By Asim Ahmad

Shaikh ul- Hadith Muhammad Zakariyya was born in 1898 in Kandhela, India, a fertile region known as Du Aba, which produced some of the greatest scholars of Allah in the Indian subcontinent. Many of the Muslim inhabitants of this region are descendants of the Sahaba including Shaikh ul-Hadith, who was from the lineage of Abu Bakr .

In recognition of the erudition in hadith, his teacher, the renowned muhaddith Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri, granted him the honorable title of shaikh ul-Hadith which became a permanent attachment to his name. From here on, this title will be used throughout this short biography of his life.

• Two Major Achievements

The contributors of Shaikh ul-Hadith in the various Islamic fields are so numerous that they cannot all possibly be covered in so short a space. Instead, it would be more apt to sum up his life by dividing it into two major parts. One deals with his achievements as a spiritual mentor, striving to revive self-awareness in the Umma and to purify and invigorate their hearts with love for Allah and His blessed Prophet. The second part of his life covers some of his numerous academic contributions to the Islamic sciences.

Rarely does a person acquire distinction in both the islamic spiritual and intellectual knowledge. The intricacies of these fields are revealed only to those who devote their life to them and to those who have a natural skill for them. This is why the history of Islam offers many examples of experts in the field of spirituality or in the Islamic sciences, but rarely does one get a glimpse of an expert who conquered both these two fields. But Allah blessed Shaikh ul-Hadith with extraordinary talent who achieved distinction as a spiritual mentor and as a scholar. Much of his ability to strike a delicate balance between the two fields owes to his upbringing in the midst of the scholars of Deoband. Shaikh Husain Ahmed Madani, Mulana ‘Abd al-Qadir Raipuri and Shah ‘Abd ul-Rahim Raipuri and many others were imams of both the Shari‘a and Tariqa, scholars and mentors who enriched their students’ lives by guidance through the Qur’an and Sunna while cultivating in their hearts of the love Allah and love for the blessed Prophet. Those who sat in their company and would easily understand the outstanding character of the Sahaba and how they combined in their lives strength of faith and purity of heart with a prodigious knowledge of the Qur’an and Sunna.

It can be convincingly argued after studying his life that the Shaikh ul-Hadith represented the balance of esoteric and exoteric that was the hallmark of the scholars in Deoband. He renounced extremities in all their shades and complemented the sacred knowledge of the esoteric with exoteric and the exoteric with the esoteric.

Continued…