My second Years in
Al-Jami’a (September 1963 – June 1964)
We had a routine of four lessons every day, each around 45
minutes, followed by a 15 minute break. As soon as we finished our last lesson,
some of us would try to go to the Mosque of the Prophet (SAW) if the transport
was available, but most of us would prefer to delay it till after ‘Asr prayer.
This is how we could have our lunch at the room (there was no mess at that
time), enjoy a short siesta and be ready for ‘Asr and departure to Madina where
we would be staying until ‘Isha prayer.
The time we used to pass in the Mosque, benefitted us a lot;
memorising the Qur’an, revising our lessons, attending some circles of
knowledge or having Muzakara (two persons reading to each other) with a friend.
Sometimes, we would have a stroll in the adjoining ‘Uyaina Street, visiting
Maktaba Ilmiya of Sheikh Namnakani, or Maktaba Salafiya of Sheikh Abdul-Muhsin
(at Bab-e-Majeedi). Or we would enjoy a Halabiya (a sweet dish) or hot tea in
one of the cafes around the Mosque.
During the seasons of Ramadan and Hajj, you may come across
a number of dignitaries whom you would love to visit at their residence or in
the Mosque itself. Those whom I remember meeting, include Sheikh Abul hasan
Al-Nadawi at the garden of Noorwali (if I correctly remember this name), Sheikh
Muhammad Zakariyya of Jama’t al-Tabligh and Sheikh Mustafa Al-Siba’I, the editor
of Hazarat-ul-Islam, Damascus. Furthermore, I met Sheikh Abdullah of occupied
Kashmir, Sheikh Abdul Basit Abdul Samad while reciting the Qur’an in the
Mosque, Maulvi Farid Ahmad from Dhaka (the then capital of East Pakistan),
Sheikh Hamidullah of Paris who gave a series of lectures at Al-Jami’aand Mr Gul
Muhammad, a judge of High Court, Lahore and many others whom I may remember
later.
New batch of students
This year, four new students from Pakistan joined us: Ihsan
Ilahi Zaheer, Hafiz Sanaullah, Abdul Salam Kiyani and Abdul Khaliq Tariq. They
all excelled in their teaching or Da’wa profession after their graduation.
Ihsan Ilahi Zaheer had been well-known in Pakistan and
international forums until his death, (1988) because of injuries sustained in a
bomb blast under the stage from where he was delivering a speech.
Hafiz Sanaullah added to his name “Madani” after returning
to Pakistan. He is the most famous and learned person in Hadith throughout the
country.
Both Abdul Salam Kiyani and Abdul Khaliq Tariq served in Uganda after
graduation. The former in teaching and Da’wa, and the latter in establishing a
renowned seminary of Islamic Knowledge in Kampala.
Among the Arab students, I remember Ahmad Muha’iry from
Syria, a young and promising student who developed a strong bond of friendship
with Ihsan.
Among the Indian students were Muhammad Luqman Salafi and
Abdul Hameed Rahmani. Both of them excelled in their work; Salafi remaining in
Saudi Arabia and pursuing a high esteemed position in the office of Sheikh Abdul
Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz, authoring a variety of books in Tafsir and Ahadith
and establishing a paramount seat of education by the name “Jamia’ Ibn Taimiya”
in his home town at Bihar, India. On the other hand, Rahmani moved to India
after graduation and was known for his scholarly speeches, enriched articles in
his monthly magazine ‘Al-Tan’iya’ and his wise leadership of Jammat
Ahl-e-Hadith of India.
A Heart-breaking
incident
Among the new students was a young man from Singapore, a
bright and good looking person, with smiles on his face and warmth whenever you
met him. The other one was a hardworking intelligent youth from Indonesia. They
formed a good company. After staying in the hostel for a while they decided to
move to the city. They hired a two room flat in a newly-built seven storey
building at Manakha, the famous taxi and bus stand of Madinah. We used to pass
by that building on our way to the hostel after visiting the Mosque in the
evening each day. One morning we heard the dreadful news of the sudden collapse
of this building during the night; when we rushed to the scene, workers were
still busy in removing the rubble and helping those still alive to come out. I
do not remember how many dwellers lost their lives but as for our friends; one
could not escape death, the other survived.
It is said that the Singaporean brother, just after hearing
the cracking and thundering sound of the upper floor falling above him, fled to
the staircase to follow the escape route but he could not make it. Inna
lillahi wa inna ilaihe Raj’ioon’. The Indonesian brother was lying on a
thick mattress on the floor, surrounded on both sides with high piles of books.
The concrete fell on his body and pressed hard on his legs, but his face was
saved because of the books around him. Once dragged out alive, he had to stay a
very long time in hospital to get his injured legs treated, massaged and
brought back to life once again. It came to my knowledge, that he later went to
Pakistan and finished his studies in Darul Uloom of Maulana Muhammad Yusuf
Binnori in Karachi. This is the same institute which is now led by my colleague
Dr Abdul Razzaq Iskandar.
Before or after the Hajj 1964, I remember visiting the
Rabita’s headquarter on the main road leading to Shisha, Aziziya and Mina. It
was an old building with verandas and arches. Sheikh Asim Al-Haddad, the Arabic
teacher in my early school days, had moved from Lahore to join a relatively
ambitious post at Rabitah in Makkah. I was pleased to see him in his office. In
the following years, his place of sitting, after entering into the Grand Mosque
through the Abdulaziz Gate, in front of the Ka’aba, became an assembly point
for the adherent of Jamat Islami. Similarly, the sitting place of one of our
Pakistani colleagues, Sheikh Fathi (Fatah Mohammad) Nabina i.e ‘the blind’
became the meeting point, many years later for the Salafi students and scholars.
I also remember
receiving a free copy of a translation and commentary on the Qur’an by Abdullah
Yusuf Ali in two volumes, from either the Ministry of Hajj or the Presidency of
the two sacred mosques, which used to have an office building in one of the narrow
allies outside the King Abdul Aziz Gate. The organisations used to distribute a
number of books including translations of the Qur’an. The old person, who was
assigned this task did not know English but he asked me to read a few lines
from the translation to find out whether I deserved to receive that copy or
not.
Soon the annual vacation was due and once again we, the
group of the Pakistani students, were knocking at different offices to secure
our tickets on the big Pakistani vessel for a voyage back to Karachi in the
summer of 1964. Shopping precedes each travel let alone if it was of a special
nature for me. My wedding along with my elder brother Shuaib, had been arranged
by my parents and I was very anxious to fill my suitcase with a lot of ladies’
clothes and presents.
The ship was crowded with pilgrims who had just finished
their Hajj and were eager to go back to their homes. We students were pleased
to stay on the deck with our luggage cornered in an outer corridor, facing the
open sea. As described earlier, the voyage had to take seven days to reach our
destination. We had to spend our time roaming around the five or seven decks of
this huge vessel, meeting new and old faces, conversing to friends and
foreigners, looking at the calm surface of the Red sea, then to the roaring,
stormy waves of the Indian Ocean once we crossed Bab al Mandib after Aden. At
night we had to spread our sleeping bags on the open deck to enjoy our sleep,
with the sea breeze soothing and comforting us and the ship’s diving and
rumbling sound occasionally interrupting it. I remember one time, at some point
after midnight, the meagre sound of an object presumably falling into the sea.
After the Fajr prayer, I headed towards the corridor to have a check on our
luggage.
Unfortunately, my suitcase went missing. Being a new, shiny
suit case, it must have attracted the eyes of a thief, disguised as a pilgrim,
who must have emptied the contents of that case into his own bag and thrown the
suitcase into the sea to conceal his theft. My efforts, along with my friends,
to report this theft to the ship’s captain, and subsequent search for the
missing case in a multitude of five thousand pilgrims ended up in vain. The
only consolation I had was repeating the Qur’an verse: “Inna lillahi wa inna
ilaihe raj’ioon”. On the ship was a much respected figure from our family,
Sheikh Abdul Wakil, one of my father’s cousin’s uncle, a great Imam and orator,
to the extent that he acquired the title of “Khateeb” (speaker) with his name.
That was the only time I had a close audience with him in my entire life.
I was received by my
brothers at Karachi sea-port with great warmth and happiness. This time the
family had moved to a house in Aziz Abad; a double storey building with enough
space for a large family where six of my siblings were still there, some in
infancy, some in school and some elder ones in University or engaged in a job.
24th September 1964, was that historical day when
I moved from ‘single’ to a ‘couple. Myself and my elder brother, both married
in the same family; the house of a great teacher of Hadith, Sheikh Muhammad
Yunus Dehlavi. My brother was wed to his daughter, Razia Khatoon and myself to
his granddaughter Shakeela Khatoon d/o Muhammad Zubair Qureshi. It was a simple
ceremony of Nikah at Masjid Al-Falah, the mosque situated in front of the
Sheikh’s house in the P.E. C. H. S (Pakistan Employees Corporative Housing
Society), very near to the great mausoleum of Qaid Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
the founder of Pakistan. The next afternoon, the Waleema had been arranged in
some hired tents, according to a popular practice in Pakistan where people
occupy a street or an open ground to celebrate such an event. A surprise was
waiting for us, Sheikh Abdul Qadir Shaibat-ul-Hamd, my teacher of Hadith in
Madinah, arrived that day and was brought straightaway to our dwelling to meet
my father Abdul-Ghaffar Hasan.
He came on a specific mission: to recruit two most capable
teachers of Hadith to benefit the students at the University at Madinah. My
father’s name must have been mentioned by the top leadership of Ahl-e-Hadith
like Maulana Mohammad Ismail of Gujranwala and Maulana Syyed Muhammad Dawud
Ghaznawi of Lahore. For my father, it was a great privilege and honour, a
fulfilment of his passionate desire and a pleasant dream to come true. But he
had to ask permission from the head of Madrassah Rahmania, Soldier Bazar,
Karachi where he had a contract to teach. Sheikh Abdul Wahhab, the son of his
benefactor Sheikh Ata-ul-Rahman of Delhi Madrasa Rahmania did not hesitate a
moment when he welcomed this offer saying: “Though we would never like to lose
you but we will never stop you from
joining a seat of knowledge at one of the most celebrated places of Islam?”
The other most gifted and most privileged personality picked
by Sheikh Abdul Qadir was Maulana Mohammad Gondalwi, one of the most
knowledgeable teachers of Hadith in the sub-continent. By that time, I had
already planned my return journey to Saudi Arabia by booking two tickets, for
myself and my bride, through the B. I.S.C (British Indian Steamship Company) in
the same route through Bahrain as I did last year.
My father was allowed to accompany his family by air to
Madinah in accordance to the contract of his new employment. We were the only
two persons to accompany him at that time. It was a great relief for me to
cancel the ship booking and join my father en-route to Jeddah on our maiden
flight. On 31st October 1964, the three of us left for Jeddah by a
Saudi aircraft. The flight touched down at Zahran and then Riyadh, the capital
where we had to stay the night in a hotel due to a technical fault with the
aircraft. Next morning we continued our flight to Jeddah where Syyed Manzoor
Husain, the husband of my father’s real aunt, Amat-ul-Raqeeb, had passed away.
She had died just a few days ago, so it was a mournful
meeting between the two of them. After a visit to Makkah and performing Umrah
once again, we flew to Madinah. We were hosted once again in Hotel Bahauddin
and three days later we were able to rent a flat at the edge of Manakha (the
market near to the taxi stand). There were no more stays in Jami’a’s boarding
as I had a family residence in Madinah. I am going to speak about my last two
years in Jami’a in the next section. As a married person, I have now entered
the married couples circle.
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