Shibli Numani’s imagined community

Even if in the blooming spring we didn't reach the garden,

We still have the autumn to behold.

– Shibli Numani

In 1892, when 35-year-old Shibli Numani decided to write a travelogue about his journey to West Asia, he began by saying that he had no intention of writing one. His hand was compelled by the thought of his friends and family, he wrote, so that they could learn more about the status of Muslims outside India. For many prominent Muslim thinkers of British India, the later years of the 19th century marked a low point for the Muslim community. A teacher of Persian and Arabic at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College – an important site of modern higher education in 19th-century northern India and a predecessor of Aligarh Muslim University – Numani was, therefore, interested in the institutions of the Muslim world, particularly educational, to see if they could be the blueprint for the betterment of the Subcontinent's Muslims. As he sailed through the port cities of Aden, Cyprus, Beirut, Port Said, and Izmir, he hoped the descriptions of the social life in these cities, which were published in a book titled Safarnamah-e Rum-o Misr-o Sham, would serve as clarion call for spiritual and educational revival back home.

Born in Azamgarh in current-day Uttar Pradesh, Shibli Numani (1857-1914) was a prominent Islamic scholar and religious reformer, best known for his biographical writings on the life of Prophet Muhammad. His other well-known works includes a biography of Caliph Omar Faruq and a history of Persian poetry. Although Numani had previously traveled to Mecca for Hajj, the 1892 journey was his first extensive trip to the wider Muslim world. Accompanied by the British orientalist, a close friend and mentor, Thomas Arnold, Numani travelled from Bombay to Istanbul, after which he headed alone to Egypt. Numani looked at Turkey in particular, because the Ottoman Empire appeared to him to be the last bastion against the colonial onslaught.