I offer observations about the three key texts of this study. Chapter one summarizes Maulānā ‘Abdul Ḥayy’s rich educational upbringing and his professional career as a physician, historian, and director of the Nadwatul ‘Ulamā’. How then might a Muslim’s approach to history – a view from within – offer a different way? Thus this study explores three historical texts written by Maulānā ‘Abdul Ḥayy in order to offer the reader a view into his social world and the material conditions to which he reacts, an introduction to the Islāmic historiographical tradition, and the significant historiographical intervention that he makes in light of dramatic changes brought to the India by Western colonialism and modernity. This distrust has legitimized countless acts of violence and continues to prevent nations from building bridges of understanding and mutual respect. In providing a short biography of Maulānā ‘Abdul Ḥayy and a cursory examination of three of his important works, I venture to ask three questions: What material conditions animate Maulānā ‘Abdul Ḥayy’s historical writings? What message does he try to convey? Whom does he seek to reach? What techniques does he employ to achieve his goal? Why are these questions worth pursuing? For centuries, Western historians have portrayed the Muslim world in ways that have led the West to view Islām with an eye of fear and suspicion. ![]() In creatively engaging the practice of the Islāmic historiographical tradition, he implicitly invites all Muslims to resist Western epistemic pressures and reclaim past Muslim glory, offering a path to liberation through the preservation and revival of traditional, indigenous curricula. As a late nineteenth-century, Islāmic historiographer of the Nadwatul ‘Ulamā’ in British India, Maulānā ‘Abdul Ḥayy explicitly calls upon all Muslims to learn about the intellectual heritage of Indian ‘ulamā’. Moreover, the life-story and writings of Maulānā ‘Abdul Ḥayy promoted resistance to imperialist agendas, especially those focused on controlling the ways indigenous groups understood their own history and would carve out their futures through education pursuits. The life and work of a historian steeped in Islām’s fourteen-century, intellectual tradition, Maulānā Ḥakīm Sayyid ‘Abdul Ḥayy al-Hasanī, serves as a model for rethinking the history of Muslims in India during the British Colonial period. ![]() I am grateful to Ateeb Gul for his careful reading and editing of the manuscript. * The research for this article has been generously supported by the Faculty Initiative Fund (FIF) of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and the Newton International Fellowship's alumni funds provided by the British Academy and the Royal Society. Drawing upon such sources as historical texts produced in Pakistan, recently declassified documents of the Cabinet Division, and proceedings of the All Pakistan History Conference, I will delineate the features of this master narrative, the intellectual history of ideas that shaped it from the colonial to the post-colonial period, and the political exegesis whereby it gained structural dominance in Pakistan that was replicated for intellectual, ideological, and statist projects. Unlike existing studies on this topic, which simply point out the 'flaws' in the history textbooks used in Pakistan, I will argue that the dominant historical narrative to be found in these textbooks- or even in many scholarly works produced in Pakistan-is a form of master narrative that has a longer history that dates back to the colonial period. This article looks at the development of this historiography in Pakistan. ![]() It received official support and patronage as the new state was eager to shape a historical narrative that could strengthen the argument for a distinct Muslim identity. ![]() As a result, soon after independence in 1947, a group of eminent historians got together to set up the All Pakistan History Conference. A particular understanding of the past was, in other words, central to the idea of Pakistan. The demand for the creation of Pakistan was based on a historical narrative built around the centrality of the Muslim community in India and its distinctiveness in terms of religious beliefs, cultural traits, and historical traditions.
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