Hidden in the Margins: Contesting Legal Authority in Marginal Hadith Glosses

What is it about?

In the twentieth century, India witnessed a significant and ambitious scholarly output in the genre of hadith commentary, with multivolume compendia like Khalīl Aḥmad Sahāranpūrī’s (d. 1927) Badhl al-majhūd and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Mubārakpūrī’s (d. 1935) Tuḥfat al-aḥwadhī. While there is new interest in the area of hadith commentary, the focus has been on either larger modern commentaries like the aforementioned two, or classical commentaries like those of the Mamluk-era hadith commentators. However, there is a substantial yet overlooked body of work between these two periods: nineteenth century marginal glosses on lithographed hadith literature. Using the commentarial work of the North Indian Aḥmad ʿAlī Sahāranpūrī (d. 1880) as a point of departure, I explore the impact of these marginal glosses and their role in the competition over scholarly authority in the region. Among other things, these marginalia served as subtle yet crucial guides for readers within the madrasa network, particularly at a time when the advent of print technology intersected with intra-Muslim legal debates among Ḥanafīs and Ahl-i Ḥadīth. These marginalia are an ideal site to examine the divergent views of Ahl-i Ḥadīṭh and the Ḥanafīs, as they occupy the margins of the very hadith collections that shaped the former and ostensibly conflicted with the legal practices of the latter.

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