On ʿumrah recently I was approached by an Iraqi student from Samarra. As it would turn out, he is a descendant of ʿAlī al-Hādī, the 10th imām. Not only that, the descendants of Imām ʿAlī al-Hādī are today seven entire tribes, all of whom continue to live in the vicinity of Samarra where he and his son, al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, lie buried. And all seven tribes are Sunnī. They have for hundreds of years been the custodians of the tombs of al-Hādī and al-ʿAskarī… till the recent Shīʿī takeover of Iraq.
I learnt quite a few things from the Iraqi student. He originally approached me in al-Masjid al-Nabawī for ijāzah in ḥadīth. After I left for Makkah, he undertook an ʿumrah to Makkah to spend more time with me, and take further ijāzāt before the Kaʿbah.
From him I learnt about the Madrasah ʿIlmiyyah of Samarra and its founder, Shaykh Muḥammad Saʿīd al-Naqshabandī and his successor Shaykh Aḥmad al-Rāwī.
In 1864, Mirza Muḥammad Ḥasan Shīrāzī succeeded his mentor Shaykh Murtaḍā Anṣārī as chief mujtahid of the Usūlī Ithnāʾ ʿAsharīs. Ten years later, he moved his headquarters from Iran to Samarra, which (like Karbala) was up to then a primarily Sunnī settlement. This was the period in which Shīʿism was about to launch its conversion campaign in Iraq. Most of Iraq was still Sunnī at the time, and the shadow of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd still hung protectively over the land.
However, the Shīʿah had plans…
It took twenty years for the ʿulamāʾ of Iraq to stir in response. Samarra in particular was under threat due to the presence of Mirza Shīrāzī, who had established a school of Jaʿfarī fiqh there. Incidentally, this was the first ever Shīʿī seminary in Samarra. The significance of the resting place of the last two imāms being without a Shīʿī presence of note for over a thousand years, cannot be lost.
What was happening in Samarra was noticed by Shaykh Muḥammad Saʿīd al-Naqshabandī, a leading ʿālim of Baghdad. Through the good offices of the Ottoman governor of Baghdad, Tawfīq Pasha, he arranged to travel to Istanbul where he met Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and set the problem in Samarra before him. The Sultan ordered the construction of a madrasah in Samarra, the expenses for which would be borne by his government.
I’m sure you will see the parallel with Deoband as a means of preserving dīn. The madrasah was built and opened its doors for boarding students in 1896. Exactly thirty years after Deoband.
Shaykh Muḥammad Saʿīd’s wisdom stretched further than this. He made a point of enrolling the children of the leading citizens of Samarra. Especially the Ashrāf families, descendant of Imām ʿAlī al-Hādī. One of his most brilliant pupils, ʿAllamah Aḥmad al-Rāwī, would afterwards be appointed head of the Madrasah ʿIlmiyyah, producing an excellent generation of scholars in Iraq. But more importantly, preserving, THROUGH ʿILM, the ʿaqīdah of the Ahl al-Sunnah in Iraq.
And this is where it dovetails so neatly with our own philosophy and that of the founders of Deoband. Knowledge will be the light that keeps deviation at bay. When all else has failed, the preservation of dīn means, first and foremost, the preservation of ʿILM.
*This brief message was written in November of 2015.
Note: The text of the author has been slightly adapted for clarity, including adjustments in transliteration, spelling, and formatting.
