Page "Firangi Mahal" Paragraph 67

Several problems command attention within the history of Farangi Mahall.

There is the problem of the material basis of their support, of how they survived as a family of Islamic learning, not just under the favorable rule of the Mughals but also under the less favorable regimes first of the Mughals but also the problem of how a family of tradition survived, of how one family maintained a distinctive style and purpose down the centuries, neither deterred by influences emanating from the qasbah zamindari families amongst whom marriages were sometimes made, nor seduced in the main by those from the rich and materialistic worlds of Arcot and Hydrabad into which branches of the family expanded.

Then, we need to be able to identify the particular emphasis and quality of their Islamic scholarship so that we can place it with rather more precision then now, not just in the context of eighteenth-century Indian Islamic scholarship but also in hat of the Islamic world in general.

So far unfortunately, as little work has been done on the learning of the Farangi Mahallis as has been done on the background against which it must be set.

There follows a need to trace the development of their scholarship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a development which seems to stand in stark contrast so that of Shah Wali Allah, his descendants and their followers, both spiritual and intellectual.

Islam, however, is less about what scholars think and write then about how men behave.

Here we must reach into the Sufi as much as scholarly part of the Farangi Mahall world to unveil their vision of a perfect and well-formed life, the example of correct Islamic behavior which they wished to set before the faithful. 15 Associated with this question is that of changes in right conduct, the movement of religious change which Barbra Metcalf has discerned especially amongst Muslims of the Delhi world, as processes of religious revival and reform began to draw Muslims away from the particularistic and ecstatic practices of the shrines to the more sober forms of religious expression commanded by scripture.

We need to know how Farangi Mahallis responded to this profound and important new departure in Indian Islam, how far they shared in it, modifying it perhaps in the light of their own distinctive way, and how far they maintained their own traditions unchanged.

We are not concerned, however merely with how Farangi Mahallis interacted with Muslim reformism, we also need to know how they interacted with the Hindu world on whose margins they moved, and that of Shi ’ a scholarship which was vigorous in nineteenth-century Lucknow, not to mention that of Muslims beyond India amongst whom, from the mid-nineteenth century, they increasingly came to travel.

Then, there is the opportunity, which should not be missed, to explore the life of a leading learned man and his family in the early twentieth century, to discover the pattern of his day, his month, his year, set in the context of family, city quarter, school, and calendar of saints festivals.

These problems and possibilities and others will be investigated in the forthcoming monograph.

The remainder of this essay will be concerned with two further problems: how the influence of Farangi Mahall was spread and maintained throughout much of India ; and how Farangi Mahallis responded to modernization under British rule.

The aim is to provide no more than an outline in the hope of revealing some of the excitement of the history of Farangi Mahall, and what it might contribute to the history of Indian Islam.