A few years ago, Mufti Ehzaz Ajmeri, a fellow lover of books, gifted me a copy of Yādgār-i Zamāna Shakhṣiyyāt kā Aḥwāl-i Muṭālaʿah, a tremendously enjoyable Urdu book edited and compiled by the late Mawlānā Ibn al-ʿAbbās ʿAbbāsī. It is a single volume of articles by seventy contemporary scholars. Each was asked to write about their life of study and reading, the books that shaped them, recommendations for newer readers, and so on.
One of the shortest pieces in the collection is by my mentor, ʿAllāmah Dr. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Chishtī al-Nuʿmānī, may Allah shower him with His infinite and bountiful mercy. It runs only two pages. In the process of collecting biographical information on him for a scholarly biography I am currently writing, I translated a sizeable portion of the short piece, and then thought to translate the remaining sections and post it online, so that others might benefit from it as well. – Bilal Ali
By Mawlānā ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Chishtī
Supervisor of the Takhaṣṣuṣ Program in Ḥadīth, Jāmiʿat al-ʿUlūm al-Islāmiyyah Banūrī Town
When my late father, may Allah have mercy on him, asked me to accompany him to Hyderabad Deccan and took me along, I observed the [unique academic] atmosphere of the place and its people of learning, especially Mawlānā Ḥaydar Ḥasan Khān Ṣāḥib and Mawlānā Maḥmūd Ḥasan Khān Ṣāḥib, may Allah have mercy on them, as well as others. I attended their scholarly gatherings. I was very young at the time [and understood relatively little of what I witnessed], yet I stayed a full year in Hyderabad Deccan with my father, and in that year I settled the question of my life. I resolved that I would study. I began doing so [seriously] the following year.
This was the age of English [curricula], and everyone wished to have their children taught English. Our father, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, may Allah have mercy on him, desired instead that his children study the Arabic [curriculum]. He had each of us learn the Qurʾān, and he kept working toward that end. He was a man of great spiritual standing. He never once struck us. If a complaint about my conduct ever reached him, he said only that this: come with me to Hyderabad and stay a year. It was a silent training, perhaps greater than that of years of spiritual contemplation (murāqabāt). It produced in me a love of reading, and to this day I remain occupied with it.
In Hyderabad Deccan I [learned from what I] saw [of] those elders. Most importantly, I took part in the work on Lughāt al-Qurʾān (multi-volume Qurʾān dictionary), together with my elder brother Mawlānā ʿAbd al-Rashīd Nuʿmānī, may Allah have mercy on him. After that, I devoted myself to understanding books on my own. I read, and reading became my occupation. My work has run on nothing else. In the beginning, I had an inclination toward Urdu literature and belles lettres. Over time that changed, and I came to care only for research, which I continue to devote my time to.
Among authors, I prefer Shiblī (Nuʿmānī). He writes and speaks in a scholarly language, and his whole manner is scholarly.
My favorite books are many, so I will name only journals. They are Fikr-o Naẓar and Maʿārif of Aʿẓamgaṛh. I have no attachment at all to short stories, newspaper columns, or humor and satire. Only the scholarly manner appeals to me.
I give all my free hours to reading. My pace is not fast, but I keep reading. I do not read scholarly books while traveling. I prefer solitude, and I read in solitude.
To those who are starting to write, I offer the following: Determine your own inclination and fix your path by it. [Second], take guidance from the experts of the discipline. [Third,] do the labor yourself. If you do so, the paths will open for you of their own accord.
ʿAbbāsi, Ibn al-Ḥasan, Yādgār-i Zamāna Shakhṣiyyāt kā Aḥwāl-i Muṭālaʿah. Karachi: Majlid Turāth al-Islām, 2020, pgs.69-70.
