Intizar Husain

IN the latest issue of Me’yar, the research journal of the Urdu department of the Inter­national Islamic Uni­versity, Islamabad, a few precious and recently unearthed letters written by two internationally recognised Islamist scholars and addressed to Mohammad Hasan Askari have been published.

The editor of the journal, Dr Aziz Ibnul Hasan, is pleased to inform us that Askari’s brother, Mohammad Hasan Musanna, was kind enough to send him these letters, which were recently discovered when he was rummaging through his late brother’s papers.

The letters written by the great scholar Dr Muhammad Hamidullah, who had chosen to settle in France after migrating from Hyderabad, Deccan, were in Urdu, while those by Michel Valsan were in French. They were reproduced in their original text, along with Urdu translations by Dr Qaisar Shehzad.

As the esteemed editor has explained, these letters deal with questions related to Islam, which is indicative of Askari’s deep involvement in Islamic studies. This is one of the major significance of these letters. Other letters have been written by Askari to his Urdu contemporaries and friends, such as Dr Ibadat Barelvi, Dr Aftab Ahmad Khan and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, and they deal with questions related to literature. But in his later years he seemed to have outgrown his long-lived literary period. He was now steeped deep in Islamic studies and appeared preoccupied with questions arising out of this study.

During these years he was very much under the influence of French scholar Rene Guenon who, after his study of Vedanta and Islam, had chosen to convert to Islam. Valsan belonged to the Guenonian school of thought. It was because of this fact that Askari found it easy to develop personal relations with him. This led to a long correspondence between the two and they availed this opportunity to discuss questions related to Islam.

In addition, this friendship served another purpose. Valsan played a part in bringing Askari and Dr Hamidullah close. Dr Hamidullah was all praise for Askari. He tells us that in his last days Askari was engaged in tracing the influence Sufi music, particularly the qawwali, exerted on Indian music.

Along with these introductory notes, which provide us valuable information about Askari’s scholarly engagements, the letters addressed to him have been reproduced.

Out of these letters, three are Dr Hamidullah’s. He is all praise for Askari’s vast knowledge about the commentaries and translations of the Quran and informs him about one of the oldest Urdu translators, Mohammad Baqir Fazlullah Khairabadi. In another letter he is read talking about the French translation of Sahih Bukhari.

As for the letters written by Valsan to Askari, they have been reproduced in their Urdu translations along with the French text. In them, Valsan seems very happy at the suggestion that his articles should be published in their Urdu translations. He in particular talks about his article bearing the title ‘Androgyne’.

He agrees with Askari that this article, after being translated in Urdu, should be published in the form of a booklet under the title ‘Narmadgi’. He adds that the original Greek word should also be written in Greek alphabets. And it should be explained that it means a person who carries within him the male and the female in a perfectly balanced way. Hazrat Adam was such a person before Eve was created.

Michel Valsan was a Muslim scholar and master of the Shadhiliyya tariqah in Paris under the name Shaykh Mustafa ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. As well, he was a Romanian diplomat and a prolific translator who specialized in translating and interpreting the works of the Sufi theoretician Ibn Arabi

In one letter Valsan talks about his illness and the medicines he took for it. Here he explains that he very much believes in istakhara and that it was after doing istakhara that he took the prescribed medicines for his illness and readily got better.

In one letter he requests Askari to supply a copy of each of his articles to him, which he intended to reproduce in his own journal after translating them in French.

Such are the contents of these letters. They tell us much about Askari’s intellectual involvements during those years.