Maulana Syed Aqa Hasan Naqvi Nasirabadi

Maulana Syed Aqa Hasan Naqvi (Nasirabadi) (مولانا سيد اقا حسن نقوى) was a mujtahid from Darul Ijtehad Nasirabad later shifted to Lucknow, India who preached Twelver Shi'a Islam and came from a family of scholars known as "Khandaan-e-Ijtehad". He married into Khandaan-e-Ijtehad, his wife was the daughter of Syed Mohammad, who was the oldest son of Syed Dildar Ali Nasirabadi, also known as Ghufran Ma'ab.
At one time, he was the Imam-e-Juma of the Asafi Masjid in Lucknow, India. The same position was held by his descedents (in chronological order): Maulana Syed Kalbe Hussain, Maulana Syed Kalbe Abid and currently Maulana Syed Kalbe Jawad.
Notable contemporaries of Maulana Syed Aqa Hasan were scholars like Maulana Syed Mohammad Baqir "Baqir-ul-Uloom", Maulana Syed Nasir Hussain "Nasir-ul-Millat" and Maulana Syed Najmul Hasan "Najmul Millat".

Kalbe Hussain Naqvi Nasirabadi

Kalbe Hussain Naqvi (Nasirabadi) - A mujtahid from Nasirabad later shifted to Lucknow, India who preached Shia Islam and came from a family of scholars, notably Syed Dildar Ali Alias Ghufran Ma'ab.
He was a big cleric and chief of the Shia scholars on the Indian subcontinent.
His family includes (late) Maulana Syed Kalbe Abid (also mujtahid) and Maulana Syed Kalbe Sadiq. His grandson, Syed Kalbe Jawad (son of Syed Kalbe Abid) is also a scholar and the chief of the Shia population in Lucknow, India.

Maulana Syed Kalbe Abid Naqvi (Nasirabadi)

Maulana Syed Kalbe Abid Naqvi (Nasirabadi) (مولانا سيد كلب عابد نقوى) was a mujtahid from Qasba Nasirabad later migrated to Lucknow, India who preached Shia Islam and came from a family of scholars known as "Khandaan-e-Ijtehad", notably Syed Dildar Ali Nasirabadi, also known as Ghufran Ma'ab. His father was Syed Kalbe Hussain and grandfather Syed Aqa Hasan. His son, Syed Kalbe Jawad is also a scholar and the chief of the Shia population in Lucknow, India. He died in 1986 after being involved in a car crash while going to Allahbad from Nasirabad on his way to read a majlis. His final 10 set of majlises which he read in Imambara Ghufran Ma'ab in 1986 has been entitled "Majlis-e-Azeem".[1]

Maulana Dr Syed Mohammad Waris Hasan Naqvi (Nasirabadi)(died May 11, 2008) was a Shia cleric from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Waris Hasan was the son of the renowned cleric Syed Sibte Hasan Naqvi & grand son of Moulana Dildar Ali Naqvi Nasirabadi Alias Ghura'an Maab Sahab.
He held a doctorate from Edinburgh University, Scotland. He was popularly known amongst English academics as an outstanding scholar in English and Arabic. Ex principal at Shia College Lucknow he made important strides for the shia community throughout his lifetime.
He held position of Principals of institutions like Shia College, Lucknow and Madrasatul Waizeen, Lucknow.
He died at his house in the early hours of Sunday 11th May 2008 after prolonged illness. Dr Kalbe Sadiq cousin of Waris Hasan read the majlis at Imambara Ghufran Ma'ab in Lucknow, it is there where Syed Waris Hassan Naqvi is buried. Dignetries who attended the mourning ceremony include Syed Sibtey Razi.
He leaves three sons, two daughters and three grandchildren.

Maulana Sibte Hassan Naqvi (Nasirabadi)
Maulana Syed Sibte Hasan Naqvi (مولانا سيد سبط حسن نقوى) was a Shia scholar from the family of Syed Dildar Ali Naqvi Naseerabadi aka Ghufran Ma'ab known as Khandaan-e-Ijtehad.
He held the title Shamsa Ulema translating as 'the Sun of scholarsï awarded by Iraqi clergy.
He was most famous for refining the style of Muharram majlis to the format used today, most notably in the Urdu language amongst the South Asian Shia community. Before his time, majaalis in Lucknow and other places contained marsiya, recited by great poets like Meer Babbar Ali Anees and Mirza Dabeer. He introduced an academic structured approach in oration, with the Qazi recital at the end of the majlis, as opposed to the Iranian style of Qazi recital of majlis throughout. It was this radical dynamism which pedaled the acceptance of Shia Islam in the region as well as being a reason for the title awarded to him, sadly the dynamism brought to the Islamic world and especially to the region was too far reaching for contemporary Qazi recitalists of the time. The new format had Khutba in Arabic, some tafseer, Fazail of Ahlul Bayt then Masaeb of Karbala.
He was poisoned with a sweet offering from a local Qazi. His burial place is in Imambara Ghufran Ma'ab.He also was a great poet,he used to compose in thre languasges the first verse in Urdu the second in Persian and the third in Arabic and all used to rhyme
He was also the teacher of Maulana Ibne Hasan Naunaharvi.
Maulana Syed Mohammad Waris Hasan Naqvi ex-principal of Madrasatul Waizeen, Lucknow was his son.
The Sibte Hasan foundation had been set up to remember the strides made by him, his two brothers Kamal Hussain and Zafar Mehndi (first translator of nahjul-balagah into urdu), and his son Waris Hassan for the shia community in India and the region.

Syed Dildar Ali Ghufranmaab (Nasirabadi)

Syed Dildar Ali Ghufranmaab (Nasirabadi)

Ayatollah Ul Uzma Syed Dildar Ali Nasirabadi - also known as Ghufran Ma’ab was scholar Shia scholar of India who originated from a family of scholars from the village of Nasirabad, 32 km from their District Raebareli, in Uttar Pradesh, India. The title “Ghufran Ma’ab” was giving to him by scholars in Najaf, Iraq and means “the one who lives in heaven” due to his scholarly attributes.

The Early Career of Syed Dildar Ali Nasirabadi

The opportunities for education and patronage available to Shi‘i ulama from 1766 are demonstrated by the career of Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi (1753-1820).Born and raised in the large, Sayyid-dominated village of Nasirabad in Rai Bareli not far from Lucknow, as a youth Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi learned Arabic and studied some basic texts in Nasirabad itself. He set out for other towns in order to pursue the rational sciences with individual scholars in the Muslim small towns. Nasirabadi’s search for knowledge took him to the provincial capital of Allahabad, which had a relatively large Shi‘i population. He joined the classes of the Imami philosopher Ghulam Husayn Dakani Ilahabadi, with whom he studied most of the basic textbooks for the rational sciences. As was noted above, in 1769-72 Nasirabadi explored cosmography (hay’at ) with Tafazzul Husayn Khan, conveying questions and answers on the abstrusities of logic between his two mentors. Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali’s student days were hard ones before he found a patron, and at one point he reportedly made a deal with a Hindu shopkeeper to serve as a night watchman for his shop if he could sleep on its doorstep.

Young Nasirabadi’s peregrinations also took him north to Shahjahanpur, which served until 1774 as the capital of Hafiz Rahmat Khan’s Ruhilah domain. Until that date Shahjahanpur was an important, if small, intellectual center with the Farangi Mahall tradition strongly represented by two former heads of that institution, Mulla ‘Abdu’l-‘Ali and Mulla Hasan. Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi furthered his exploration of the rational sciences at the hands of Mulla ‘Abdu’l-‘Ali, one of the foremost contemporary minds in this field. The Shi‘i student at one point engaged in a heated debate with his distinguished tutor. Mulla Hasan Farangi-Mahalli, who had once angrily ejected Tafazzul Husayn Khan from his class, also debated Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi on matters of metaphysics.

The encounter of Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi with these former heads of Farangi Mahall in Shahjahanpur is rich in irony. Both were forced to leave Lucknow by Shi‘i communalists who enjoyed the backing of the nawab. Yet in their exile they taught and engaged in discussions with the future leader of Awadh’s Shi‘is. Admittedly, they may not hate known he was a Shi‘i. But even in the face of the most powerful Forces for communal strife and separation, education in Awadh remained strangely ecumenical.

Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi left Shahjahanpur for Nasirabad, then journeyed to nearby Faizabad, where a number of Shi‘i ulama were gathering under the patronage of Shujau’d-Dawlah and his notables. |He fell ill,| and was chided by the old nawab for studying too hard. When he recovered he followed the new court of Asafu’d-Dawlah to Lucknow, where he taught and also completed his studies.The difficulties facing a student without a wealthy patron are illustrated by an incident from Nasirabadi’s youth. Unable to afford a servant to bring food from the city market, considered an unclean place where no gentleman would be seen, students had to do their own shopping. One of Nasirabadi’s colleagues, Sayyid ‘Abdu’l-‘Ali Deoghatavi, volunteered to go to the bazaar, and was returning when he saw someone he knew coming down the road. He quickly hid himself. Then he considered that to hide a fault indicates a prideful desire to be honored by others. He caught up with his acquaintance, going out of his way to show himself and his bazaar-derived provisions.

Finally, Nasirabadi’s diligence was rewarded. His reputation for piety and ability, as well as some of his early compositions, reached the notice of Awadh’s chief minister from 1777, Hasan Riza Khan. The illiterate official, having these works read to him, was favorably impressed and began financially supporting Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi, giving him a stipend of Rs. 30 per month and including him among his companions. Still, the young scholar was overshadowed by other, more important recipients of the chief minister’s patronage, such as Sufi leaders. The Shi‘i notables in India did not at this point hold the ulama in such high esteem, preferring unlettered mystics to learned scholars.

As the Shi‘i-ruled state of Awadh began developing a more extensive local bureaucracy, and as its notables increasingly felt a need to promote their branch of Islam, the ulama became more important. The patron-client relationship expanded and changed in character. Younger scholars, such as Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi, pioneered a new phase in ulama-state relations in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Yet the need felt by the notables for a Shi‘i clerical class was frustrated by the lack of local scholars trained in specifically Shi‘i sciences. In the absence of a Shi‘i seminary in North India, one solution was to have some teachers trained in the Shi‘i intellectual centers of Iran and Iraq.

Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi took his place among an increasing flow of Awadh Shi‘i scholars to the Shi‘i shrine cities of Mamluk Iraq, who went to study Shi‘i law and help spread the religion in India upon their return. An important predecessor, Mirza Khalil, went from Lucknow to Iraq, where he studied with the young Sayyid ‘Ali Tabataba’i, the nephew and son-in-law of Usuli leader Aqa Muhammad Baqir Bihbahani. Mirza Khalil, impressed with his teacher, endeavored to convince him to journey with him to India “in order to eradicate unbelief and ignorance.” Sayyid ‘Ali, taken aback, fervently expressed his desire that God would never show him India or part him from the shrine cities. He reacted to the pious entreaty as if someone had prayed that evil might befall him. Most high ulama in Iran and Iraq showed reluctance to give up all the benefits they derived from living at the Shi‘i center in order to undertake a missionary career in an alien environment like North India.

Mirza Khalil on his return had his patron, Almas ‘Ali Khan, offer another scholarship of Rs. 2,000 for study in Iraq, to Akhbari notable scholars, but they refused it as too small. Finally Mirza Khalil went to another Akhbari, Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi, who at first begged off on the grounds that he had just married and lacked means to support his wife while traveling. The moral imperative of such a journey, however, outweighed these considerations, and he set out in 1779 with one young companion, Sayyid Panah ‘Ali. They proceeded arduously overland through Rajasthan to Hyderabad in Sindh, and thence to the coast, where they boarded a ship for the sea journey to Basra.

Nasirabadi brought with him a copy of Muhammad Amin Astarabadi’s Al-fawa’id al-madaniyyah , a work hugely popular among Shi‘i thinkers in North India. Written nearly two centuries earlier, this major statement of the Akhbari creed attacked such classical Usuli writers as Hasan ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli. During the long boat journey up the Euphrates Nasirabadi made friends with an Arab Shi‘i also en route to Najaf, where he had just begun his studies. Their discussions came around to the principles of jurisprudence. Nasirabadi supported the Akhbari position, whereas his Arab friend took the side of the Usulis. In this discussion Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali first

Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi’s Journey to the Shrine Cities in 1779-81 encountered the now largely Usuli atmosphere of the shrine cities and found it disturbing.

After performing visitation to the shrine of Imam ‘Ali, Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi met with prominent Shi‘i scholars in Najaf, committed Usulis. After several debates with them, Nasirabadi decided that if he insisted on arguing with his teachers, he would learn nothing. He then shifted north to Karbala, studying the oral reports from the Imams with Aqa Muhammad Baqir Bihbahani then seventy-five, and law with Bihbahani’s younger disciples. Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi determined to throw himself into a study of Usuli works, given their rarity in India. He read widely on the issue of the validity of those oral reports that were related by only a single transmitter in each early generation (khabar al-ahad ).After study of the classical writers, Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi began to doubt the validity of Astarabadi’s position. In the space of a few months from his arrival in Iraq he adopted the Usuli school, one reason surely being the predominance of this ideology at the centers of Shi‘i scholarship. He later perceived this change of views to be one of the graces he received by virtue of his proximity to the holy tombs of the Imams.

Nasirabadi then sought out another of Bihbahani’s students, Sayyid Muhammad Mihdi Tabataba’i, and studied with him briefly. He pointed out to his teacher that in the Usuli system either a believer must be himself a mujtahid, or he must emulate a living mujtahid. But, he continued, the Shi‘is of India were deprived of any opportunity for either, so that they might land in perdition. Tabataba’i replied that Indian Shi‘is must practice caution (ihtiyat ), following the most strict of the major positions on any matter of law. Nasirabadi riposted that Majlisi I once said that the most cautious position was not always the correct one. Sayyid Muhammad Mihdi answered that such instances were rare. Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali’s dissatisfaction with the practice of caution as a solution to the dilemma of Indian Usulis suggests that even then he saw the need for religious leadership which the spread of Usulism in Awadh would create.

Because of his Indian background Nasirabadi had great difficulty in being taken seriously as a scholar, some Iranian students insisting that there simply were no ulama in India. They found the very thought of an Indian mujtahid absurd, given that only three scholars at the shrine cities were recognized exemplars. After about a year and a half, Sayyid Dildar Ali Nasirabadi returned to India overland via Kazimayn, Tehran, and Mashhad, wintering in Khurasan and studying there briefly.

On arriving in Lucknow he met with Hasan Riza Khan and had an interview with Nawab Asafu’d-Dawlah. In 1781 he began teaching and writing in Lucknow, producing a wide-ranging attack on Akhbari ideas and beginning the task of training a new generation of Shi‘i scholars in Usuli sciences.

Sham-e-Ghariba Majlis

Ghufrana-Maab had few Ulema guests’ from Iraq pay him a visit during Moharrum. They reached Lucknow on the 10th the Ashura. Ghufrana-Maab organized food and water for them in Ghufrana-Maab Imambargha. Then all the Ulema including Ghufrana-Maab started discussing about Imam Hussein (A.S). Then Ghufrana-Maab suggested why not we perform a majls and sermon of Imam Hussein (A.S). They then invited everybody form the neighborhood and started the Sham-e-ghariba majlis.