Introduction: a denunciation
On 4 June 1957, one Muhammad Rasul Mugumaev (1932–2005) appealed to communist authorities in Makhachkala to complain about the spreading of religious fanaticism in Dagestan. Crafted in broken, in fact almost incomprehensible, Russian, Mugumaev’s four-page letter was a vitriolic slur that was designed to discredit the Muslim Spiritual Board of the North Caucasus (known by the Russian acronym DUMSK) and its personnel. Established during the Second World War, DUMSK was headed by a mufti and staffed by a group of Muslim scholars who oversaw the activities of all the official mosques and shrines that had secured registration in the mountainous republic of Dagestan. Like other Muslim Spiritual Boards that operated in the territory of the USSR, DUMSK played a double role: it catered to the needs of the one-party state on the one hand, while it served the interests of local Muslim communities on the other.Footnote 1
A clamorous contrarian, Mugumaev was a well-known figure in Dagestan.Footnote 2 A former student of the Mir-i ‘Arab madrasa in Bukhara (one of the very few Islamic institutes of higher learning that functioned in the USSR after the Second World War),Footnote 3 in 1957, Mugumaev served as the deputy imam of the congregational mosque of Buynaksk (former Temir-Khan Shura), a major urban centre in the republic. Serving thus as an official mullah, Mugumaev formally belonged to DUMSK’s network and his denunciation offered Soviet authorities a valuable—in fact unprecedented—insider’s view into the republican Islamic sphere. Mugumaev maintained that most of DUMSK’s employees, who had recently travelled to the Middle East for purposes of hajj, had brought back literature of Islamist inspiration that called for the liberation of the North Caucasus from the yoke of ‘Russian Communist colonisers’ and advocated for the establishment of an independent Islamic republic. Furthermore, and more importantly for our present purposes, Mugumaev claimed that, in 1949, a senior adviser to DUMSK had written a pamphlet to spread fanaticism in Dagestan.Footnote 4 This work, Mugumaev held, deserved state authorities’ sustained attention: not only did its author travel to rural communities in the mountains to read excerpts from it, but other mullahs had also made several copies of this work, thereby facilitating its circulation in the region.Footnote 5
Clearly unbeknown to communist authorities, Mugumaev was referring to an Arabic-language work entitled Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li’l akh al-muṣliḥ, which had been crafted by one ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh al-Uḥlī (1912–2000). Born into a family of prominent scholars, ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh had studied in the madrasa of Okhli between 1921 and 1927. In the wake of the Soviets’ crackdown on Islamic institutions after 1928, ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh pursued his studies until 1935 under the radar of Soviet authorities in underground circles that were led by scholars who lived in remote alpine settlements. In 1942, he was drafted into the Red Army to fight against the Nazis and posted to Gagra (today Georgia) on the Black Sea coast. Dismissed from the army after being wounded, he made return to his native village of Okhli, where he worked in a collective farm. The year 1947 marked a big change for him, for it was the year in which ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh began to work for DUMSK. There is little doubt that ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh commanded authority over scholarly networks in the region after the Second World War, for he would eventually be elected mufti of the North Caucasus in 1975.Footnote 6 Furthermore, one of the two manuscript copies of his Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li’l akh al-muṣliḥ that have come down to us includes a great number of endorsements by Dagestani ulama, which attests to its circulation and indicates that it was copied until the second half of the 1960s.Footnote 7
But why did this work gain so much traction in Dagestan—so much so that it provoked Mugumaev’s reprimand nearly a decade after its composition? Written in the guise of a reply to ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh’s acolytes, the pamphlet warned about the danger of two intellectual trends that had become particularly influential in the North Caucasus at the turn of the twentieth century and, according to its author, had brought impiety to the region. One was represented by Wahhabism whereas the other was represented by what he termed ‘the modernist party’ (al-firqa al-jadīdiyya)—a term under which ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh lumped, as we shall see, intellectuals of fundamentalist leanings. ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh considered the modernists to be particularly dangerous given their lasting impact on the intellectual landscape of Dagestan and for two other major reasons: their critique against Sufism and their advocacy for a type of juristic hermeneutics that was centred on the notion of absolute ijtihād. More specifically, ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh held the view that those who call for ijtihād ‘are enthralled by the examples of people who are vicious and who have deviated from the right path, who do not observe the basic [precepts] of Islam, who have left [aside] the sharī‘ah, who publicly support viciousness, impiety and disbelief’.Footnote 8
What makes ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh’s work particularly valuable from a historical perspective is that it offers a genealogy of the thinking that ostensibly popularised the recourse to ijtihād among Muslim jurists in Dagestan during the Soviet period. Having listed the most influential modernist thinkers in the Middle East whom he calls ‘impious’ (mufsid), he proceeded to name several Dagestani scholars who were known to him for having made, albeit allegedly, recourse to independent reasoning on matters of Islamic jurisprudence and thus planted ‘the seed of delusion and religious immorality’ in the region. Most importantly, ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh opined that the central figure of the pro-ijtihād scene in Dagestan was ‘Alī b. ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Ghumuqī 1878–1943), whom he described as follows:
[At the beginning of the century,] he travelled to the lands of Egypt in search of knowledge and there he met the Egyptian wicked man, [i.e. Rashīd Riḑā. Indeed,] he took great pleasure in his malicious teachings. Rashīd Riḑā planted in him the seed of misguidance from which the grass of vice and impiety sprang up, and sent him [back] to the lands of Dagestan, for the purpose of teaching his wicked doctrine. At times [al-Ghumuqī] spread his false belief among the Muslims, and at other times he concealed his views, fearing the [critique of] his contemporaries. ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī [once] said: ‘Verily, Allāh Almighty has made sharī‘ah one thing and I am greatly surprised at those people who have divided it into the four [schools].’ He called for absolute independent reasoning (al-ijtihād al-muṭlaq) and said: ‘Who are these modern scholars who are not guided by the Book of Allāh, the most high, and the Sunnah of His Messenger? They have not extracted [from the Qur’an and the Sunnah] anything different from what the [four] Imams had already extracted. So, what is the difference [in what we do]? The [four] imams were scholars and so we are.’ Many scholars have debated with him and forced him to admit that he was wrong. The outstanding scholar of his era Najm al-Dīn al-Ḥūtsī al-Dāghistānī al-JabalīFootnote 9 ridiculed him in his qasida:
Leave the hadiths for those who are versed in them, // Verily, the slumbering forest [of knowledge] is for the lion and not for the goat //
Once our brother, the major scholar ‘Abdullah b. Shu’ayb-afandī al-BāginīFootnote 10 told me the following: ‘He [i.e. ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī] was a bad scholar. Once I happened to be with him in the same prison in Makhachkala. I have not seen a man more shameless and worse than him. He did not fulfil the religious duties, but at the same time he called for ijtihād and claimed to be a shaykh in Islam. ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī shaved off his beard and moustache, wore the clothes of the infidels (al-kuffār), and became an object of ridicule to the rest of the people there [Muslims].’ Being a bad mujtahid, he did not adhere to a single page of the Qur’ān. And he continued to be an object of censure and reproach [by the scholars] until the tsarist government collapsed [in 1917] and there were no righteous scholars left. Then he repeatedly began to mislead ignorant scholars and foolish students. He never befriended any of the righteous people, liaising only with wicked ones like himself. [When he was living in Temir-Khan] Shura under tsarist rule, he published a newspaper in Arabic titled Jaridat Dāghistān Footnote 11 for the purpose of spreading his disgusting harmful innovations (bid‘ah) in our cities. He has a work called ‘Islamic Law’ (al-Sharī‘a al-islāmiyya). However, from the point of view of the righteous Muslims, his [vision of] the law amounts to apostasy from the faith (murūq).
In this uncompromisingly disdainful portrayal, we understand that ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh abhorred ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī for his close connection to the Egyptian modernist intellectual Rashīd Riḑā and his advocacy for independent reasoning in Islamic jurisprudence. Furthermore, ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh’s prose exudes contempt for ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī’s intellectual persona, his demeanour, and his (in fact rather feeble) connections to the tsarist government. But who was ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī, what was his oeuvre, and why did ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh—one of the most prominent ulama in post-WWII Dagestan—despise him to such an extent that he penned an original pamphlet to curse his legacy? In this article, we set out to answer these questions and, in so doing, attempt to show that, at the beginning of the Soviet century, the North Caucasus represented an important conduit for the circulation and further refinement of Islamic scholarship. We contend that the absorption and reproduction of modernist thinking among Dagestani ulama were not halted by the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks’ takeover. Indeed, we set out to show that, in the North Caucasus between the 1920s and 1960s, scholars continued to cultivate interest in Islamic jurisprudence, unencumbered by the secularist policies that were adopted by the Soviet state. As we shall see, in this environment, ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī morphed into what could, with some latitude, be termed an epic figure and became so popular that he personified either the virtues or the evil aspects of modernist Islam. More specifically, Dagestani scholars of his and later generations became fixated on al-Ghumuqī’s association with the Middle Eastern modernist scene. In so doing, we argue, they have misread, misunderstood, and ultimately misinterpreted his oeuvre.
Transregional intellectual connections have, of course, always been important for scholars from the North Caucasus.Footnote 12 In the nineteenth century, however, things changed significantly in this respect. Dagestani ulama increasingly pursued their studies in the Middle East, mostly because of the Russian belligerence towards the highlandersFootnote 13 that led to the brutal annexation of the region in 1864 after decades of war. In fact, viewing themselves as part and parcel of a landscape of Islamic knowledge in the Arabic language, Dagestani ulama more often than not made privileged connections with their peers in the Levant and the Hijaz rather than with scholars who inhabited the Muslim-majority regions under tsarist rule, whose works were conveyed via different linguistic vessels (Persian and Turkic). Such circumstances brought about a distinctive situation in which, after the pacification of the North Caucasus, the local scholarly environment thrived on the importation of Islamic manuscripts that were originally produced in the Middle East and this is best reflected by writing practices as they are stratified today in manuscript libraries in Dagestan.Footnote 14 ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī’s legacy should be read against the background of a history of peripatetic scholars who were deeply entangled within a transregional web of learned communications, as well as an intellectual environment that was deeply influenced by more than a century of wars with the Russian empire. More importantly, his unique intellectual contribution to the scholarly landscape of the North Caucasus survived Sovietisation through his most immediate disciples and the appreciation of Soviet orientalists in spite of the unfavourable ideological context in which the latter operated.Footnote 15 We shall come back to this point towards the end of the present article.
Today, it is important to study ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī’s oeuvre, not only to put Dagestani scholars on the map, so to speak, but also to endow the cartography of global Islam with the granularity that is required to appreciate the variable geometries of intellectual transmission. In emphasising his proximity to Muslim modernist thinkers in the Middle East, we do not want to argue that al-Ghumuqī merely transplanted into the North Caucasus what he had found abroad. We would like, instead, to emphasise the originality of his thinking, for he elaborated and further developed a type of hermeneutic engagement with Islamic law that was current at the time in many places in the Muslim world.Footnote 16 More specifically, in 1913, al-Ghumuqī penned a maximalist critique of imitation (taqlīd) in the field of jurisprudence in which he advocated for the adoption of the method of the talfīq (lit. ‘amalgamation’)Footnote 17 of legal opinions that required a crossing of the boundaries between schools of law.Footnote 18 He did so by aggregating references from Ottoman and South Asian scholars who theorised a lenient approach to such jurisprudential practice and it is to al-Ghumuqī’s work on talfīq that we would now like to turn our attention in this article.
Reflection upon the genealogies of his thinking—especially his innovative approach to legal hermeneutics—will allow us to fully appreciate al-Ghumuqī’s originality and situate him within the various intellectual currents that, with some latitude, are usually referred to as salafiyya.Footnote 19 As we shall see, al-Ghumuqī’s intervention in the field of jurisprudential hermeneutics is significant, for he views talfīq as a type of reasoning that ordinary Muslims should apply to cultivate their religious selves and pursue piety, liberated from the perceived rigidity of the schools of law. Seen from this perspective, al-Ghumuqī’s advocacy for talfīq in fact amounted to undermining the authority of the scholars of Islam and encouraging commoners to be less deferential in matters of ritual.
This article consists of two parts. In the first, we offer a biographical sketch of ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī. We devote the second part to a detailed examination of his juristic method and do so by examining his reasoning with regard to the method of ‘amalgamation’ (talfīq).Footnote 20 In the conclusions, we offer a reflection on the sociocultural environment that was specific to Dagestan as a region of the Russian empire, which might have prompted al-Ghumuqī’s articulation of such a radical view of Islamic jurisprudence.
‘Alī al-Ghumuqī, his life, and his oeuvre: a sketch
‘Alī al-Ghumuqī began his studies in his native village of Kumukh—a rural settlement in the southern part of central Dagestan that is perched atop a mountainous range, overlooking a steep ravine that was excavated by a tributary of the Sulak river.Footnote 21 Having completed his cursus studiorum there, he pursued further education in various Lak, Avar, and Kumyk villages. It was during this period that al-Ghumuqī first manifested an interest in the reformist thinking of al-Afghānī—an interest that prompted his copyingFootnote 22 the latter’s famous ‘Refutation of the materialists’ (al-Radd ‘ala al-Dahriyyīn), published in 1882, which was a blistering attack against Sayyid Aḥmad Khan, a key figure in a broad process of absorption of Western materialism in South Asia.Footnote 23 Incidentally, his fascination with the work of al-Afghānī would lead him, in 1926, to author another important tract entitled Al-sahm al-ṣā’ib li ṣāḥib al-za‘m al-kādhib (‘The arrow pierced the liars’ throat’), in which he similarly criticised Muslim intellectuals who had embraced Western secularist thinking and atheism.Footnote 24
In circa 1900, al-Ghumuqī relocated to Astrakhan at the invitation of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Mullā ‘Abd al-Wahhāb, the imam of the 9th congregational mosque, to work as an instructor in one of the local madrasas.Footnote 25 After five years, al-Ghumuqī left for Cairo and enrolled at al-Azhar, where he stayed until 1908. During his stay in Cairo, al-Ghumuqī became a close acquaintance of Rashīd Riḑā, whom he assisted in the publication of the journal al-Manar.Footnote 26 In 1908, al-Ghumuqī relocated to Istanbul to work in the local library, but he was immediately arrested by the Ottoman police, most probably for his ties with the Egyptian reformist milieu. A few months later, al-Ghumuqī was released from detention and left the Ottoman empire.Footnote 27
As we shall see in more detail in the second part of this article, upon his return to the North Caucasus, al-Ghumuqī adapted the Islamic modernist approach to the Dagestani intellectual context, to which he was exposed in the Middle East, and thus became involved in heated debates about issues of theology, Sufism, and jurisprudence. More specifically, he developed a critical approach to the jurisprudential method of emulation (taqlīd) of established traditions within a school of law and theorised the possibility of direct hermeneutical engagement with the Islamic scriptures, namely the Qur’an and the Sunnah, which he regarded as an effective means to address the perceived rigidity of Islamic teaching, especially in the field of ritual law (‘ibādah).Footnote 28
This is certainly not entirely original thinking in the modern history of the Muslim world,Footnote 29 for we observe the same conceptualisation among other Muslim intellectuals who lived under Russian rule.Footnote 30 However, it is important to pause to reflect on al-Ghumuqī’s hermeneutical method because, for a long time, scholars of Islam in the Russian empire and the Soviet Union have argued that Muslim modernists advocated for their communities to belong to an ideal of civilisational improvement that was premised upon a combination of Western-style rationalist and secularist thinking.Footnote 31 While this was the case somewhere, it is equally important to distinguish where this did not happen.
Having returned to the Caucasus, al-Ghumuqī moved to the village of Gundelen in the Tersko-Kuban region (now the Kabardino-Balkar Republic), where he opened a new-method (uṣūl-i jadīd) madrasa on the initiative of local residents.Footnote 32 In 1913, at the invitation of Badavi Saidov (1877–1927), chief of the chancellery of Sigismund Volsky, then governor general of the Dagestani region (an administrative unit of the Russian empire that was ruled by the military from 1860), al-Ghumuqī moved to Temir-Khan Shura, where he organised the publication of the Arabic-language newspaper Jarīdat Dāghistān (1913–1917). After the fall of imperial power in February 1917, al-Ghumuqī actively participated in local political life. However, after the Bolsheviks’ takeover and the establishment of Soviet power in 1919, he withdrew from the public scene, went back to his native village, took up the post of qāḍī, and taught at the local madrasa.
When Soviet authorities banned sharia courts, al-Ghumuqī moved once again to Makhachkala on the invitation of ‘Alībek Takho Godi (1892–1937), then commissar for national education.Footnote 33 Employed at the Institute of National Culture between 1927 until his arrest in 1938, al-Ghumuqī had the opportunity to refashion himself as a ‘folklorist’—a move that characterised the intellectual trajectory of many Muslim savants in the early Soviet period.Footnote 34 His new appointment at the Institute of National Culture allowed him to travel often through Dagestan and afforded him the unprecedented opportunity to examine a great number of private collections of manuscripts as well as to collect materials on the history of the country and on local languages. In fact, during that decade, al-Ghumuqī penned numerous works that had very little in common with his previous scholarly production. During this period, he wrote The Biographies of Dagestani Scholars (in three versions: Turkish, Arabic, and Lak), The Grammar of the Lak Language, The Dictionary of the Lak Language and Its History (4 vols, 629 fols), The History of the 1877 Uprising in Dagestan and Chechnya (in Arabic and Lak), The Lak-Avar-Dargin Dictionary, The History of Muridism, The History and Language of the Laks, Lak Historical Songs, Materials on the Defeat of Nadir Shah, and Proverbs, Sayings and Wording of the Laks, among other works.
If projected against the background of historical works produced by Dagestani ulama in earlier periods, al-Ghumuqī’s output no doubt stands out for its originality. Having abandoned the annalistic writing mode, he began to cultivate a specific interest in the personality of individuals who had played a meaningful role in the events that led to the formation of Soviet Dagestan. In his work that was devoted to the October Revolution and the Civil War, for example, al-Ghumuqī examined the political turmoil of the 1917–1920s period by concentrating his attention on several distinct figures: the Naqshbandi shaikh ‘Alī-Ḥājjī Akushinsky,Footnote 35 the Muslim scholar-cum-politician Najm al-Dīn Gotsinsky, the Turkish officers Kazem-BeiFootnote 36 and Nūrī Pasha,Footnote 37 and the socialists Makhach DakhadaevFootnote 38 and Jalāl al-Dīn Korkmasov.Footnote 39 Through an examination of these individuals’ characters, he ultimately crafted a historical narrative that was coloured by human virtues and vices: courage, ambition, fanaticism, hypocrisy, and deceptiveness are placed centre stage in his work. Proceeding in a similar fashion, ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī then narrativised the history of the 1877 uprising in Dagestan. His account is redolent of Chekhov’s theatrical plays in which everything is explained by the power hunger of some (the head of the Dagestani okrug Levan MelikovFootnote 40), the treacherous cunning of others (qāḑī ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ghāzīghumuqī,Footnote 41 who closely collaborated with tsarist authorities), the self-sacrifice of a few (one of the leaders of the uprising, ‘Alībek-ḥājjīFootnote 42), the naivety of a fourth character (Naqshbandi shaikh ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣughūrī),Footnote 43 and the irresolution of another (Muḥammad-ḥājjī al-Ṣugūrī).Footnote 44
Another aspect that distinguishes al-Ghumuqī as a historian is his penchant for critical thinking. By collecting a colossal number of sources that reflected a wide range of compositional genres, he called into question many of the established clichés among Dagestani ulama. In particular, ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī was the first to question the common idea that a number of local rulers were descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad, claiming instead that the Golden Horde had played a crucial rule in the formation of the Dagestani Khanates. Needless to say, broadly speaking, such a critical approach to history is common among Muslim modernist thinkers in the late tsarist period and dovetails with Soviet historiography, too.
In 1931, al-Ghumuqī was arrested on charges of belonging to a religious organisation that aimed to overthrow the Soviet power and exiled to Chelyabinsk, in the Urals. A few years later, at the request of Jalāl al-Dīn Korkmasov (1877–1937), chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Dagestan, he was released from exile and returned home. In November 1934, he resumed his work at the Institute of National Cultures. In January 1939, however, on charges of belonging to Turkish intelligence and organising anti-Soviet rebellions, al-Ghumuqī was once again arrested and, after a year in solitary confinement, he was exiled to Kazakhstan. In December 1943, he contracted typhus and died in a hospital in the village of Novogeorgievka.
Al-Ghumuqī as jurist and his treatise on the liceity of talfīq
We mentioned above that, in the wake of the Second World War, the work of ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī was so influential that it sparked a reprimand from a prominent Dagestani scholar, ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh al-Uḥlī, who was particularly concerned with al-Ghumuqī’s alleged advocacy for independent reasoning (ijtihād) in matters of jurisprudence. As we have seen, ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh accused al-Ghumuqī, in particular, of having imported a legal method that was foreign to Dagestan and for having done so by emulating Middle Eastern modernists (jadīd). This was enough for al-Ghumuqī to earn ‘Abd al-Ḥаfīdh’s ire and his accusation of sedition and impiety. But what was al-Ghumuqī’s thinking really like? And, more specifically, how did he regard the prevailing attitude among jurists that promoted imitation within a school of law? Did al-Ghumuqī ever call for the disbandment of the schools of law to promote a direct engagement with the scriptures? We would like to answer these questions by turning to an important work that ‘Alī al-Ghumuqī crafted in 1913 when he was working as editor of the newspaper Jarīdat al-Dāghistān.
Existing in two copies, as replicated by one of his acolytes, the treatise on the liceity of the method of amalgamation (Risāla fi al-taqlīd wa jawāz al-talfīq) is a rather cryptic work, full of references that were extracted from a wide range of scholars across the Ḥanafī and the Shāfi’ī spectrum and covering an impressive geographical range. It begins by questioning the prevalent view among scholars of his time that propounded the need to strictly follow the established opinion of the eponymous founders of a given school of law. More specifically, he explains that this way of proceeding represents a deviation from the exemplary model of the ‘righteous forefathers’ (al-salaf al-ṣālihūn) who based their opinions exclusively on the scriptures (the Qur’an and the Sunnah). The following except may allow us appreciate the extent to which al-Ghumuqī embraced a fundamentalist approach to Islamic law:
It is no secret that all those who have read and are familiar with the biographies of the righteous forefathers (al-salaf al-ṣālihūn) and their contemporaries among the Muslim commoners (‘awām), know that they [= the righteous forefathers] did not follow the opinion of any Imam in any matter whatsoever. They [= the righteous forefathers] also set aside the opinions of those who disagreed with them, except in certain cases and under certain conditions,Footnote 45 unlike what is characteristic of the people of our era and those who lived before them. They [= the righteous forefathers] were guided by what was sent down to them, the authentic hadiths. They were well versed in the scriptures, and when they did not know something regarding a specific matter, they would turn to those whom they met from among the knowledgeable, without forcing anyone to follow a particular person or be guided only by his opinion, as it was explained by an-NawawiFootnote 46 and Ibn Humām.Footnote 47
Having openly criticised the default approach to imitation, al-Ghumuqī then proceeds to collect examples from the history of Islamic law that show how jurists had applied the method of talfīq prior to him:
They [= the righteous forefathers] did not question [the legitimacy of] talfīq, unlike some contemporary scholars, who forbade its application without citing a single source nor any evidence (ḥujjat wa dalīl). They scaffold their opinion by referring to a stipulation (sharṭ) which is absent from the Book of Allāh Most High and the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings of Allāh be upon him)! Nor has anyone among the mujtahid imams [= those who founded the madhhabs] offered any recommendation on this matter. [They never encouraged us] to follow only the opinion of one scholar on a certain point of law (mas’ala) without taking into account the opinions of others who can too be relevant. On the contrary, they [= the mujtahid imams] wrote the opposite. They indicated that it is permissible to resort to talfīq, as is evidenced in the [following] tradition of Abū Yūsuf, the disciple of Abū Ḥanīfa (may Allāh be pleased with him). Once [Abū Yūsuf] performed the Friday prayer, and after its completion he was informed that a dead mouse was found in the well of the bathhouse from which he was drawing water for ablution. Then he said: ‘In that case, we will follow the opinion of our brothers from Medina,Footnote 48 whereby if the water reaches two kullas,Footnote 49 it is not considered impure.’Footnote 50 Obviously, he as well as other Muslims who adhered to the [Ḥanafī] madhhab used such water for ablution, and performed the prayer, even though the people who usually did so followed a different school of law.Footnote 51 And this practice of talfīq was applied in their ritual (‘ibadah), as explained by the author of the work Qawl al-sadīd.Footnote 52
The intended upshot of this otherwise rather cryptic passage is that, according to a tradition, Abū Yūsuf, a disciple of Abū of Ḥanīfa, and other Muslims performed ablution by taking water from a container in which they later found a dead mouse. The volume of this water, however, did not reach a sufficient amount for it to be considered suitable for ablution according to the Ḥanafī school of law. Accordingly, the Friday prayer of Abū Yūsuf and those who performed it after him would have been considered invalid. Confronted by this situation, Abū Yūsuf resolved to proceed pragmatically and to follow the Mālikī madhhab, according to which a dead mouse does not contaminate the water, regardless of its volume, provided that the colour, smell, and taste of the water have not changed. Following the Mālikī madhhab in this matter, the water was therefore suitable for ablution and the prayer that was performed thereafter was to be considered perfectly valid. Al-Ghumuqī showed in this example how Abū Yūsuf and his followers could easily solve an issue that concerned matters of ritual by embracing an opinion from a different school of law.
In his tract, al-Ghumuqī further shows how, historically, talfīq was applied to other points of law such as waqf. He holds that Abū Yūsuf allowed the individual who established a charitable endowment to make use of the property that belonged to the waqf (al-waqf ‘alā al-shakhs). His opinion, however, did not include movable property, such as gold and money. Muḥammad al-Shaybānī opined differently. He argued that it was permissible to devote movable property to a waqf. However, he excluded the possibility that the person who was establishing a waqf could use such movable property for one’s self. However, later Ḥanafī scholars combined these two opinions and ruled on the permissibility of devoting movable and immovable property to a waqf, thereby allowing the donor to make use of such property. In doing so, such scholars followed the prevailing opinion of the Shāfi‘ī madhhab, who establishes that a waqf has no right to use the latter’s property for himself, unless he stipulates that such property should support students and he becomes one of them himself. This is best shown, al-Ghumuqī suggests, by the work of the Ottoman Damascene mufti Ibn ‘Ābidin (circa 1783–1836), ‘Uqūd al-durriyya fi tanqīh al-ḥamīdiyya. Al-Ghumuqī further reinforces his argument by referring to Mehmet Abū Su‘ūd (1490–1574), a Ḥanafī scholar who served as shaykh al-Islam under the reign of Süleyman the Lawgiver and his son Selim II.Footnote 53 Abū Su‘ūd, so explains al-Ghumuqī, held that a person can create waqf money that he can then use for himself (‘alā al-shakhs). He did so in open contradiction of the opinion of Abū Yūsuf and Zufar b. al-Hudhayl al-Tamīmī (728–775), who was a major Ḥanafī scholar and a successor to Abū Ḥanīfa.Footnote 54 Such references show the degree to which al-Ghumuqī had become familiar with the history of the Ḥanafī literature during the period that he spent in Cairo—literature that circulated in Dagestan to only a limited extent.
But, if many juristic authorities held for its liceity, then why, asks al-Ghumuqī, was talfīq prohibited? He explains that resorting to talfīq does not mean combining opinions that are taken from different madhhabs within the framework of one specific issue (mas’ala).Footnote 55 Seen from this perspective, al-Ghumuqī’s understanding of talfīq does not qualify as an ‘amalgamation’ of legal views—that is, unlike the way in which the term is usually understood. Rather, for him, talfīq is an instrument that allows Muslims to switch to a different school of law when needed. In fact, his advocating for talfīq is key to advising the uneducated not to identify themselves with a particular madhhab. That is, the uneducated should regard themselves as being free to turn to any jurist and follow what he says, regardless of the madhhab to which this jurist belongs. This is the main rationale behind al-Ghumuqī’s understanding of talfīq.
Further in his tract, al-Ghumuqī exemplified his reasoning about talfīq by referring to the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, who is said to have performed the prayer after the hijāma (i.e. the practice of bloodletting). The caliph did so without performing the ritual ablution anew. According to the Ḥanafī madhhab, the prayer of the caliph and all those who prayed after him should have been considered invalid and would have to be repeated. In spite of this, Abū Yūsuf considered this prayer valid and therefore did not repeat it. By proceeding in this fashion, al-Ghumuqī reaches the following conclusion:
it is evident that the Imams (may Allāh be pleased with them) did not consider certain ritual practices invalid, even though they had different, in fact opposing opinions in these matters. Had it not been so, they would not have followed one after the other [in prayers] as described above.Footnote 56
We now come to al-Ghumuqī’s central argument: talfīq is the only way for the uneducated believer to avoid the mistakes that one can incur on account of one’s ignorance in legal matters. Indeed, al-Ghumuqī holds that one can claim to be following a madhhab only if one is able to evaluate the juristic method that led to the articulation of an opinion on a matter of controversy—an opinion that became preponderant within the precincts of a school of law and therefore morphed into an established practice. Otherwise, if one unknowingly imitates a bad opinion, then one is bound to be a sinner:
If it were the case, as it has been said, that the followers of the madhhabs (muqallid) should emulate [blindly] all the conclusions reached by the [mujtahid] whom they follow, then this [approach] would close the doors of taqlīd to the masses in most of [the legal cases which represent] matters of controversy. [It is so] because [the followers of the madhhabs] do not know all the conclusions reached [by the mujtahid] on these [legal] matters and do not pay much attention to them. Especially, one should consider that some of the major jurists have claimed that they did not comprehend the full meaning of those issues in which they followed the opinion of [imam] al-Shāfi‘ī, despite the fact that they devoted all their time to the study and teaching of his madhhab. Oh, if only I could have known this! If [the essence of the madhhab] is not fully comprehended by a jurist who has devoted his whole life to its study and teaching, how can it be comprehended by the common people? […] The common people should not follow strictly those who reject the provisions of another madhhab, who place their opinion on some issues above the decision of another madhhab [on the same issues], who pit their madhhab against another one.Footnote 57
Key to al-Ghumuqī’s reasoning is the idea that the founders of the legal schools reached specific solutions by pondering on their limitations (taqiyyid) as well as their specifications (al-tahṣīṣ); and he was adamant that subsequent scholars may have misunderstood the principles that had guided the founder of a legal school and must have therefore derived incorrect opinions. In this connection, he cites ‘Abd al-Wahhab b. Aḥmad al-Sha’ranī (1493–1565), a Shāfi‘ī jurist who, in his al-Mizān, opined that:
The madhhab of the imam is the truth. It reflects what he [= the imam] said and his unchanged opinions until his death. It does not reflect what the imam’s followers understood his words to mean. The Imams were not in agreement with the people [who delivered opinions] by eliciting meaning from their words and by distorting them.Footnote 58
One could say that al-Ghumuqī’s approach to talfīq reflected his radical view regarding the adherence to the preponderant view within a school of law:
In fact, the populace (al-‘āmmī) cannot belong to a particular madhhab, as al-Harawī said from the words of al-Shāfi‘ī, and al-Nawāwī; others agreed with this opinion. Moreover, the major scholar Ibn al-Amīr al-HajjiFootnote 59 in his work al-Taḥrīr Footnote 60 mentioned that it is not possible for a person who is not a scholar to follow a madhhab even if he claims to do so. He also said that the very notion of following the madhhab is only possible for a person who has sufficient level of knowledge to reason, justify, compare arguments and weigh evidence, know a particular section of jurisprudence, and is familiar with the fatwas of the Imam of his madhhab. One who is unable to do this, but at the same time claims to be a Ḥanafī, a Shāfi‘ī and so on, cannot be considered as such merely on the basis of his unsubstantiated statements. His mere words will not suffice. Just as if someone calls himself a jurist, a linguist or a writer, it will not be enough for him to be considered one.Footnote 61
Al-Ghumuqī frowned upon the idea of the uneducated claiming adherence to a legal school, as it represented a manifestation of fanaticism (‘aṣabiyya). Accordingly, he preached a tolerant vision in which the commoner should simply follow the opinion of any jurist. Relying on the al-Anwār al-mushrīqa fi al-fatāwā al-muḥaqqiqa, a work by the Yemeni scholar al-Zabīdī (1494–1567), al-Ghumuqī held the view that ‘if the deeds of an uneducated conform to the madhhab of one of the Imams, which can be followed, then his deeds are valid. If one does not follow them, then there is space for the servants [of Allah] to follow any of the madhhabs’. Al-Ghumuqī was solely concerned with the possibility that adherence to a madhhab would complicate the lives of the believers. It should not come as a surprise, then, that he quotes Ibn ‘Arabī and his Futuḥāt al-makkiyyah:
Praise be to Allāh, who has made the disagreement among the Imams a mercy for us. Had it not been for those scholars who turn into stone His mercy by insisting on [the need] to follow a certain school of law, which was not established by Allāh or His Prophet, nor by the clear text of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, nor by strong or weak arguments. They have deprived [the common Muslim] of the right to seek comfort in different situations, to follow the interpretation of another scholar by accepting his judgements, and the definition of strictness in this [= following a particular madhhab]. While the sharī’ah has given ample opportunity for our ummah, the scholars have restricted the opportunities for ordinary Muslims by binding them to a particular madhhab, constraining them [in their daily activities]. This is not sharī’ah.Footnote 62
Finally, al-Ghumuqī concludes his tract by hammering home his point: none among the most authoritative Muslim scholars of the past has ever forbidden the practice of talfīq:
I know that people in the best ages, in the period of the mujtahids, did not confine themselves to any one particular madhhab. On the contrary, in one case they were guided by the opinion of one Imam and in other cases by the opinion of another Imam. And none of the scholars of that era forbade performing talfīq by choosing between two opposing opinions in matters of worship (‘ibādah). And anyone who calls for it,Footnote 63 should have a [convincing] explanation for it. Neither Allāh nor His Messenger obliged any of the people to adhere to the books of the later scholars, blindly follow what is in them, including what is unnecessary and bad, limit themselves to what they said, and repeat [uncritically] what they transmitted.Footnote 64
It is only when we reach the end of al-Ghumuqī’s tract on talfīq that we find out what prompted its crafting. Indeed, al-Ghumuqī mentions in passing that he came across a treatise that was written by ‘Alī-Ḥājjī al-Aqūshī—an authoritative Naqshbandi shaykh, who, like ‘Abd al-Ḥafīdh al-Uḥlī, commanded authority in Dagestan and was known for his scathing critique of Wahhabism and modernist Islam.Footnote 65 Indeed, al-Aqūshī had penned a short work entitled al-Jawāb li ṣulaḥā’ min ahl qaryat Gubdān fī ḥukm miyāhihim (‘Reply to the pious inhabitants of the village of Gubden regarding a decision concerning [the status of] their water’). In the introduction, he explains the circumstances that prompted him to compose this work:
I was approached by residents of the village of Gubden with a request to clarify an issue concerning the [use of] their water [for purposes of ablution]. In turn, I asked them to clarify in detail the circumstances of their issue, so that my answer would fit their question. They elaborated by saying that in some reservoirs the properties of water change either partially or completely because of the presence of urine and droppings of wild animals that remain there. I replied that in such reservoirs the water becomes impure and one should refrain from using it [for ablution]. However, in other reservoirs, when there is no such change, the water is still considered impure according to the new interpretation of the madhhab of Imam Shāfi‘ī, because its flow is constantly in contact with dung and other pollutants. But according to the old opinion of Imam Shāfi‘ī the water remains pure and [preserves its] purifying (muṭahhir) [character], as well as according to the other three madhhabs. Therefore, pious people who observe the religious injunctions collect water in tanks to reach the prescribed volume of two kullahs, thus making it pure for sure. However, some scholars have opposed this [opinion] and even insulted those who collect water in public places and markets. I preferred not to respond to them because, by Allah’s will, on careful reflection the texts themselves testify in favour of this practice [of preferring to collect water in tanks]. Now, in view of the insistence of some of my brothers that I should give a detailed answer to this question, I decided to write this tract.Footnote 66
In this work, al-Aqūshī delivered an opinion (ḥukm) following the ‘last’ (jadīd) opinion of Imam Shāfi‘ī, thereby preferring the latter over his ‘earlier’ (qadīm) version.Footnote 67 Moreover, al-Aqūshī strictly followed the Shāfi‘ī tradition, thereby disregarding alternative opinions of other legal schools. In so doing, he purposefully avoided resorting to the practice of talfīq. In a revealing passage, he explained his juristic method by criticising the Indonesian Shāfi‘ī scholar Muḥammad Nawāwī al-Jāwī,Footnote 68 who, when reflecting on the same legal question, wrote that Mālikī scholars consider water to be suitable for ablution when it does not change its properties. Al-Aqūshī further explained that ‘when there are numerous opinions of Shāfi‘ī scholars on this issue, then the decisions of the Mālikī school cannot serve as an argument for the Shāfi‘ī’ and that ‘it is necessary to strictly follow the tradition (lā budda min ‘amal bih min al-taqlīd) and to be guided solely by the opinion of imam al-Shāfi‘ī’.Footnote 69 That is, al-Aqūshī opined that one should not resort to talfīq when there are clear, unambiguous rulings within the Shāfi‘ī tradition.
Al-Ghumuqī observed that al-Aqūshī’s reasoning was misleading, as ‘[the opinion of Imam] Mālik (may Allāh be pleased with him) in matters of partial (al-wudhū’) and complete (al-ghusl) ablution does not contradict the opinion of [Imam] al-Shāfi‘ī, except in the wiping of the head and [the area of] its coverage’. In speaking of exception, al-Ghumuqī meant that, while both the Shāfi‘ī and the Mālikī schools require that water should reach the roots of the hair of the head during the ritual ablution, there is a slight difference in the interpretation of exactly what is considered to be the ‘root of the hair’. While Shāfi‘īs consider it to be where the hair begins, Mālikīs hold the opinion that the ‘root of the hair’ is the part that is closer to the scalp. Another difference is that the Mālikīs require the entire head to be wiped during the ablution whereas the Shāfi‘ī believe that wiping it only partially is sufficient. In spite of these differences, al-Ghumuqī was adamant about the similarity of Shāfi‘ī and Mālikī opinions in matters of ritual ablution, for, as he himself explains, ‘this would be easy for the populace to follow’. Once again, we observe here how al-Ghumuqī comes back to the idea that ordinary Muslims do not need to delve into the intricacies of jurisprudence and that jurists should resort to talfīq to facilitate orthopraxis among ordinary people. In so doing, al-Ghumuqī explains, he relied on the opinion of the Shāfi‘ī jurist Ahmad b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīzī al-Malabarī al-Hindī (d. 1583), who, in his work Fatḥ al-mu‘īn sharḥ qurrat al-’ayn, argued that ‘there is no harm in combining these two opinions’. Interestingly, the work in question began to circulate in Dagestan only from the late nineteenth century—that is, after its publication in Egypt.
The very end of the treatise sounds as if al-Ghumuqī threw a gauntlet at the feet of his contemporaries:
Did Allāh Almighty and His Messenger forbid the guidance of hadīths? [Were they] obliged to refer to the books of later scholars? ‘Is it not time for the believers’Footnote 70 to return to the Book of their Lord and the Sunnah of their Messenger, to be guided by them [= Qur’an and Sunnah], and to avoid what is not in them, as it was in the time of their [righteous] forefathers? They were guided by them [= Qur’an and Sunnah], they did not know the madhhabs, and the taqlīd […] And were they not the best in everything?
Conclusion
We have opened this article by referring to al-Uḥlī’s treatise that circulated in the 1950s, which violently chastised al-Ghumuqī for his innovative views. Interestingly, he went so far as to call him an apostate. We close this article with another, this time positive, attestation to the enormous impact that al-Ghumuqī’s legacy had in Dagestan after the Second World War. Crafted by one Mas‘ūd al-Muhūkhī (1893–1941), who was a Dagestani scholar of Avar origins and a student of al-Ghumuqī, ‘Burning the obstacles in the path of independent legal reasoning’ (Kharq al-asdād ‘an abwāb al-ijtihād)Footnote 71 can be rightfully considered a manifesto of radical modernist Islam. Indeed, it urges to a return to the scriptures, but it does so in a drastic fashion—that is, by suggesting that any Muslim should do away with the schools of law and engage hermeneutically with the Qur’an and the Sunnah. As we shall see from the opening excerpt of his tract, al-Muhūkhī’s main target is the majority of the ulama in Dagestan who have premised their scholarly status upon the uncritical reliance on the edifice of knowledge of the school of law:
Many in our days, those who identify themselves as scholars, in making judgements, detach themselves from the Qur’an and the Sunnah. In issuing fatwas, they rely on and are guided by the opinions of later scholars who have written books, commentaries on these books, sub-commentaries, and who follow [the method] of taqlīd. Many of them have not even held in their hands the books of the four Imams,Footnote 72 nor have they read the hadith and yet they give judgements like those [four] Imams who knew both the Qur’an and the Sunnah and extracted judgements from there. These modern scholars of ours, who do not rely on the Qur’an and the Sunnah but on the opinions of other scholars, do not know where a judgement is derived from and what its source is (dalīl). They deny giving a judgement based on the sources of fiqh even when they see a clear argument in the Qur’an or Sunnah. They deny this by saying that the era of ijtihād ended many centuries ago, that there are no more mujtahids left and that one should be guided by later books and the opinion of scholars who wrote commentaries and sub-commentaries. And if they see a private legal opinion (taqrīr)Footnote 73 on any [discussion on] a point of law made by a non-Arab (‘ajam), i.e., from the mountaineers [of the North Caucasus], they prefer to issue fatwas according to that opinion rather than referring to the Qur’an and the Sunnah.Footnote 74
In the following revealing passage, we learn what al-Muhūkhī truly means when engaging hermeneutically with the scriptures. His proposed method is ‘rationality’ (‘aql):
They do not know a single section of [tracts dealing with] ijtihād and yet they deny categorically [the permissibility of] being guided by the reason [when eliciting meaning from the Qur’an and the Sunnah]. Thus, they turn to stone Allāh’s mercy by closing it [= making it inaccessible]. At the same time, they read only some Qur’anic verses and hadiths that confirm their words, without understanding their deeper meaning. And, Allāh’s mercy, which they turn into stone, is not inaccessible! I have written this book to cure them of the disease of envy and fanaticism (ta‘aṣṣub); verily, Allāh’s mercy is accessible!Footnote 75
Devoting an entire section to the jurists who, prior to him, can be regarded as mujtahids, al-Muhūkhī explains that many of them preferred to be guided by the Qur’an and the Sunnah rather than by the opinion of scholars, including the founders of the madhhabs. Furthermore, he added that many such mujtahids censured taqlīd. Al-Muhūkhī’s references are well known—in fact, rather predictable, ranging as they are from Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah to Muḥammad Abduh and Rashīd Riḑā. What may surprise the reader, however, is to find al-Ghumuqī referred to as ‘absolute mujtahid’. This is what al-Muhūkhī writes about him:
Alī b. ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Ghāzī Ghumuqī went to Egypt and stayed there for several years, benefiting from [exposure to] local scholarship. Then he returned to Dagestan and began to share his knowledge, without ceasing to exalt the Sunnah and opposing harmful innovations (bidʻah). He did so by making inferences [directly] from the Qur’an and the Sunnah. On the basis of this reasoning, he issued opinions outside the Shāfi‘ī madhhab. He is currently a qadi in Ghazi Gumuk. In our age, calls to reform education, science and religion have become common and people are now advised to [rediscover] the Qur’an and the Sunnah, and to be guided by them. These ideas first appeared in Egypt, then they also spread in India and Russia, and then in Dagestan, where some scholars have opposed the sclerosis of blind imitation (taqlīd) and called for a return to the religion as it was in the first centuries of Islam.Footnote 76
It is at this point of the tract that we can best appreciate how al-Muhūkhī misinterpreted al-Ghumuqī’s reasoning and attributed to the latter ideas that he had never formulated. Indeed, while, as we have seen, al-Ghumuqī had advocated for it to be permissible for the uneducated to switch to another school of law if needed, at the same time, al-Muhūkhī attributed to him a radical critique of the imitation of established opinions that were accepted within the madhhab and, most importantly, the adoption of independent reasoning (ijtihād):
‘Alī b. Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Ghumuqī once said: ‘Many of our scholars believe that the sharī‘ah is only what is written in the numerous works on Muslim law and in the commentaries and sub-commentaries on them. They also believe that by being guided by these books, they are following the sharī‘ah. And if anyone opposes what is stated in these books, he opposes the sharī‘ah, thereby deviating from the way of the Muslims and following harmful innovations and heresies. Therefore, they urge Muslims to follow what is stated in these books. When someone asks them a question, they look for the solution in numerous texts of jurisprudence and if they find the answer, they quote it almost verbatim. If they do not find it, they draw inferences by analogy (qiyās) from similar questions and examples. However, they do not admit that they draw inferences by analogy, because this amounts to absolute independent reasoning (ijtihād mutlāq), which for them is inadmissible.Footnote 77
We have explained above that, throughout his life, al-Ghumuqī never advocated for the need to do away with the legal schools, nor did he urge jurists to derive their opinions from the scriptures in general. What he did do was to theorise the permissibility for ordinary Muslims—that is, the uneducated—to follow a jurist regardless of the latter’s affiliation to a specific school of law. We find a further articulation of al-Ghumuqī’s thinking in an opinion that he delivered in 1924 when questioned on whether the differences between the schools of law could be an impediment for infidels (kuffār) to convert to Islam:
Question: If an infidel these days says, ‘I want to convert to Islam. However, among you there are Ḥanafīs, Shāfi‘īs and others; and each of them contradicts the other in actions and decisions. Did the prophet do what the Ḥanafīs or Shāfi‘īs do?’, then what can we answer him? Should we tell him about the inconsistency of the madhhabs? should we deny them? […] Answer: The fact that some mention differences among Muslims in their faith, and see this as an obstacle to entering Islam, asking them which of these the Prophet adhered to—this does not make sense! I usually tell such people that what our Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) came with is what is contained in the Qur’ān and the authentic hadiths. And if he wants to accept Islam, then this is Islam. The imams of the madhhabs did not talk about the invalidity of what did not correspond to their madhhabs. On the contrary, they said: ‘Our decisions are how and what we understood from the texts of sharī‘ah. And that if someone understands [the texts of the Qur’an and Sunnah] the way we understood them, then it is [true]. And if someone understands these texts differently, then this is their understanding [of these texts]. And if anyone does not understand, then he can ask what he needs to know from those who have knowledge and understand [these texts].’Footnote 78
In absence of clear references to specific historical circumstances in his writings, we can only speculate that al-Ghumuqī articulated this idea about talfīq when dealing with cases of Muslims who lamented their concerns regarding the prescriptions of a given school of law. Such cases most probably manifested themselves as intermingling among confessional communities in and across the Russian empire. At the turn of the twentieth century—especially in cities such as Temir-Khan Shura, Astrakhan, Derbent, or Baku for that matter—Muslims were increasingly exposed to situations of cultural diversity, when the same mosque, for example, could be attended by believers who followed different schools of law on matters of ritual. Furthermore, one is reminded that the imperial infrastructure and the introduction of steam connections facilitated long-range travels. Either while travelling for trading purposes or on a pilgrimage, Muslims from the North Caucasus could increasingly find themselves in Muslim-majority environments in which the Shāfi‘ī school of law, once predominant at home, was not hegemonic. Furthermore, while al-Ghumuqī’s tract can be seen as a response to the increasing multiculturalism that came with the Russian control of the region, at the same time, it appears to be responding to the increasing politicisation of things Muslim all over world. The method of talfīq represented a peculiar way of responding to the global trends of democratisation—trends that one can observe elsewhere between Cairo and Bombay.Footnote 79
Be that as it may, it is ironic to observe that al-Ghumuqī’s fame did not rest on the originality of his juristic thinking. In fact, by misinterpreting the upshot of his oeuvre on talfīq, scholars such as ‘Abd al-Ḥafīdh al-Uḥlī and Mas‘ūd al-Muhūkhī have immortalised al-Ghumuqī merely as a follower of Rashīd Riḑā, thereby mapping Dagestan into the world of modernist global Islam.
Acknowledgements
Research for this article was made possible by a generous grant of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, Grant No. P 37154-G). The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for their astute comments and suggestions on earlier drafts.
Conflicts of interest
None.
