Muhammad Asad: Twenty-six Unpublished Letters

Abstract

Muhammad Asad had a large circle of friends—from Dr. Muham- mad Iqbal (1877–1938) to Muhammad Hussain Baburi (d. 1984), a type-writer mechanic he hired when he set up his printing press. Among his eminent friends were Chaudhri Niyaz Ali Khan (1880- 1976), Mir Waʾiz Muhammad Yusuf (1892-1968), a Kashmiri reli- gious and political leader and the founder of Anjuman-i Nusrat al- Islam, Mawlana Abdul Qadir Qasuri (1863-1942) and his younger brother Maulavi Abdullah Qasuri (1875-1949); Sayyid Sulayman Nadwi (1884-1953), the director of Dar al-Muṣannfīn (Azamgarh, India), Sayyid Abuʾl-Aʿla Mawdudi (1903-1979), Mawlana Sayyid Dawud Ghaznvi (1895-1963), Muhammad Ismail Ghazanvi (1895- 1964), Mawlana Ahmad Ali Lahori (d. 1962), Dr. Zakir Hussain (1897-1969), the vice-chancellor of the Jamia Millia Delhi (1928- 1948), Dr. Omer Hayat Malik (1892-1982), the Principal of Islamia College Peshawar and Lahore and later the vice-chancellor of the University of Punjab (1947-1950), Mumtaz Hassan (1907-1974), the Finance Secretary of the Government of Pakistan (1952-1958), and his younger brother Nasim Hasan (1911-1995), Zahid Hus- sain (1893-1957), the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan and the founder chairman of the Planning Commission of Pakistan, Chaudhri Nazir Ahmad Khan (d. 1980), the attorney general of Pakistan (1959-1961), Muhammad Sadiq Qureshi (a Lahore based journalist), A. D. Azhar a government servant in British India and later in Pakistan and several others. I have collected more than 170 letters by Asad from various per- sons. I am indebted to the descendants of the Mawlana Ghulam Mehr, Chaudhri Nazir Ahmad Khan, Malik Muhammad Ashraf, and Muhammd Sadiq Qureshi for making these letters available to me. The author is greatly indebted to late Maqbool Hussain Baburi (d. 2005), the son of Muhammad Hussain Baburi, for the provision of a folder containing more than 130 original letters of Asad. Most of these letters are addressed to Muhammad Hussain