting them from any public expression of the Islamic faith. Ahmadis universally concur in the belief that Ghulam Ahmad
11899-517: The Lahore Ahmadiyya movement are referred to by the majority group as ghayr mubāyi'īn ("non-initiates"; "those outside of allegiance" to the caliph) and are also known colloquially as Lahori Ahmadis . Adherents of the Lahore Ahmadiyya movement believe Ghulam Ahmad to be a Mujaddid (reformer) and also affirm his status as the promised Messiah and Mahdi , but diverge from the main Ahmadiyya position in understanding his prophetic status to be of
12062-595: The Maghreb, Abū Madyan stopped at Béjaïa and "formed a circle of disciples." Abū Madyan eventually died in Tlemcen , while making his way to the Almohad court of Marrakesh ; he was later venerated as a prime Awliya Allah of Tlemcen by popular acclaim. One of Abū Madyan's most notable disciples was ʿAbd al-Salām Ibn Mas̲h̲īs̲h̲ (d. 1127), a "saint ... [who] had a posthumous fame through his being recognised as
12225-466: The Messenger, they are with those unto whom God hath shown favor: the prophets and the ṣidīqīna and the martyrs and the righteous. The best of company are they," to carry a reference to holy people who were not prophets and were ranked below the latter. The word ṣidīqīna in this verse literally connotes "the truthful ones" or "the just ones," and was often interpreted by the early Islamic thinkers in
12388-453: The Muslim community and were Muslims only in the sense that they belonged to the Ummah of Muhammad and as such were entitled to be treated as members of Muslim society ( mu'ashira ), which, according to him, was different from saying that they are Muslims and not kafirs . He held, therefore, that non-Ahmadi Muslims were to be classified as disbelievers albeit within the remit of Islam and not in
12551-499: The Qur'an has pointed to it in different places, and the sayings of the Prophet have mentioned it, and whoever denies the miraculous power of saints are only people who are innovators and their followers." In the words of one contemporary academic, practically all Muslims of that era believed that "the lives of saints and their miracles were incontestable." In the modern world , the traditional idea of saints in Islam has been challenged by
12714-538: The Qutb in order that he may direct his attention to the weak spot and that by his blessings the imperfection may be remedied. Another is from Ibn Arabi , who lived in Moorish Spain. It has a more exclusive structure. There are eight nujabā ("nobles"), twelve nuqabā , seven abdāl , four awtād , two a'immah ("guides"), and the qutb. According to the 20th-century Sufi Inayat Khan , there are seven degrees in
12877-478: The Saints ). It is, moreover, evident from the Kitāb al-Kas̲h̲f wa 'l-bayān of the early Baghdadi Sufi mystic Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz (d. 899) that a cohesive understanding of the Muslim saints was already in existence, with al-Kharraz spending ample space distinguishing between the virtues and miracles ( karāmāt ) of the prophets and the saints. The genre of hagiography ( manāḳib ) only became more popular with
13040-450: The Sufi's spotless mind realizes that it has no real existence in itself; his existence is only God's light and he is only the mirror. In certain esoteric teachings of Islam, there is said to be a cosmic spiritual hierarchy whose ranks include walis (saints, friends of God), abdals (changed ones), headed by a ghawth (helper) or qutb (pole, axis). The details vary according to
13203-474: The Sufis were responsible for articulating the religion's deepest inward truths, later prominent mystics like Ibn Arabi (d. 1240) only further reinforced this idea of a saintly hierarchy, and the notion of "types" of saints became a mainstay of Sunni mystical thought, with such types including the ṣiddīqūn ("the truthful ones") and the abdāl ("the substitute-saints"), amongst others. Many of these concepts appear in writing far before al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Arabi;
13366-811: The Sunnis of the area. Some of the most popular and influential Maghrebi saints and mystics of the following centuries were Muḥammad b. Nāṣir (d. 1674), Aḥmad al-Tij̲ānī (d. 1815), Abū Ḥāmid al-ʿArabī al-Darqāwī (d. 1823), and Aḥmad b. ʿAlāwī (d. 1934), with the latter three originating Sufi orders of their own. Famous adherents of the Shadhili order amongst modern Islamic scholars include Abdallah Bin Bayyah (b. 1935), Muhammad Alawi al-Maliki (d. 2004), Hamza Yusuf (b. 1958), and Muhammad al-Yaqoubi (b. 1963). The veneration of saints in Maghrebi Sunni Islam has been studied by scholars with regard to
13529-663: The Turkish Islamic lands, saints have been referred to by many terms, including the Arabic walī , the Persian s̲h̲āh and pīr , and Turkish alternatives like baba in Anatolia, ata in Central Asia (both meaning "father"), and eren or ermis̲h̲ (< ermek "to reach, attain") or yati̊r ("one who settles down") in Anatolia . Their tombs, meanwhile, are "denoted by terms of Arabic or Persian origin alluding to
13692-561: The Wahhabi creed, "destroyed the tombs of saints wherever ... able" during its expansion in the Arabian Peninsula from the eighteenth-century onwards. As has been noted by scholars, the development of these movements have indirectly led to a trend amongst some mainstream Muslims to also resist "acknowledging the existence of Muslim saints altogether or ... [to view] their presence and veneration as unacceptable deviations." At
13855-445: The absorption of vocabulary from various regional Pakistani languages, while some Urdu vocabularies has also been assimilated by Pakistan's regional languages. Some who are from a non-Urdu background now can read and write only Urdu. With such a large number of people(s) speaking Urdu, the language has acquired a peculiar Pakistani flavor further distinguishing it from the Urdu spoken by native speakers, resulting in more diversity within
14018-407: The ancient language Old Hindi began to acquire many Persian loanwords and continued to be called "Hindi" and later, also "Hindustani". An early literary tradition of Hindavi was founded by Amir Khusrau in the late 13th century. After the conquest of the Deccan , and a subsequent immigration of noble Muslim families into the south, a form of the language flourished in medieval India as
14181-597: The caliph as Ghulam Ahmad's divinely chosen successor. Dr. Zahid Aziz a prominent Lahori Ahmadi Scholar from the UK, on the Lahore Ahmadiyya Blog when asked about the Hijab and Beard in 2015, dismissed these as "cultural practices" and not apart of Islam which is in contrast to the mainstream Ahmadiyya Muslim Community's view on the matter that it is absolutely compulsory, the term most commonly used by Ahmadi Muslims
14344-539: The category of disbelief, and that rejection of him ultimately amounted to rejection of Muhammad, he utilised the broad connotations and usages of the Arabic word Kafir to stress that his use of the term in reference to such Muslims did not carry its demotic meaning, but rather meant to signify doctrinal deviancy and to express that only Ahmadis were true Muslims. For him, since such Muslims as had not accepted one appointed by God ( ma'mur minallah ) within Islam were neither deniers of God nor Muhammad, they were still part of
14507-466: The concept of the saint and the organisation of pilgrimages displays no fundamental differences." The veneration of saints really spread in the Turkish lands from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, and played a crucial role in medieval Turkic Sunni piety not only in cosmopolitan cities but also "in rural areas and amongst nomads of the whole Turkish world." One of the reasons proposed by scholars for
14670-599: The court language of various Indo-Islamic empires . Religious, social, and political factors arose during the European colonial period that advocated a distinction between Urdu and Hindi, leading to the Hindi–Urdu controversy . According to 2022 estimates by Ethnologue and The World Factbook , produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Urdu is the 10th-most widely spoken language in
14833-428: The doctrine of the hierarchy of saints is already found in written sources as early as the eighth-century, it was al-Tirmidhi who gave it its first systematic articulation. According to the author, forty major saints, whom he refers to by the various names of ṣiddīḳīn , abdāl , umanāʾ , and nuṣaḥāʾ , were appointed after the death of Muhammad to perpetuate the knowledge of the divine mysteries vouchsafed to them by
14996-399: The earlier mystics had highlighted particular parts and different aspects of a single, cohesive hierarchy of saints. The goal of the Sufi path is to achieve unification of the self with God ( fanāʾ ). The concept is often described in Sufi allegories as the self mirroring the light of God. Accordingly, the soul is tainted and in need of purification. In the purified state of the Sufi saint,
15159-415: The early 21st century an increasing percentage of Indian Muslims began switching to Hindi due to socio-economic factors, such as Urdu being abandoned as the language of instruction in much of India, and having limited employment opportunities compared to Hindi, English and regional languages. The number of Urdu speakers in India fell 1.5% between 2001 and 2011 (then 5.08 million Urdu speakers), especially in
15322-515: The end of 1905, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad published a short treatise anticipating his own death entitled Al-Wasiyyat (or The Will ) in which he established the Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyya (Central Ahmadiyya Council), an executive body set up to administer the movement and to collect and distribute funds to support the propagation of Islam. Ghulam Ahmad presided over the Council himself until his death in 1908. After his death, Hakim Nur-ud-Din
15485-414: The exalted camp . Earlier it was known as Hindvi, Hindi and Hindustani . Urdu, like Hindi , is a form of Hindustani language . Some linguists have suggested that the earliest forms of Urdu evolved from the medieval (6th to 13th century) Apabhraṃśa register of the preceding Shauraseni language , a Middle Indo-Aryan language that is also the ancestor of other modern Indo-Aryan languages. In
15648-483: The existence and veneration of saints and in the traditional narratives of their lives and miracles. Hence, we find that even medieval critics of the widespread practice of venerating the tombs of saints , like Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), never denied the existence of saints as such, with the Hanbali jurist stating: "The miracles of saints are absolutely true and correct, by the acceptance of all Muslim scholars. And
15811-434: The figures who later came to be regarded as the major saints in orthodox Sunni Islam were the early Sufi mystics, like Hasan of Basra (d. 728), Farqad Sabakhi (d. 729), Dawud Tai (d. 777–781), Rabia of Basra (d. 801), Maruf Karkhi (d. 815), and Junayd of Baghdad (d. 910). From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, "the general veneration of saints, among both people and sovereigns, reached its definitive form with
15974-620: The grace of God. The contemporary scholar of Sufism Martin Lings described the Islamic saints as "the great incarnations of the Islamic ideal.... spiritual giants with which almost every generation was blessed." The doctrine of saints, and of their miracles, seems to have been taken for granted by many of the major authors of the Islamic Golden Age (ca. 700–1400), as well as by many prominent late-medieval scholars. The phenomena in traditional Islam can be at least partly ascribed to
16137-529: The grammar and core Indo-Aryan vocabulary of the local Indian dialect Khariboli, it adopted the Nastaleeq writing system – which was developed as a style of Persian calligraphy. Throughout the history of the language, Urdu has been referred to by several other names: Hindi, Hindavi, Rekhta, Urdu-e-Muallah, Dakhini , Moors and Dehlavi . In 1773, the Swiss French soldier Antoine Polier notes that
16300-950: The hadith that states "the Prophets are alive in their graves and they pray". (According to the Islamic concept of Punishment of the Grave —established by hadith —the dead are still conscious and active, with the wicked suffering in their graves as a prelude to hell and the pious at ease.) According to Islamic historian Jonathan A.C. Brown, "saints are thought to be no different" than prophets, "as able in death to answer invocations for assistance" as they were while alive. Saints were envisaged to be of different "types" in classical Islamic tradition. Aside from their earthly differences as regard their temporal duty (i.e. jurist , hadith scholar , judge , traditionist , historian , ascetic , poet), saints were also distinguished cosmologically as regards their celestial function or standing. In Islam, however,
16463-600: The hagiographic traditions of that particular area. Thus, while Moinuddin Chishti (d. 1236), for example, was honored throughout the Sunni world in the medieval period, his cultus was especially prominent in the Indian subcontinent , as that is where he was believed to have preached, performed the majority of his miracles, and ultimately settled at the end of his life. The veneration of saints has played "an essential role in
16626-568: The heavenly advocates for specific Muslim empires, nations, cities, towns, and villages. With regard to the sheer omnipresence of this belief, the late Martin Lings wrote: "There is scarcely a region in the empire of Islam which has not a Sufi for its Patron Saint." As the veneration accorded saints often develops purely organically in Islamic climates, the Awliya Allah are often recognized through popular acclaim rather than through official declaration. Traditionally, it has been understood that
16789-448: The hierarchy. In ascending order, they are pir , buzurg , wali, ghaus , qutb, nabi and rasul He does not say how the levels are populated. Pirs and buzurgs assist the spiritual progress of those who approach them. Walis may take responsibility for protecting a community and generally work in secret. Qutbs are similarly responsible for large regions. Nabis are charged with bringing a reforming message to nations or faiths, and hence have
16952-496: The idea of pilgrimage ( mazār , ziyāratgāh ), tomb ( ḳabr , maḳbar ) or domed mausoleum ( gunbad , ḳubba ). But such tombs are also denoted by terms usually used for dervish convents, or a particular part of it ( tekke in the Balkans , langar , 'refectory,' and ribāṭ in Central Asia ), or by a quality of the saint ( pīr , 'venerable, respectable,' in Azerbaijan )." According to various traditional Sufi interpretations of
17115-458: The idea of the abdāl , for example, appears as early as the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal (d. 855), where the word signifies a group of major saints "whose number would remain constant, one always being replaced by some other on his death." It is, in fact, reported that Ibn Hanbal explicitly identified his contemporary, the mystic Maruf Karkhi (d. 815-20), as one of the abdal , saying: "He is one of
17278-480: The independence movement. But after the 1947 Partition , when it was chosen as the national language of Pakistan to unite all inhabitants with one linguistic identity, it faced serious competition primarily from Bengali (spoken by 56% of the total population, mostly in East Pakistan until that attained independence in 1971 as Bangladesh ), and after 1971 from English. Both pro-independence elites that formed
17441-554: The language as " Moors " or "Moorish jargon". John Gilchrist was the first in British India to begin a systematic study on Urdu and began to use the term "Hindustani" what the majority of Europeans called "Moors", authoring the book The Strangers's East Indian Guide to the Hindoostanee or Grand Popular Language of India (improperly Called Moors) . Urdu was then promoted in colonial India by British policies to counter
17604-458: The language in the Perso-Arabic script in courts and government offices, though Hindus continued to employ the Devanagari script in certain literary and religious contexts. Through the late 19th century, people did not view Urdu and Hindi as being two distinct languages, though in urban areas, the standardised Hindustani language was increasingly being referred to as Urdu and written in the Perso-Arabic script. Urdu and English replaced Persian as
17767-575: The language of Bollywood films tend to contain a large number of Persian and Arabic words and thus considered to be "Urdu" in a sense, especially in songs. India has more than 3,000 Urdu publications, including 405 daily Urdu newspapers. Newspapers such as Neshat News Urdu , Sahara Urdu , Daily Salar , Hindustan Express , Daily Pasban , Siasat Daily , The Munsif Daily and Inqilab are published and distributed in Bangalore, Malegaon, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai . Outside South Asia, it
17930-883: The language. In India, Urdu is spoken in places where there are large Muslim minorities or cities that were bases for Muslim empires in the past. These include parts of Uttar Pradesh , Madhya Pradesh , Bihar , Telangana , Andhra Pradesh , Maharashtra ( Marathwada and Konkanis), Karnataka and cities such as Hyderabad , Lucknow , Delhi , Malerkotla , Bareilly , Meerut , Saharanpur , Muzaffarnagar , Roorkee , Deoband , Moradabad , Azamgarh , Bijnor , Najibabad , Rampur , Aligarh , Allahabad , Gorakhpur , Agra , Firozabad , Kanpur , Badaun , Bhopal , Hyderabad , Aurangabad , Bangalore , Kolkata , Mysore , Patna , Darbhanga , Gaya , Madhubani , Samastipur , Siwan , Saharsa , Supaul , Muzaffarpur , Nalanda , Munger , Bhagalpur , Araria , Gulbarga , Parbhani , Nanded , Malegaon , Bidar , Ajmer , and Ahmedabad . In
18093-472: The latter being something only the prophets receive; (5) he can work miracles ( karāmāt ) by the leave of God , which may differ from saint to saint, but may include marvels such as walking on water ( al-mas̲h̲y ʿalā 'l-māʾ ) and shortening space and time ( ṭayy al-arḍ ); and (6) he associates with Khidr . Al-Tirmidhi states, furthermore, that although the saint is not sinless like the prophets, he or she can nevertheless be "preserved from sin" ( maḥfūz ) by
18256-759: The leadership of the Muslim League in Pakistan and the Hindu-dominated Congress Party in India had been educated in English during the British colonial period, and continued to operate in English and send their children to English-medium schools as they continued dominate both countries' post-Partition politics. Although the Anglicized elite in Pakistan has made attempts at Urduisation of education with varying degrees of success, no successful attempts were ever made to Urduise politics,
18419-466: The legal system, the army, or the economy, all of which remained solidly Anglophone. Even the regime of general Zia-ul-Haq (1977–1988), who came from a middle-class Punjabi family and initially fervently supported a rapid and complete Urduisation of Pakistani society (earning him the honorary title of the 'Patron of Urdu' in 1981), failed to make significant achievements, and by 1987 had abandoned most of his efforts in favour of pro-English policies. Since
18582-404: The main languages of instruction, although the people from differing provinces may have different native languages. Urdu is taught as a compulsory subject up to higher secondary school in both English and Urdu medium school systems, which has produced millions of second-language Urdu speakers among people whose native language is one of the other languages of Pakistan – which in turn has led to
18745-457: The majority population in the city of Karachi , however. Many newspapers are published in Urdu in Pakistan, including the Daily Jang , Nawa-i-Waqt , and Millat . No region in Pakistan uses Urdu as its mother tongue, though it is spoken as the first language of Muslim migrants (known as Muhajirs ) in Pakistan who left India after independence in 1947. Other communities, most notably
18908-403: The most Urdu-speaking states of Uttar Pradesh (c. 8% to 5%) and Bihar (c. 11.5% to 8.5%), even though the number of Muslims in these two states grew in the same period. Although Urdu is still very prominent in early 21st-century Indian pop culture, ranging from Bollywood to social media, knowledge of the Urdu script and the publication of books in Urdu have steadily declined, while policies of
19071-564: The most alive language and moving ahead with times" in India. This phenomenon pertains to the decrease in relative and absolute numbers of native Urdu speakers as opposed to speakers of other languages; declining (advanced) knowledge of Urdu's Perso-Arabic script, Urdu vocabulary and grammar; the role of translation and transliteration of literature from and into Urdu; the shifting cultural image of Urdu and socio-economic status associated with Urdu speakers (which negatively impacts especially their employment opportunities in both countries),
19234-544: The most significant ninth-century expositor of the doctrine, posited six common attributes of true saints (not necessarily applicable to all, according to the author, but nevertheless indicative of a significant portion of them), which are: (1) when people see him, they are automatically reminded of God; (2) anyone who advances towards him in a hostile way is destroyed; (3) he possesses the gift of clairvoyance ( firāsa ); (4) he receives divine inspiration ( ilhām ), to be strictly distinguished from revelation proper ( waḥy ), with
19397-457: The movement's administration after his death. Further, according to them, since leadership of the movement was no longer divinely appointed after Ghulam Ahmad's death, the obligation to pledge allegiance to his successor had also lapsed and had become a voluntary act. As opposed to the foregoing approach, Mahmud Ahmad, who assumed the movement's leadership as the second successor the day after Nur-ud-Din's death, held that Ghulam Ahmad had envisioned
19560-618: The nature of Ghulam Ahmad's prophethood—and consequentially the status of Muslims who did not accept him— as well as the form the leadership should take within the movement, viz. the relative authority of the successor (or khalīfa ) and the Central Ahmadiyya Council ( Anjuman ). Although a clash of personalities between the dissenters and Mahmud Ahmad has also been postulated owing to the latter's relative youth, inexperience and poor academic background. The disputes surrounding these, and other related issues, eventually led to
19723-461: The official languages in northern parts of India in 1837. In colonial Indian Islamic schools, Muslims were taught Persian and Arabic as the languages of Indo-Islamic civilisation ; the British, in order to promote literacy among Indian Muslims and attract them to attend government schools, started to teach Urdu written in the Perso-Arabic script in these governmental educational institutions and after this time, Urdu began to be seen by Indian Muslims as
19886-526: The officially recognised languages in India and also has the status of "additional official language" in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh , Uttar Pradesh , Bihar , Jharkhand , West Bengal , Telangana and the national capital territory Delhi . Also as one of the five official languages of Jammu and Kashmir . India established the governmental Bureau for the Promotion of Urdu in 1969, although
20049-438: The ongoing Hindi–Urdu controversy and modern cultural association of each language with the two religions has led to fewer Hindus using Urdu. In the 20th century, Indian Muslims gradually began to collectively embrace Urdu (for example, 'post-independence Muslim politics of Bihar saw a mobilisation around the Urdu language as tool of empowerment for minorities especially coming from weaker socio-economic backgrounds' ), but in
20212-493: The organization of Sufism ... into orders or brotherhoods". In the common expressions of Islamic piety of this period, the saint was understood to be "a contemplative whose state of spiritual perfection ... [found] permanent expression in the teaching bequeathed to his disciples". In many prominent Sunni creeds of the time, such as the famous Creed of Tahawi ( c. 900 ) and the Creed of Nasafi ( c. 1000 ),
20375-482: The passage of time, with numerous prominent Islamic thinkers of the medieval period devoting large works to collecting stories of various saints or to focusing upon "the marvelous aspects of the life, the miracles or at least the prodigies of a [specific] Ṣūfī or of a saint believed to have been endowed with miraculous powers." In the late ninth-century, important thinkers in Sunni Islam officially articulated
20538-660: The popularity of saints in pre-modern Turkey is that Islam was majorly spread by the early Sunni Sufis in the Turkish lands, rather than by purely exoteric teachers. Most of the saints venerated in Turkey belonged to the Hanafi school of Sunni jurisprudence. As scholars have noted, saints venerated in traditional Turkish Sunni Islam may be classified into three principal categories: Reverence for Awliya Allah have been an important part of both Sunni and Shia Islamic tradition that particularly important classical saints have served as
20701-518: The position and prestige of English only grew stronger in the meantime. There are over 100 million native speakers of Urdu in India and Pakistan together: there were 50.8 million Urdu speakers in India (4.34% of the total population) as per the 2011 census; and approximately 16 million in Pakistan in 2006. There are several hundred thousand in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, United States, and Bangladesh . However, Hindustani, of which Urdu
20864-480: The presence of these opposing streams of thought, the classical doctrine of saint veneration continues to thrive in many parts of the Islamic world today, playing a vital role in daily expressions of piety among vast segments of Muslim populations in Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, Senegal , Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Tunisia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Morocco, as well as in countries with substantial Islamic populations like India, China, Russia, and
21027-484: The previous emphasis on Persian. In colonial India, "ordinary Muslims and Hindus alike spoke the same language in the United Provinces in the nineteenth century, namely Hindustani, whether called by that name or whether called Hindi, Urdu, or one of the regional dialects such as Braj or Awadhi ." Elites from Muslim communities, as well as a minority of Hindu elites, such as Munshis of Hindu origin, wrote
21190-401: The previously-oral doctrine of an entire hierarchy of saints, with the first written account of this hierarchy coming from the pen of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. 907-912). With the general consensus of Islamic scholars of the period accepting that the ulema were responsible for maintaining the "exoteric" part of Islamic orthodoxy, including the disciplines of law and jurisprudence , while
21353-407: The prophet. These forty saints, al-Tirmidhi stated, would be replaced in each generation after their earthly death; and, according to him, "the fact that they exist is a guarantee for the continuing existence of the world." Among these forty, al-Tirmidhi specified that seven of them were especially blessed. Despite their exalted nature, however, al-Tirmidhi emphasized that these forty saints occupied
21516-432: The prophets are exalted by Muslims as the greatest of all humanity, it is a general tenet of Sunni belief that a single prophet is greater than all the regular saints put together. In short, it is believed that "every prophet is a saint, but not every saint is a prophet". In the modern world , traditional Sunni and Shia ideas of saints has been challenged by fundamentalist and revivalist Islamic movements such as
21679-479: The ramifications of this phrase include the connotations of a general "saint," it is often used to specifically signify a spiritual guide of some type. Amongst Indian Muslims , the title pīr baba (पीर बाबा) is commonly used in Hindi to refer to Sufi masters or similarly honored saints. Additionally, saints are also sometimes referred to in the Persian or Urdu vernacular with " Hazrat ." In Islamic mysticism ,
21842-595: The realms of light of the Divine Names .... When the walī Allāh has traversed all the realms of the Divine Names, i.e. has come to know God in His names as completely as possible, he is then extinguished in God's essence. His soul, his ego, is eliminated and ... when he acts, it is God Who acts through him. And so the state of extinction means at the same time the highest degree of activity in this world." Although
22005-516: The religious, and social life of the Maghreb for more or less a millennium"; in other words, since Islam first reached the lands of North Africa in the eighth century. The first written references to ascetic Muslim saints in Africa, "popularly admired and with followings," appear in tenth-century hagiographies. As has been noted by scholars, however, "the phenomenon may well be older," for many of
22168-618: The right path) in distinction to disbelief in a basic element of the faith which would have excluded them from the Muslim community ( Ummah ). Muhammad Ali repudiated the idea of declaring the entire Muslim community as disbelievers, a term which, according to him, could not apply to non-Ahmadi Muslims indiscriminately, something which he accused Mahmud Ahmad of doing. Affirming a different typology of disbelief, i.e. that which subsists outside of Islam in contrast to that which does not entail exclusion from it, although Mahmud Ahmad held that Muslims who did not accept Ghulam Ahmad technically fell into
22331-456: The saint as someone "whose obedience attains permanence without interference of sin; whom God preserves and guards, in permanent fashion, from the failures of sin through the power of acts of obedience." Elsewhere, the same author quoted an older tradition in order to convey his understanding of the purpose of saints, which states: "The saints of God are those who, when they are seen, God is remembered." Meanwhile, al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi (d. 869),
22494-437: The saints are represented in traditional texts as serving separate celestial functions, in a manner similar to the angels , and this is closely linked to the idea of a celestial hierarchy in which the various types of saints play different roles. A fundamental distinction was described in the ninth century by al-Tirmidhi in his Sīrat al-awliyāʾ ( Lives of the Saints ), who distinguished between two principal varieties of saints:
22657-646: The same language, Hindustani (or Hindi-Urdu), share a core vocabulary and grammar . Apart from religious associations, the differences are largely restricted to the standard forms : Standard Urdu is conventionally written in the Nastaliq style of the Persian alphabet and relies heavily on Persian and Arabic as a source for technical and literary vocabulary, whereas Standard Hindi is conventionally written in Devanāgarī and draws on Sanskrit . However, both share
22820-435: The same time, the movement of Islamic Modernism has also opposed the traditional veneration of saints, for many proponents of this ideology regard the practice as "being both un-Islamic and backwards ... rather than the integral part of Islam which they were for over a millennium." Despite the presence, however, of these opposing streams of thought, the classical doctrine of saint-veneration continues to thrive in many parts of
22983-509: The sense of "saints," with the famous Quran translator Marmaduke Pickthall rendering it as "saints" in their interpretations of the scripture. Furthermore, the Quran referred to the miracles of saintly people who were not prophets like Khidr ( 18:65-82 ) and the People of the Cave ( 18:7-26 ), which also led many early scholars to deduce that a group of venerable people must exist who occupy
23146-418: The sense that they had a religion other than Islam; and, further, that the movement passed no judgement as to their fate in the hereafter and never proactively expressed this opinion of them. Although he refused demands from outside the movement to accept that the term Kafir did not apply to non-Ahmadi Muslims, Mahmud Ahmad did maintain that such Muslims were not deemed to be outside the pale of Islam. Towards
23309-617: The source. One source is the 12th Century Persian Ali Hujwiri . In his divine court, there are three hundred akhyār ("excellent ones"), forty abdāl ("substitutes"), seven abrār ("piously devoted ones"), four awtād ("pillars"), three nuqabā ("leaders") and one qutb. All these saints know one another and cannot act without mutual consent. It is the task of the Awtad to go round the whole world every night, and if there should be any place on which their eyes have not fallen, next day some flaw will appear in that place, and they must then inform
23472-462: The spiritual life of Muslims in the region. For the vast majority of Muslims in the Maghreb even today, the saints remain "very much alive at their tomb, to the point that the person's name most often serves to denote the place." While this classical type of Sunni veneration represents the most widespread stance in the area, the modern influence of Salafism and Wahhabism have challenged the traditional practice in some quarters. Scholars have noted
23635-495: The stories of the Islamic saints were passed down orally before finally being put to writing. One of the most widely venerated saints in early North African Islamic history was Abū Yaʿzā (or Yaʿazzā, d. 1177), an illiterate Sunni Maliki miracle worker whose reputation for sanctity was admired even in his own life. Another immensely popular saint of the time-period was Ibn Ḥirzihim (d. 1163), who also gained renown for his personal devoutness and his ability to work miracles. It
23798-583: The style of Urdu spoken on a day-to-day basis in Pakistan is akin to neutral Hindustani that serves as the lingua franca of the northern Indian subcontinent. Since at least 1977, some commentators such as journalist Khushwant Singh have characterised Urdu as a "dying language", though others, such as Indian poet and writer Gulzar (who is popular in both countries and both language communities, but writes only in Urdu (script) and has difficulties reading Devanagari, so he lets others 'transcribe' his work) have disagreed with this assessment and state that Urdu "is
23961-449: The substitute-saints, and his supplication is answered." From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, "the general veneration of saints, among both people and sovereigns, reached its definitive form with the organization of Sufism —the mysticism of Islam—into orders or brotherhoods." In general Islamic piety of the period, the saint was understood to be "a contemplative whose state of spiritual perfection ... [found] permanent expression in
24124-527: The teaching bequeathed to his disciples." It was by virtue of his spiritual wisdom that the saint was accorded veneration in medieval Islam, "and it is this which ... [effected] his 'canonization,' and not some ecclesiastical institution" as in Christianity . In fact, the latter point represents one of the crucial differences between the Islamic and Christian veneration of saints, for saints are venerated by unanimous consensus or popular acclaim in Islam, in
24287-524: The total Ahmadiyya population. Similar to the 'Qadiani' Ahmadis, the 'Lahori' Ahmadis hold annual conferences or conventions called jalsas where community updates, aims, topics of interest, and challenges are discussed and emphasized to help direct policy-planning goals and initiatives for the respective groups or jamaats. Soon after the death in 1914 of Hakim Nur-ud-Din , Ghulam Ahmad's first successor, Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmad , Ghulam Ahmad's son,
24450-569: The tremendously "important role" the veneration of saints has historically played in Islamic life all these areas, especially amongst Sunnis who frequent the many thousands of tombs scattered throughout the region for blessings in performing the act of ziyāra . According to scholars, "between the Turks of the Balkans and Anatolia, and those in Central Asia, despite the distance separating them,
24613-618: The two languages' mutual intelligibility effectively decreases as the factor of formality increases. Urdu originated in the area of the Ganges-Yamuna Doab , though significant development occurred in the Deccan Plateau . In 1837, Urdu became an official language of the British East India Company , replacing Persian across northern India during Company rule ; Persian had until this point served as
24776-425: The two official languages of Pakistan (along with English). It is spoken and understood throughout the country, whereas the state-by-state languages (languages spoken throughout various regions) are the provincial languages , although only 7.57% of Pakistanis speak Urdu as their first language. Its official status has meant that Urdu is understood and spoken widely throughout Pakistan as a second or third language. It
24939-438: The type of prophethood or the adjectives added to qualify it. Accordingly, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes that prophecy gifted as a result of perfect obedience and self-effacement in devotion to Muhammad does not infringe upon the finality of his prophetic mission, though it affirms the advent of only one such promised end-times prophetic figure (Ghulam Ahmad) as having appeared in accordance with scriptural prophecies. Such
25102-471: The various "types" of saints venerated by Sunnis in those areas. These include: Regarding the veneration of saints amongst Sunni Muslims in the Maghreb in the present day, scholars have noted the presence of many "thousands of minor, local saints whose tombs remain visible in villages or the quarters of towns." Although many of these saints lack precise historiographies or hagiographies, "their presence and their social efficacity ... [are] immense" in shaping
25265-455: The world , with 230 million total speakers, including those who speak it as a second language . The name Urdu was first used by the poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi around 1780 for Hindustani language even though he himself also used Hindavi term in his poetry to define the language. Ordu means army in the Turkic languages . In late 18th century, it was known as Zaban-e-Urdu-e-Mualla زبانِ اُرْدُوئے مُعَلّٰی means language of
25428-494: The writings of many of the most prominent Sunni theologians and doctors of the classical and medieval periods, many of whom considered the belief in saints to be "orthodox" doctrine. Examples of classical testimonies include: The rationale for veneration of deceased saints by pilgrims in an appeal for blessings ( Barakah ) even though the saints will not rise from the dead until the Day of Resurrection ( Yawm ad-Dīn ) may come from
25591-584: Was Abu Madyan (d. 1197), however, who eventually became one of the Awliya Allah of the entire Maghreb . A "spiritual disciple of these two preceding saints," Abū Madyan, a prominent Sunni Maliki scholar, was the first figure in Maghrebi Sufism "to exercise an influence beyond his own region." Abū Madyan travelled to the East, where he is said to have met prominent mystics like the renowned Hanbali jurist Abdul-Qadir Gilani (d. 1166). Upon returning to
25754-407: Was both the promised Mahdi and Messiah foretold by Muhammad to appear in the end times, and that his prophetic qualities were neither independent nor separable from those of Muhammad . What this entailed theologically, however, became an issue of contention within the early Ahmadiyya movement. Muhammad Ali held that the type of prophecy described by Ghulam Ahmad in reference to himself did not make him
25917-453: Was chosen in Qadian at the age of 25 to lead the movement as his second successor. However, a group, which included some of the movement's senior figures, led by Maulana Muhammad Ali , opposed his succession and refrained from pledging their allegiance to him, eventually leaving Qadian and relocating to Lahore . Muhammad Ali and his supporters' differences with Mahmud Ahmad centred mainly upon
26080-591: Was educated in Egypt but taught in Libya and Morocco , and Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Jazūlī (d. 1465), "who returned to Morocco after a long trip to the East and then began a life as a hermit," and who achieved widespread renown for the miracles he is said to have wrought by the leave of God. Eventually, the latter was buried in Marrakesh , where he ended up becoming of the city's seven most famous Awliya Allah for
26243-611: Was intentioned as means of unification for Muslims in Northern India and later Pakistan, it adopted a modified Perso-Arabic script. Urdu continued its role in developing a Pakistani identity as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was established with the intent to construct a homeland for the Muslims of Colonial India. Several languages and dialects spoken throughout the regions of Pakistan produced an imminent need for
26406-555: Was referred to as "Moors", which simply meant Muslim, by European writers. John Ovington wrote in 1689: The language of the Moors is different from that of the ancient original inhabitants of India but is obliged to these Gentiles for its characters. For though the Moors dialect is peculiar to themselves, yet it is destitute of Letters to express it; and therefore, in all their Writings in their Mother Tongue, they borrow their letters from
26569-404: Was unanimously chosen to succeed him and presided over the Council's appointed president. Muhammad Ali and his supporters held that Ghulam Ahmad, in The Will , had designated the Council as a consultative institution to be his successor. Viewing as autocratic the idea of one individual wielding absolute authority within the Community and demanding total obedience from it, they repudiated the idea of
#207792