A Historical and Comparative Study of Juristic Services in Multan: A Research Appraisal of the Scholarly and Practical Methodology of Ḥaḍrat Bahā᾿ al-Dīn Zakariyyā Multānī and Khwāja ʿUbayd Allāh Multānī

ملتان میں فقہی خدمات کا تاریخی و تقابلی مطالعہ(حضرت بہاؤالدین زکریا ملتانی اور خواجہ عبید اللہ ملتانی کے علمی و عملی منہج کا تحقیقی جائزہ)

Abstract

Multan, historically celebrated as Madīnat al-Awliyā᾿, occupies a distinctive position in the intellectual history of Islamic South Asia not merely as a centre of taṣawwuf but, equally significantly, as a durable site of juristic (fiqhī) production, transmission and application. This study undertakes a historical and comparative examination of the juristic services rendered in Multan through the lens of two representative yet chronologically distant figures: Shaykh Bahā᾿ al-Dīn Zakariyyā Multānī (578–661 AH / 1182–1262 CE), founder of the Suhrawardī order in the Indian subcontinent, and Khwāja ʿUbayd Allāh Multānī (1219–1305 AH / 1804–1888 CE), a prolific muftī and Chishtī-Qādirī shaykh of the colonial period. Although separated by nearly six centuries and by radically different political contexts, the two belong to one continuous juristic tradition marked by four constants: adherence to the Ḥanafī madhhab, the subordination of spiritual practice to the sharīʿa, the integration of the khānqāh with the madrasa and the dār al-iftā᾿, and the deployment of fiqh as an instrument of social order rather than abstract theory. Employing a descriptive-analytical and comparative method, and drawing on tadhkira literature, malfūẓāt, surviving manuscripts and modern scholarship, the study reconstructs the juristic methodology (manhaj) of each figure. It examines Bahā᾿ al-Dīn Zakariyyā᾿s insistence on ẓāhir al-sharīʿa, his rejection of samāʿ, his legitimation of trade and organised endowment, and his engagement with political authority. It then analyses Khwāja ʿUbayd Allāh᾿s corpus of approximately one hundred works and twenty-two surviving manuscripts spanning tafsīr, ḥadīth, kalām, fiqh and uṣūl, his fatwā practice under colonial rule, and his defensive writing on ʿaqīda. The comparative section identifies convergence in madhhab loyalty, sources and social function, and divergence in scale, genre and audience. The paper concludes that Multan᾿s juristic tradition is best understood as an evolving continuum in which the pastoral jurisprudence of the medieval khānqāh was progressively textualised into the written fatwā culture of the nineteenth century,, and identifies Multan᾿s unedited manuscript legacy as an urgent research priority.