Toward the Formation of a Waliullahi Public in Eighteenth-Century India

Abstract Shah Waliullah of Delhi, the famous eighteenth-century Naqshbandi, is widely recognized as a major figure in the emergence of Islamic reformist discourse in South Asia, but we still have little sense of the first audiences who engaged with his ideas. This article seeks to further our understanding of the crystallization of this reform-oriented Waliullahi public by recreating the fragmentary biography of his lifelong companion and disciple Nurullah Budhanwi. While he didn't write any books that survive, accounts of Nurullah's life and reports of his oral statements are scattered throughout texts produced by Waliullah's circle, and provide insight into the conflicting intellectual, ethical, and affective responses to Waliullah's thought in his own lifetime. This article demonstrates that Nurullah felt deep concern about what his acceptance of Waliullahi reformist ideas might mean for his material and spiritual life, suggesting that the formation of this new reform-oriented public was a fraught process entailing contestation and negotiation. Nurullah's biography shows us that intellectual histories that rely on discussions of abstract ideas of famous thinkers or the simplistic reconstruction of scholarly networks fail to do justice to the complex life of ideas in the world.