Abd al-Hayy al-Lakhnawi

Abu l-Hasanat Muhammad Abd al-Hayy al-Lakhnawi was an Indian Hanafi scholar, the son of Mawlawi Abd al-Halim, a theologian associated with the Farangi Mahall seminary at Lucknow. He was born at Banda in Bundelkhand in 1264/1848 and died at Lucknow. The encyclopaedia's entry is signed by Mohammad Shafi. ¹

He studied with his father and with another scholar until he was seventeen, then began to assist his father as a teacher. He made the pilgrimage to Mecca twice, where he met the Mufti Ahmad ibn Zayni Dahlan, from whom he obtained a large number of ijazas. He wrote glosses and annotations on many textbooks current in Indian madrasas, and numerous works on religious and legal subjects, which he listed himself in al-Nafi al-Kabir and in his edition of al-Shaybani's recension of the Muwatta' (Delhi, 1297). He was a distinguished and influential teacher, and one of his pupils, Hafiz Allah, wrote his biography under the title Kanz al-Barakat. ¹

His work of most general use is al-Fawa'id al-Bahiyya fi Tarajim al-Hanafiyya (Delhi, 1293; Cairo, 1324). It abridges Mahmud ibn Sulayman al-Kaffawi's Katta'ib A'lam al-Akhyar and adds biographical notices. The encyclopaedia cites Rahman 'Ali's Persian Tadhkira of Indian scholars and notes that Brockelmann wrongly ascribed two works listed under his name to him, as the article's subject. ¹