Shah Waliyullah Dihlavi: aspirations and Tensions Of Islamic Cosmopolitanism (Makers Of the Muslim World)

Shah Waliyullah Dihlavi (d. 1762) was a highly renowned and influential scholar of Islam who produced works on the Qur’an; Islamic law and jurisprudence; Sufism; philosophy and politics. He sought to reconcile seemingly competing strands of Muslim intellectual thought and practice; pursuing a cosmopolitan Islam marked not by dogmatism and finality but by debate and flexibility. In South Asia today; virtually every school of Islamic thought; even those bitterly opposed to him; claim to be his rightful heirs. Setting his life and intellectual career in the context of India on the eve of British colonisation; SherAli Tareen explores Shah Waliyullah’s work and its reception among later scholars and reform movements in South Asia and beyond.