A Response to Peshawar Nights
Introduction
The art of fictional narration
The art of fictional narration can be traced back to the
earliest civilizations, and has assumed various different
appearances over the centuries. The fact that this form of
narration is fictitious was never really used to
discredit literary fiction, since the lessons the author of
Aesop’s Fables, for example, wished to impart, did not
depend upon whether his animal characters could or did really
speak. Similarly, Shakespeare, in his quasi-historical works,
does not attempt to convey to the reader the notion that the
words or actions he ascribes to his characters were really
said or done by them.
However, it is when the author of the fictional narrative
tries to overstep the bounds of fiction and confer upon his
work the appearance of historical authenticity, that his work
loses the respectable designation “literary fiction”, and
earns for itself the ignominious epithet “literary hoax”.
The Historicity of “Peshawar Nights”
In the book “Peshawar Nights”, whose author is styled
as “Sultan al-Wa‘izin Shirazi”, we have an example of a
work which purports to be the record of a Sunni-Shi‘i
debate. However, an objective analysis of the book leads us
to the inevitable conclusion that in this particular work
Shirazi has done nothing more than employ the literary device
of fictional narration—a device that for centuries has
found favour with Shi‘i polemicists.
Shi‘i polemicists were quite aware that to actually
engage the ‘ulama of the Ahl as-Sunnah in debate would
considerably curtail their advantage, and therefore they
resorted to the more convenient ploy of creating their own
opponents, since by doing so they would be able to manipulate
the “opponent’s” arguments to their own advantage.
Thus, when Sultan al-Wa‘izin Shirazi decided to choose this
style of writing for his book, he was not being original at
all. He was merely imitating the precedent set by earlier Shi‘i
writers like Abul Futuh ar-Razi and Radiyy ad-Din Ibn Tawus.
Below we look at three works in this genre by these two
authors.
Husniyyah
A book by this title appeared during the latter half of
the previous century, purporting to be the record of a debate
that had taken place at the court of Harun ar-Rashid between
Husniyyah, a slave girl owned by a merchant friend of Imam Ja‘far
as-Sadiq, and the Imams Abu Yusuf and ash-Shafi‘i. This
slave girl had supposedly stayed with Imam Ja‘far upto the
age of twenty, and had acquired expertise in numerous
branches of knowledge from him. In the book she publicly
humiliates the two Imams, defeating their arguments and
presenting them with “incontrovertible evidence” of the
truth of the creed of the Shi‘ah.
The book is full of anachronisms. For one, ash-Shafi‘i
came to Baghdad only after the death of Abu Yusuf, so it is
impossible that they could ever have taken part together in
any discussion. The book also speaks of a third learned man
by the name of Ibrahim Khalid of Basrah, who was supposedly
regarded by Abu Yusuf as “superior in knowledge to them all.”
When they themselves were unable to answer the arguments of
Husniyyah, they referred the matter to this Ibrahim Khalid,
but he too, was incapable of responding to her. History,
however, has recorded nothing of a person by this name, and
the effort to identify him with Abu Thawr, whose name was
Ibrahim ibn Khalid, is futile, since Abu Thawr was a Baghdadi
by birth and lived there all his life. Far from being
regarded as ash-Shafi‘i’s superior, he was his student,
and one of the four narrators of his qadim views. Even
of Husniyyah herself, the annals of history and biography
have recorded nothing at all. It is only in this belated
document that mention is made of her existence.
It is recorded by the prominent Shi‘i bibliographer, Aqa
Buzurg Tihrani in his bibliographical lexicon adh-Dhari‘ah
that this booklet was originally found in the possession of a
sayyid in Syria by Mulla Ibrahim al-Astarabadi when the
latter returned to Iran from Hajj in the year 958/1551. He
translated it into Persian, and it was first published in
1287/1870. (adh-Dhari‘ah, vol. 4 p. 97 no. 452, 3rd
edition, Dar al-Adwa’, Beirut 1401/1981)
The Shi‘i biographer Mirza ‘Abdullah Effendi al-Isfahani
has done us a favour by exposing the real author of the book Husniyyah,
and his purpose in writing such a book. He writes in his book
Riyad al-‘Ulama’:
Such a degree of learning
and eminence is accorded to Husniyyah in this booklet,
that it creates the impression of it being the fraudulent
work of Shaykh Abul Futuh ar-Razi, written and forged by
him. He ascribed it to Husniyyah in order to bring
disgrace to the beliefs of the Ahl as-Sunnah, and to
humiliate them by exposing their beliefs. (Riyad al-‘Ulama’
vol. 5 p. 407 (Maktabat Ayatullah al-Mar‘ashi, Qum
1401/1981)
This identification of Abul Futuh ar-Razi with the
authorship of the booklet Husniyyah is supported by
Sayyid Muhsin al-Amin, the author of A‘yan ash-Shi‘ah,
one of the most authoritative contemporary biographical
dictionaries of the Shi‘ah. He states categorically that
this book “is the work of Abul Futuh ar-Razi”.
Yuhanna the Christian
This same Shaykh Abul Futuh ar-Razi is credited with the
authorship of another spurious polemical tract called Risalat
Yuhanna an-Nasrani (the tract of Yuhanna [John] the
Christian). In this tract, quoted by a number of Shi‘i
writers as factual truth, a Christian by the name of Yuhanna
engages the Sunni ‘ulama of Baghdad in a debate during
which he demonstrates the “fallacies” in the creed of the
Ahl as-Sunnah. Eventually he declares his acceptance of Shi‘ism
as the true religion. Mirza ‘Abdullah Effendi ascribes this
work to Abul Futuh ar-Razi. The “strength” of this
polemic is supposed to derive from the fact that even a non-Muslim
is able to discern the “falsehood” of Sunni belief from
the “truth” of Shi‘ism.
‘Abd al-Mahmud the Dhimmi
Radiyy ad-Din Ali ibn Tawus belonged to a prominent Shi‘i
family that lived at Hillah near Najaf at the time of the
sack of Baghdad by the Tartars under Hulagu. Shi‘ite
complicity in the fall of Baghdad is a fact of history. This
explains why the Mongol conquerors favoured the Shi‘i
intellectuals. Ibn Tawus, for example, was appointed Naqib al-Ahsraf
by Hulagu, the destroyer of Baghdad. He gladly accepted this
office, having earlier persistently refused it from the late
Khalifah, al-Mustansir.
With the fall of Baghdad came a new surge in Shi‘ite
propagation, the like of which was only seen in the days of
the Buwayhids during the 5th century. The high positions
occupied by Shi‘i dignitaries in the Ilkhanid (Mongol)
administration afforded the Shi‘ah the influence and
leverage they needed to prosper. In Iraq the town of Hillah
soon developed into the most important center of Shi‘i
learning.
This age also saw the composition of a number of polemical
works. As the most prolific Shi‘i author of the time, it
would be only natural for Ibn Tawus to contribute to this
genre of literature. However, he preferred to do so under an
assumed identity. His book, entitled at-Tara’if fi
Madhahib at-Tawa’if, was written under the nom-de-plume
‘ Abd al-Mahmud ibn
Dawud al-Mudari.
He commences his book with the (patently false) statement
that he is a man from amongst the Ahl adh-Dhimmah (Jews or
Christians living under the protection of the Muslim state).
He then proceeds on to a comparative study of different
religious persuasions, and predictably enough, ends up with
Ithna ‘Ashari (Twelver) Shi‘ism as the only true religion.
Like Abul Futuh ar-Razi before him, he seeks to inject
objectivity into his work by assuming the identity of a
supposedly unbiased observer. (See Riyad al-‘Ulama’ vol.
5 p. 407)
This survey of the use of fictional narration by Shi‘i
polemicists in history creates the background against which
we will now proceed to examine the historicity of “Peshawar Nights” and its contents.
Authorship
The first thing which draws the attention of the unbiased
reader should be the fact that while there were two sides who
participated in the discussion, the book itself came from the
peof the Shi‘i participant exclusively. This fact might at
first glance escape the notice of the unsuspicious reader who
has complete faith—to the point of gullibility—in the
goodwill of the author. However, no one possessed of a sense
of discretion can help but notice this discrepancy.
The writer of the foreword seeks to make amends for this
serious indictment of the book’s historicity by stating
that “four reporters recorded the discussions in the
presence of approximately 200 people (Shia and Sunni Muslims),”
and that “local newspapers published these accounts each
following morning.” Yet, both Shirazi and his publishers
fail to produce the least bit of factual evidence in the form
of copies of the newspaper reports from which it is alleged
that Shirazi ultimately compiled the book. All we have to
vouch for the occurrence of this ten-night discussion is the
word of Shirazi himself.
There is furthermore no external corroboration at all,
least of all by the Sunni participant or the five other
dignitaries who are alleged in the translator’s preface (p.
xviii) to have publicly acknowledged their conversion to Shi‘ism.
Once again, we have nothing but Shirazi’s own claim to
support the historicity of the event upon which “Peshawar
Nights” is based.
Publication
The book is published not in Peshawar, the city in which
the discussion reportedly took place, but in Tehran. It is
published not in Urdu or Pushtu, the language of the North
West Frontier, but in Persian, the language of Iran.
It is highly unlikely that there was a Persian language
newspaper in Peshawar, or in the rest of India for that
matter, at the time of the alleged debate. In India at that
time, Persian had diminished into an archaic language, more
suited for the occasional moments of inspiration of the
romantic poet than for the practical use of the media.
Shirazi himself was merely a visitor to India, and is
therefore not likely to have known either Urdu or Pushtu. The
question about how he came to transcribe his book from
newspaper accounts published in a language he did not know
will remain a mystery for as long as one believes that the
book is the record of an historical debate. On the other
hand, if one accepts the much more plausible, rational, and
indeed logical position that the author of the book has
employed the literary device of fictional narration, for
whatever reason, the mystery is immediately and conclusively
solved.
The participants
The names of the participants are given as Hafiz Muhammad
Rashid and Shaykh ‘Abd as-Salam, and they are said to be
from Kabul. None of these two persons are identified beyond
their first names. Eponymous descriptions that identify
persons in terms of their localities or family connections,
and which are so common amongst the ‘ulama of India and
Afghanistan, are conspicuously absent. The same is true for
the third person, Sayyid ‘Abd al-Hayy. Even the Nawab
Sahib, whose conversion at the end of the 10th session is
prominently touted, is not clearly identified. Why, if the
incident and the personalities were as real as the author
tries to make them seem, does he prefer to keep it secret?
Furthermore, Sunni-Shi‘i polemics was at that time a
very well developed discipline. Shi‘i proselytization in
the established Sunni community had led to some Sunni ‘ulama
taking up the task of debating and refuting the Shi‘ah.
Beginning with Shah Waliyyullah and his son Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz,
there were literally scores of Sunni ‘ulama who specialized
in Sunni-Shi‘i polemics. At the time this debate was
supposedly taking place in the remote city of Peshawar, there
lived in India an intellectual giant like ‘Allamah ‘Abd
ash-Shakur of Lucknow, a scholar whose devotion to Sunni-Shi‘i
polemics had earned him the title “Imam Ahl as-Sunnah”.
In 1345 when this debate allegedly occurred ‘Allamah ‘Abd
ash-Shakur was in his prime at the age of 52.(See Nuzhat
al-Khawatir, vol. 8 p. 271) The erudite Mawlana Anwar
Shah Kashmiri was at that time 53 years of age. (See Nuzhat
al-Khawatir, vol. 8 p. 90) If Sultan al-Wa‘izin Shirazi
was at all serious about an objective discussion of Sunni-Shi‘i
differences, he would have been engaging scholars of this
caliber, and not figures of obscure historicity, who probably
never existed outside his own imagination.
Sources
Shirazi’s citation of sources cannot fail to attract the
reader’s attention. The translators ascribe this to his
erudition: “Although the dialogue was extemporaneous, such
was the erudition of Sultanu’l-Wa`izin Shirazi ... that the
transcript serves as a detailed bibliographical reference to
hundreds of Sunni treatises well known and little known, in
which the claims of the Shi`ites are acknowledged.” (p.
xviii) However, to the careful—and knowledgeable—reader,
this very same manner of citation reveals a fatal fault in
the authenticity of the book as a faithful record of a debate
in 1345/1927.
There are many occurrences of this phenomenon throughout
the book, but a few random examples should suffice to clarify
its nature to the reader.
One of the sources quoted by Shirazi, complete with volume and page numbers, is the book at-Tarikh al-Kabir by Imam Bukhari. (See p. 229) This work would be printed in Hyderabad, Deccan for the first time ever in the year 1362/1943, no less than 16 years after the “debate” took place.
Another work cited by Shirazi is Hilyat al-Awliya by Abu Nu‘aym al-Isfahani. (See p. 139) The first edition of this work was published in Cairo, from 1351/1932 to 1357/1938. The printing of this first edition commenced 6 years after the date of the alleged debate in Peshawar, and was completed 12 years after that date.
The book Tarikh al-Khulafa by Suyuti is quoted with page number by Shirazi. (See p. 147) Yet the first ever edition of this book would appear in print in 1371/1952, 26 years after the event.
The Tarikh of Ya‘qubi would be published for the first time by Dar Sadir in Beirut only in 1960. Shirazi quotes from it, complete with page reference, 33 years before its first edition would see the light. (See p. 147)
The fifth volume of Baladhuri’s Ansab al-Ashraf would be published by the University Press in Jerusalem in 1936. Sultan al-Wa‘izin Shirazi cites from this very same volume, to the point of supplying the page number, 9 years earlier. (See p. 146)
Muruj adh-Dhahab
al-‘Iqd al-Farid
al-Haythami’s book Majma‘ az-Zawa’id is confidently cited by Shirazi, with page and volume numbers. (See p. 82) Yet the book would be printed for the first time in 1352, 7 years later.
‘Umdat al-Qari
The book Tarikh Baghdad was first published by Maktabat al-Khanji in Cairo in 1349/1930. Again Sultan al-Wa‘izin Shirazi manages the impossible by citing from this work with page and volume numbers 4 years before its publication. (See p. 183)
Thus Shirazi’s habit of supplying copious lists of
references, and thereupon attempting to inject authority into
them by citing page and volume numbers, had an unexpected—and
a most definitely undesired—side effect. Instead of
bolstering the authority of his book, it destroyed the entire
image of the book as the authentic record of an objective
debate.
Aside from the above cases where Shirazi has made
reference to sources which were to be printed several years
after the date of his alleged debate in Peshawar, he also has
the tendency to list a large number of references which he
could never possibly have laid hands or eyes on. Most of his
references lack volume and page numbers. This shows that he
did not have access to these works, and was merely quoting
them from secondary, unnamed sources. A substantial number of
them refer to books that have been completely missing for ce,
and of which nothing is known besides their titles.
Source methodology
One point of criticism which will recur throughout the
book is the author’s indiscriminate use of sources. In
matters of Shari‘ah and history, source methodology
accounts for four fifths of any textual argument. No
quotation can be presented as an authoritative argument if
its authenticity has not satisfactorily been accounted for.
The key word here is authenticity. No hadith is
authentic simply for the reason of it being documented in a
book. Of all people, the Shi‘ah are supposed to be the
first to take note of this fact. Whenever they are confronted
with the fact that their hadith literature contains a huge
number of ahadith (2000, according to Ni‘matullah al-Jaza’iri
in al-Anwar an-Nu‘maniyyah) indicating that the
present Qur’an suffered interpolation at the hands of the
Sahabah. To know just how much importance the Shi‘ah attach
to authenticity, one needs only to look at the vehemence and
fervour with which Ayatullah Muhammad Husayn Burujirdi—the
supreme Shi‘i mujtahid upto his death in 1961—rejected
the Shi‘i ahadith proving interpolation in the Qur’an as
being “extremely weak”. (Lutfullah as-Safi, Ma‘ al-Kahtib
fi Khututihi al-‘Aridah, p. 53)
Is authenticity a principle that only the Shi‘ah can
invoke when things turn against them? No person possessed of
a sense fairness can fail to see the double standards of him
who complains when unauthentic quotations from his own legacy
are used against him, but freely quotes from the literature
of his opponents without bothering to secure the authenticity
of what he quotes.
In the following pages I will survey the sources of Sunni
hadith cited by Shirazi. The sources from which he cites
Sunni hadith may be classified under three headings: (1)
primary sources (2) secondary sources (3) obscure sources.
1. Primary sources
Hadith books in this category are characterized by the
fact that they utilize isnads (chains of narration)
for their material. It includes books such as the Musnad
of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the six major works of al-Buhkari,
Muslim, Abu Dawud, at-Tirmidhi, an-Nasa’i and Ibn Majah,
the works of al-Bayhaqi, ad-Daraqutni, and of authors as late
as Abu Nu‘aym al-Isfahani and al-Khatib al-Baghdadi.
The narrated material in any collection utilizing isnads
is as a rule only as good as the isnad. In Sahih al-Bukhari
and Sahih Muslim we have a unique case, in that these
two authors have applied a rigorous set of criteria to the
ahadith which they admitted into their collections. The
ahadith in the Sahihayn are therefore all authentic,
not simply for the fact that they appear in those books, but
because they conform to the criteria of authenticity
stipulated by al-Bukhari and Muslim.
Books besides the Sahihayn are all subject to
scrutiny of their isnads to determine to what extent they
conform to the criteria of authenticity. There never has been
a claim, neither by the authors of these works, nor by anyone
else, that these works incorporate exclusively authentic
material. Muhaddithin like al-Hakim, the author of al-Mustadrak,
and Ibn Hibban, the author of at-Taqasim wal-Anwa‘ (commonly
known as Sahih Ibn Hibban), have attempted to follow
the example of al-Bukhari and Muslim by documenting only
authentic ahadith, but their criteria, as well as the extent
to which they abided by those criteria left a lot to be
desired, and consequently came under censure from later
muhaddithin.
Indiscriminate quoting from these works would therefore
only occur if a person suffers from one of two defects:
ignorance of the science of hadith; or a Machiavellian
attitude of the end—in this case the conversion of the Ahl
as-Sunnah—justifying the means. Either of these defects is
sufficient to disqualify anyone as an objective polemicist.
2. Secondary sources
Books in this category do not use isnads. Instead, they
reproduce the texts of hadith from the primary sources, and
give a reference to the source from they have taken it. An
example here would be the book Majma‘ az-Zawa’id
by Abul Hasan al-Haythami. In this work the author has
collected those ahadith in the Musnads of Ahmad, al-Bazzar
and Abu Ya‘la, and the three Mu‘jams of at-Tabarani—al-Kabir,
al-Awsat and as-Saghir—that do not appear in the six
major collections.
Since the hadith collections in this category basically
draw from the previous category, the same is applicable to it
in terms of authenticity as was stated for the primary
sources. In fact, when quoting from such secondary sources,
the onus to prove authenticity is even greater.
Shirazi seems quite oblivious to—or ignorant of—the
fact that works such as Majma‘ az-Zawa’id merely
reproduce ahadith from primary sources. Therefore he thinks
nothing of adducing Majma‘ az-Zawa’id as a source
after having already ascribed the hadith to al-Mu‘jam al-Awsat
of at-Tabarani. (See p. 82) This is but one example of
many. One wonders how someone who displays such an
astonishing lack of proficiency in hadith could be bold
enough to present himself as an erudite scholar.
Other books in this category are ad-Durr al-Manthur
and Tarikh al-Khulafa, both by as-Suyuti, Ihya’
‘Ulum ad-Din by al-Ghazali, Tafsir Mafatih al-Ghayb (also
known as at-Tafsir al-Kabir) by Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi, Jami‘
al-Usul by Ibn al-Athir, and Kanz al-‘Ummal by
‘Ali al-Muttaqi. This list is by no means exhausitive.
These titles are mentioned merely by way of example.
3. Obscure sources
Shirazi has shown an idiosyncratic predilection to quote
from obscure and doubtful sources. A number of his sources
stand out prominently in this regard: Yanabi‘ al-Mawaddah
by Sulayman al-Qanduzi al-Hanafi; Kifayat at-Talib by
Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Kanji ash-Shafi‘i; and Fara’id
as-Simtayn by al-Hamawayni.
The first of the three, al-Qanduzi, is described in Mu‘jam
al-Mu’allifin (vol. 4 p. 252) as a Sufi who lived
during the latter half of the 13th/19th century. Al-Kanji,
although very prominently labelled by Shirazi as a Shafi‘i,
is completely unknown to biographers of the Shafi‘i fuqaha
such as Imam an-Nawawi in Tahdhib al-Asma’ wal-Lughat,
Ibn as-Subki in Tabaqat ash-Shafi‘iyyah al-Kubra,
Ibn Qadi Shuhbah in his Tabaqat ash-Shafi‘iyyah, and
Jamal ad-Din al-Isnawi in his Tabaqat. Having died in
658 (as stated by Zerekly in al-A‘lam vol. 7 p. 150)
he lived at least a century before an-Nawawi (who died in 767)
and two centuries before the remaining biographers. It is
therefore of great significance that that not one of these
biographers make any mention of him. Of al-Hamawayni I have
not been able to locate a single trace in any of the
biographical dictionaries.
When authors such as these compile works in which they
include ahadith the like of which was never heard of before
them, what status shall be accorded to such ahadith? Shall
they be regarded as “authentic ahadith” from “your own
reliable Sunni scholars”? I leave this question to the
great Imam Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi to answer. In his book al-Mahsul
fi ‘Ilm al-Usul (vol. 4 p. 299) he lists the kinds of
narrations which are known with certainty to be untrue and
baseless. The fourth kind is the following:
The narration which is narrated at a
time when narrations have already become established, and
when it is searched for it cannot be found in books nor
in the memories of the narrators—such a narration is
known to be baseless.
The same line reasoning is to be found in Abul Husayn al-Basri’s
book, al-Mu‘tamad (vol. 2 p. 79):
A narration which, after the
stabilization of hadith, is searched for but cannot be
traced in the corpus of hadith, is known for a fact to be
a forgery, since we know that the ahadith have been
documented. The narration of a hadith after documentation
can therefore only be the narration of documented ahadith.
So if we do not find that (i.e. we find a hadith being
narrated which was not previously documented) then we
know it to be an untrue narration.
Thus, when you see the gloating manner in which Shirazi
cites hadith from latter day “Sunni” authors such as al-Qanduzi
and al-Kanji, or the unknown Ibn al-Maghazili and al-Hamawayni,
then pity his gross lack of knowledge of this fieldof hadith,
of which he has set himself up as an expert. And if Shirazi
deserves pity, how much more deserving of pity would those be
whose utter gullibility would lead them to swallow the fruits
of his “erudite scholarship” hook, line and sinker?
The question one cannot help asking oneself is this: Can a
book as elliptical, as blatantly dishonest, and as seriously
defective in scholarship as this one ever serve to build
bridges over the yawning chasm which separates the Ahl as-Sunnah
from the Shi‘ah? This book was never intended for that
purpose. Its publication today stands as the unmistakable
recommitment by the Shi‘ah of today to the ideal of
yesterday. That ideal is to convert the Ahl as-Sunnah to the
faith of the Shi‘ah. The author preferred to refer to
himself in the book as “Da‘i”. This was
mistranslated by the translators—who obviously do not know
Arabic—as “well-wisher”. Da‘i does not mean
well-wisher. It means missionary.
After this introduction I will proceed to analyze and
criticize the arguments of the author in detail. The
destruction of the historicity of the book has only removed
the veil of objectivity and fair dialogue that was clouding
they sight of the credulous reader. Now that the book has
been revealed to be the work of a Shi‘i missionary using a
deceptive literary device to win the trust and confidence of
his credulous reader, the only thing that remains is to
critically analyze his arguments. Towards the fulfillment of
that objective I seek the aid of Allah.