Islamic Scholars

He was born on February 19, 1908 in Hyderabad, India. His family has a long scholarly tradition and is a descendant of the Arab commentator and Sufi Mahdûm Mahâimî (d. 835/1432). His father was Abu Muhammad Khalilullah, one of the chief muftis of the Nizam of Hyderabad. After receiving the first information from his father, he completed his religious education at the Jamia Nizâmiyya and received the title of “Mevlevî Kamil”, a degree equivalent to the master’s level. Afterwards, he completed his master’s degree in international law at the Faculty of Law of Osmâniye University, from which he graduated. In 1929, he participated in the establishment of the Majlis ihyâi’l-maârifi’n-Nu’mâniyya, which was established to publish the works of Hanafi scholars.

Muhammad Hamidullah was sent to the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms University in Bonn, Germany, to complete his doctorate on Islamic international law by the University of Osmâniya, where he was an assistant. After conducting research in the libraries of Sana’a, Mecca, Medina, Beirut, Damascus and Cairo during his studies, he went to Istanbul in 1932 and met with scholars such as Şerefettin Yaltkaya, İsmail Saib Sencer, Hellmut Ritter, and Osman Reşer. While doing his doctorate, he benefited from Paul Ernst Kahle and Fritz Krenkow. During this time, he taught Arabic and Urdu at the same university and worked as the European correspondent of Islamic Culture magazine. He completed his dissertation in 1933 (“Die Neutralität im islamischen Völkerrecht”, ZDMG, XIV [1935], pp. 68-88). In connection with another doctoral dissertation on early Islamic diplomacy that he was to present to the Sorbonne University in Paris, he worked on manuscripts in European and North African libraries and political documents from the early period of Islam, especially under the French orientalist M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes. After submitting this thesis (Corpus des documents sur la diplomatie musulmane à l’époque du prophète et des khalifes ortodoxes, Paris 1935), he attended the lectures of Henri Laoust, Louis Massignon and William Marçais at the Collège de France for a while. He then returned to his country and served as a professor of Islamic law and international law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Osmâniye between 1936 and 1946; He also taught at the Faculty of Religious Studies.

Hamidullah, who was elected to the delegation established in 1946 for the Nizam of Hyderabad to become a member of the United Nations, did not return to his country after India invaded the Nizam of Hyderabad (1948) while he was abroad. The Indian government also banned him from entering the territory of Hyderabad, as he worked to ensure that Hyderabad was recognized as an independent state. When he was denied entry to the UK according to the extradition treaty between India and the UK, he lived there as a stateless (heimatlos) until 1996 after his asylum application to France was accepted. Hamidullah, who started to work as a researcher at the Centre National des Recherces Scientifiques in Paris in 1954 and continued his research after his retirement in 1978, went to the United States in 1996 and settled with his relatives in Jacksonville, Florida. He died on December 17, 2002, and his grave is in the Muslim Garden of Chapel Hills Memorial Gardens in Jacksonville.

Muhammad Hamidullah was known for his humility, kindness, piety, not valuing worldly blessings and money, and he never married. He did not receive royalties from his works. He accepted the highest degree of the Order of Hilal al-Imtiyâz, which the State of Pakistan deemed worthy of him, for his work on the life of the Prophet, but he donated his prize money to the Institute of Islamic Studies in Islamabad; nor did King Faisal receive the prize money. He was awarded a certificate of appreciation and appreciation by the Ministry of National Education of the Republic of Turkey for his publications that helped the development of Turkish written literature, and the “Gift of Honor for Service to Turkish National Culture” by a cultural foundation in Istanbul. Muhammad Hamidullah was fluent in Urdu, Hindi, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. In Masjid al-Nabawi, he recited the Qur’an from beginning to end in the presence of the recitation scholar Hasan ibn Ibrahim ash-Shiir and received an ijâzetnâme.

In the early 1950s, Hamidullah, who participated in the preparatory work on the first constitution of the State of Pakistan for a while, attracted attention with his paper on the sources of Islamic law he presented at the XXII International Congress of Counsellors held in Istanbul in 1951. For twenty-three years from 1952, he taught as a visiting professor at Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters, Institute of Islamic Studies. Fuat Sezgin and Salih Tuğ are among those who assisted him during his time at this institute. During the same period, he taught Islamic history, history of Islamic institutions, comparative history of religions and Islamic law at Ankara University Faculty of Theology and Erzurum Atatürk University Faculty of Islamic Sciences. He also gave many conferences in Istanbul, Izmir, Konya and Kayseri. Hayreddin Karaman, Bekir Topaloğlu, Suat Yıldırım, Yusuf Ziya Kavakçı and İhsan Süreyya Sırma are among those who followed his lectures and conferences and later did academic studies in the field of Islamic sciences. During his tenure at the Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques in Paris, Hamidullah also gave lectures on Fridays at the Paris Mosque, where he contributed to the establishment of an Islamic cultural center and published the magazine France-Islam for a long time. He participated in the activities of the Amicales des Musulmans en Europe and gave weekly talks at l’Association des Etudiants Islamiques en France. During his time in Paris, he was instrumental in the acceptance of Islam by many people, including intellectuals. In addition, in the 1950s, he supported the establishment and publications of a research and publication institution called the Centre Islamique de Génève in Geneva for the purpose of preaching Islam in Europe. He helped Turkish students who were doing academic studies in Paris. Hamidullah, who made investigations and researches outside his field of expertise by approaching Islamic sciences from a holistic perspective and tried to base them on primary sources, not only conveyed historical information, especially in his studies on Islamic history, but also sometimes went to the places where the events took place and added his own comments and evaluations after making investigations. In doing so, he generally avoided accepting any unproven issue with a rational attitude, and tried to investigate the real causes of the events and show their consequences instead of revealing only historical information in his works. Hamidullah’s rational statements on some issues, especially miracles, have been criticized from time to time. According to him, the effect of miracle in terms of belief is not certain, since some people believe because of the miracle and some people believe without being under such an influence. What is also important in the case of Mi’raj is exaltation towards Allah; where and how it happened is of little importance (Prophet of Islam, I, 133).

Muhammad Hamidullah is of the opinion that there is a close relationship between hadith and historical sciences in terms of using methods based on narration. As a result of people’s desire to receive historical documents first-hand, the texts of most of the documents have survived to the present day thanks to these two sciences. Rather than determining whether the narrations about the hadiths are reliable or not, it is important to reach more precise information about the Prophet and his period based on the narrations. His Ḥamām b. With the publication of Munebbih’s sahîf, it has been proven that the transmission of narrations is not the only method used to reach the data of the early periods. Thus, contrary to the claim put forward by Ignaz Goldziher that the narrations were fabricated and transmitted later according to the needs of the society, it was understood that there was a hadith transmission method that was supported by the written narration.

Works. a) Copyrighted Works. 1. Quran in Every Language (Hyderabad-Deccan 1936, 1939). It is a bibliographic list of all translations of the Qur’an and contains translations of Surah al-Fatiha in various languages.

2. Majmūʿatū’l-was̱āʾiḳı’s-siyāsiyya li’l-ʿahdi’n-nabawī wa’l-ḫilāfati’r-rāshida (Cairo 1941, 1956; Beirut 1965, 1983, 1985, 1987). It is the publication of the administrative-political documents that make up the material of his doctorate. The author has improved his work by adding the documents he finds in each new edition of the work. The chapter of the book on the period of the Prophet was translated into Turkish by Vecdi Akyüz (Political-Administrative Documents of the Prophet’s Period, Istanbul 1997).

3. The Muslim Conduct of State (Hyderabad-Deccan 1942; Lahore 1945, 1953, 1962, 1979). It is about Islamic international law and was first published in the journal Islamic Culture in 1941-1942. The work also includes Hamidullah’s doctoral thesis at the University of Bonn. His book, also published as Islamic World Inter-State Relations (New Delhi, 2001), is the book by Kemal Kuşçu (Istanbul, 1963; Ankara 1979) and Hamdi Aktaş (Istanbul 1998) translated it into Turkish under the name of State Administration in Islam.

4. The Battlefields of the Prophet Muhammad (Woking 1953; Hyderabad-Deccan 1972). The work, which was first published in The Islamic Review magazine (London) in 1952 and 1953, was translated into Turkish under the name of The Prophet’s Wars and Battlefields (trc. Salih Tuğ, Istanbul 1962, 1972, 1981, 1991), translated into Persian as Resûl-i Ekrem der Meydân-ı Ceng (trc. Seyyed Ghulam Riza, Tehran 1956, 1970).

5. Le Saint Coran (Paris 1959, 1989). It is the first French translation of the Holy Quran by a Muslim scholar and is also the most widely read translation of the Qur’an in a Western language. At the beginning, there is an introduction with information about the history of the Qur’an and a list of translations of the Qur’an in Western languages. In the article, which is a kind of exegesid translation, explanations are mostly in the form of notes. Translated into Turkish by Abdülaziz Hatip and Mahmut Kanık under the name Aziz Qur’an (Istanbul 2000), only the introductory part was previously translated (Qur’an-ı Kerîm Tarihi: Bir Essay, trc. Mehmet Sait Mutlu, Istanbul 1965; Ankara 1991 [with Macit Yaşaroğlu’s Bibliography of Turkish Translations and Tafsirs of the Qur’an]; History of the Holy Qur’an: Features, Its Translations, Translations into Turkish and Western Languages, trc. Salih Tuğ, Istanbul 1993).

6. Le prophète de l’Islam: Sa vie et son oeuvre (I-II, Paris 1959, 1978, 1979; The Prophet of Islam, trc. M. Sait Mutlu – Salih Tug, Istanbul 1969, 1972; trc. Salih Tuğ, I-II, Istanbul 1980, 1990, 2003; trc. Mehmet Yazgan, Istanbul 2004). The author continued to work on this work, in which he examined the life of the Prophet based on first-hand data and sources, and added various information to the new editions. In the book, which has been translated into various languages, the subjects are explained in a systematic order, unlike the poetry books.

7. Introduction to Islam (Hyderabad-Deccan 1957, Initiation à l’Islam, Paris 1963). Hamidullah states that he wrote this work in order to respond to the need for reliable information about Islam. The book, which has been translated into more than twenty languages and has been instrumental in the adoption of Islam by many people, was translated into Turkish by Kemal Kuşçu (Istanbul 1961, 1965, 1973) and Cemal Aydın (Ankara 1996) under the title Introduction to Islam.

8. Muhammad Rasulullah (Hyderabad-Decjan 1974). The book, which deals briefly with the life of the Prophet, was translated into Turkish by Salih Tuğ (Rasulullah Muhammed, Istanbul 1973, 1992) and Ülkü Zeynep Babacan (Allah’s Messenger Hz. Muhammad, Istanbul 2001).

9. al-Bokhari, les tradition islamiques (tome-5). Introduction et notes correctives de la traduction française de Octave Houdas et William Marçais (Paris 1401/1981). It was written to show the errors in the French translation of Bukhari’s al-Jamiʿu’ṣ-ṣaḥîḥ by two orientalists.

10. The Emergence of Islam. It consists of twelve lectures given by Hamidullah at the Islamic University in Baháwalpur, Pakistan, within the framework of the celebrations of the 1400th anniversary of the Hijra. These texts were first published in Urdu (1981, 1985) under the title Ḫuṭabât-i Behâvelpûr, and after some changes in English (trc. Afzal Iqbal, Islamabad 1993). He translated the work into Turkish under the name of Murat Çiftkaya’s Birth of Islam (Istanbul, 1997).

11. Six originaux des lettres diplomatiques du prophète de l’Islam (Paris 1985, Six Original Diplomatic Letters of the Prophet Muhammad, trc. Mehmet Yazgan, Istanbul 1998).

12. Le grand livre de la conduite de l’état (I-IV, Ankara 1989-1991). It is a translation of Muhammad ash-Shaybani’s book as-Siyeru’l-kebîr into French with the commentary made by Serahsî. The translation, which was prepared on behalf of UNESCO but could not be published by this institution, was published by the Turkiye Diyanet Foundation. Hamidullah’s Urdu translation of the original and supplementary volumes of Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur on behalf of the University of Osmaniyah has not been published.

Muhammad Hamidullah’s many works in booklet style include: Daily Life of a Muslim (Islamabad, 1989); Economic System of Islam (Islamabad, 1989); The Muslim Women (Islamabad, 1989); Spiritual Life in Islam (Islamabad, 1989); Status of Non-Muslim in Islam (Islamabad, 1989). Notes of some of the courses he taught at the Faculty of Islamic Sciences at Erzurum Atatürk University Introduction to Islamic History (trc. Ruhi Özcan, Istanbul, ts.) and Introduction to Islamic Institutions (trc. İhsan Süreyya Sırma, Istanbul 1992), translations of various lectures he gave at the same faculty were also published by Visiting Prof.Dr. Conferences by M. Hamidullah (trc. Zahit Aksu, no place and date of publication) is printed.

B) Nashirs. Abu’l-Husayn al-Basrī, al-Muʿtāmād fī uṣūli’l-fīḳh (I-II, 1384-1385/1964-1965 [with a lengthy introduction written in French]); Ibn Ishaq, as-Sīrah (Sīrat Ibn Isḥāḳ al-muḥāmmā bi-Kitābi’l-Mubtadaʾ wa’l-mabʿas̱ wa’l-maġāzī, Rabat 1976); Rashid b. Zubayr, eẕ-Ẕeḫāʾir wa’t-tuḥaf (Kuwait 1959); Shaykh Nu’man b. Muhammad b. Irāq, Kitāb Maʿdānī’l-jawāhir fī tārīḫi’l-Baṣra wa’l-Jazāʾir (Islāmābād 1393/1973); Radhi al-Din Ahmad b. Isma’il al-Qazvīnī, Kitāb al-Sard wa’l-fard fī ṣaḥāʾifi’l-aḫbār (Islāmābād 1411); Ibn Qutaybah, Kitāb al-Anwāʾ fī mawāsimī al-ʿArab (with Charles Pellat, Ḥidārābād 1375/1956; Baghdad 1988); Waqidī, Kitāb al-Ridda wa nabẕe min fütûḥi’l-ʿIrāḳ (Paris 1989). Hamidullah also recited part of Abu Hanifa ad-Dînawari’s encyclopedic work Kitâb al-Nabât (Cairo 1973; Karachi 1993), the chapter of Balazuri’s Ansab al-Ashrafi on the life of the Prophet (Cairo 1959), Muhammad b. He cites Habīb al-Baghdādī’s treatise Kitāb mā jāʾe ismāni eḥadühümā ashharu min ṣāḥibihī fe-summayā bihī, a juz of his al-Ems̱āl (MMĪR., IV/1 [1375/1956], pp. 35-45), and Hammām b. He read Munabbih’s eṣ-Ṣaḥîfatu’ṣ-ṣaḥîḥa (MMIADm., XXVIII [1953], pp. 96-111; Dimaşk, 1954; Hyderabad-Deccan 1955, 1956 [with Urdu translation], 1961, 1967; Paris 1979). At the beginning of eṣ-Ṣaḥîfatu’ṣ-ṣaḥîḥa, there is an extensive introduction to the recitation of hadiths. The work was translated into Turkish by Kemal Kuşçu (Muhtasar Hadith History and Sahifa-i Hemmam Ibn Münebbih, Istanbul 1967), Talat Koçyiğit (Hemmâm Ibn Münebbih’in Sahîfesi, Ankara 1967) and M. Ragıp İmamoğlu (Hadith Mecmuası of Hemmam b. Münebbih, Ankara 1966-1967).

Some of Hamidullah’s numerous articles published in various journals are: “The Kitâb-i Mukaddes from the Perspective of the Sources of Islamic Law” (trc. İbrahim Canan, İİFD, p. 3 [1979], pp. 379-410; p. 4 [1980], pp. 313-326); “Isrâiliyat in Islamic Sciences or Narrations of Islamic Origin” (İİFD, p. 2 [1977], pp. 295-319); “The Notion of Private Law of States in Islam” (Annales de la faculté de droit d’Istanbul, XII/18 [1962], pp. 320-339); “Hajj in Islam” (trc. M. Âkif Aydın, İTED, VIII/1-4, [1980], pp. 123-162); “The Hijri Calendar and Its Historical Background” (trc. Qasim Shulul, Journal of the Faculty of Theology of UU, IX/9 [2000], pp. 671-685); “The Pre-Islamic Travels of the Prophet” (trc. Abdullah Aydınlı, EAÜİFD, sy. 4 [1980], pp. 327-342); “The Question of the Sources of Personal Guarantees in Islam” (trc. Ahmet Özel, Diyanet Dergisi, Hicret special issue [1981], pp. 217-231); “Une ambassade du calife Abū Bakr auprès de l’empereur Heraclius et le livre byzantin de la prédiction des destinées” (FÖ, II/1-2 [1961], pp. 29-42); “A Letter of the Prophet in the Musnad Script Addressed to the Yemenite Chieftains” (HI, V/3 [1982], pp. 3-20); “The History of Uṣûl al-fiqh” (trc. Fuat Sezgin, İTED, II/1 [1957], pp. 1-18); “Constitutional Problems on Early Islam” (ITED, V/1-4 [1973], pp. 15-36; for a selected bibliography of his work from 1924 to 1980, see also The Prophet of Islam, II, 1159-1169).

Muhammad Hamidullah’s articles on Islamic law and Islamic history were compiled and Islam’s Contributions to the Science of Law (eds. Salih Tuğ, Istanbul 1962), Studies in Islamic Law (Istanbul 1984), Islamic Constitutional Law (jun. Vecdi Akyüz, Istanbul 1995) and Articles / First Islamic State (trc. İhsan Süreyya Sırma, Istanbul 1992).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Muhammad Hamidullah, The Muslim Conduct of State, Lahore 1953, pp. VI-VII.

ibid., The Prophet of Islam (Tug), I, pp. XV-XX, 133; II, 1158-1169.

a.mlf., “Miracle, Kerâmet and Istidrâc”, Visiting Prof.Dr. Lectures by M. Hamidullah (trc. Zahit Aksu), [no place and date of publication], p. 4.

Alim Yıldız – Tahsin Koçyiğit, Faculty of Theology Journals Article and Authors Fihristi (1952-2002), Ankara 2002, p. 242-243.

Suat Yıldırım, Oryantalistlerin Yanılgıları, İstanbul 2003, s. 280-281.

a.mlf., “Muhammed Hamidullah”, Yeni Ümit, sy. 59, İzmir 2003, s. 7-12.

M. Kâmil Yaşaroğlu, “Muhammed Hamidullah”, Çağdaş İslam Düşünürleri (ed. Cağfer Karadaş), Bursa 2003, s. 87-98.

a.mlf., “Çok Yönlü Bir İslâm Alimi Portresi: Muhammed Hamidullah”, Yedi İklim, XVI/157, İstanbul 2003, s. 58-59.

İhsan Süreyya Sırma, “Paris Müslümanları Öksüz”, Yeni Dünya, IV/44, İstanbul 1997, s. 49.

a.mlf., “Üstad Muhammed Hamidullah’ın Ardından; O Klasik ve Modern Bir Âlimdi”, Bilgi ve Düşünce, I/4, İstanbul 2003, s. 108-110.

Ramazan Altınay, “Örnek Bir Çağdaş İslâm Bilimleri Araştırmacısı: Muhammed Hamidullah”, Yüzüncü Yıl Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, sy. 3, Van 2000, s. 263-298.

Mehmet Görmez, “Hamîdullah Hocamız Üzerine Mehmed Said Hatiboğlu ile Söyleşi”, İslâmiyât (Kitâbiyât, Bülten), V/4, Ankara 2002, s. 4-13.

Salih Tuğ, “Prof. Dr. Muhammed Hamidullah 1908-2002 (1326-1423 h.)”, Marife, II/3, Konya 2002, s. 9-12.

a.mlf., “Prof. Dr. Muhammed Hamidullah”, Yedi İklim, XVI/157 (2003), s. 5-8.

Yusuf Ziya Kavakçı, “Muhammed Hamidullah: Zamanımızın Dünya Çapındaki Dev İslâm Âlimi”, a.e., XVI/157 (2003), s. 21-28.

Hasan Mekkî – Muhammed Zâkir, “Mevâḳıf min ḥayâti’ş-şeyḫ Muḥammed Ḥamîdillah”, er-Râbıṭa, sy. 460, Mekke 1424/2003, s. 87-89.

Hasan Azûzî, “eş-Şeyḫ Muḥammed Ḥamîdullah el-Ḥaydarâbâdî: Ḥayâtühû, cihâdühû fî ġarbi Ûrûbbâ”, a.e., sy. 460 (1424/2003), s. 90-91.

İsmail Yakıt, “Tanıdığım Çağdaş Bir İslam Düşünürü ve Türk Dostu: Prof. Dr. Muhammed Hamidullah”, TY, XXIII/192 (2003), s. 44-48.

Casim Avcı, “Prof. Dr. Muhammed Hamîdullah (1908-2002)”, Hadis Tetkikleri Dergisi, I/1, İstanbul 2003, s. 223-226.

İsmail Kara, “Gurûb Etti Güneş, Dünya Karardı …”, Dergâh, XIII/156, İstanbul 2003, s. 1, 14-18.

A. R. Momin, “Professor Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah (1908-2002)”, IC, LXXVII/4 (2003), s. 83-90.

Hurşîd Ahmed, “Daktır Muḥammed Ḥamîdullah”, Khuda Bakhsh Library Journal, sy. 132, Patna 2003, s. 13-19.

Fikr u Naẓar (Daktır Muhammed Hamîdullah Husûsî İşâat), XL-XLI/1-4, İslâmâbâd 2003.

Maʿârif-i İslâmî (İşâat-i Hâs be Yâd-ı Daktır Muhammed Hamîdullah), II/2-III/1, İslâmâbâd 2003-2004.

Adem Apak, “Muhammed Hamidullah’ın Siyer İlmine Katkıları”, UÜ İlâhiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, XIII/1, Bursa 2004, s. 53-72.

Abdülhamit Birışık, “Hint Altkıtasında İslâm Araştırmalarının Dünü Bugünü: Kurumlar, İlmî Faaliyetler, Şahıslar, Eserler”, Dîvân: İlmî Araştırmalar, sy. 17, İstanbul 2004, s. 20.