Abdul Hamid Kishk

Abd al-Hamid ibn Abd al-Aziz Kishk was a blind Egyptian scholar and preacher, born at Shubrakhit in the Beheira Governorate on Friday 13 Dhu al-Qa'da 1351 AH, 10 March 1933, and died on Friday 25 Rajab 1417 AH, 6 December 1996. ^{1 2} Many called him 'the knight of the pulpits'; the Arabic article counts him among the best-known preachers of the twentieth century in the Arab and Muslim world, and says he left more than two thousand recorded sermons and preached for forty years. ¹ The English article describes him as known for his humour, his popular sermons, his religious books and his outspoken stand against injustice. ³

He memorised the Qur'an as a child, before the age of ten according to the Arabic article and by eight according to the English one, then entered the religious institute of Alexandria and the faculty of Usul al-Din at al-Azhar University. ^{1 3} The Arabic article says he came first in the country in the Azhar secondary certificate and first in his faculty throughout his studies, and that his teachers had him explain some subjects to the students, especially grammar and morphology. ¹ The English article says his father died before he reached school age. ³

He lost his sight young: the Arabic article says he lost one eye at thirteen and the other at seventeen, the English article that an illness took his sight in childhood and that the loss spurred him to learn more. ^{1 3}

He was appointed a teaching assistant at the faculty of Usul al-Din in 1957 but gave only one lecture before leaving university teaching for the pulpit, which he had first climbed at twelve when the preacher of his village mosque was absent. ¹ He represented al-Azhar at the Science Day of 1961, then served as imam and preacher at the al-Tahhan mosque and the Manufi mosque in al-Sharabiyya, Cairo, and in 1962 took the imamate and pulpit of the 'Ain al-Hayat mosque in Hadaiq al-Qubba, where he preached for about twenty years. ¹ The English article reports that the peak of his fame lay between 1967 and the early 1980s, when some ten thousand worshippers attended his Friday sermon and the Ministry of Endowments built annexes to the mosque to hold them. ³

His sermons, more than two thousand of them, spread on cassette across Egypt and the Arab world, although the official media boycotted him under Anwar Sadat. ^{3 1} The Assabile archive holds one series of his in seven long episodes, The Conditions for the Acceptance of Prayer. ⁴

He was detained in 1965 and held for two and a half years, moved between the Tura, Abu Za'bal, Citadel and Military prisons; the Arabic article says he was tortured although he was blind. ^{1 3} It says that from 1976 he clashed with the authorities, especially after the Camp David treaty, was arrested in 1981 in the September decisions, and was released in 1982 but barred from his mosque, from preaching and from teaching. ¹ The English article says Hosni Mubarak released him on condition that he give up public activity, and that the mosque where he had preached was turned into a health centre. ³

Both articles say he was a dissident under Gamal Abdel Nasser, refusing to approve the execution of Sayyid Qutb or to affirm that Islam and socialism agree, and that he criticised social conditions in Egypt and stressed personal piety in his sermons. ^{3 1} They say he attacked the personal status law 44 of 1979, which required a husband to inform his wife if he married again, holding it contrary to the Sharia. ³ He wrote a reply to Naguib Mahfouz's novel Children of the Alley, accusing it of violating the creed. ^{3 1}

The Arabic article says he left 108 books, among them a ten-volume commentary on the Qur'an, Fi Rihab al-Tafsir, written after he was barred from preaching and focused on the Qur'an's call to faith; the English article speaks of nearly thirty books. ^{1 3}

The Arabic article says he died on a Friday while praying a voluntary prayer before leaving for the mosque, in prostration in the second rak'a, and that he used to pray to die prostrating. ¹

The series 'The Conditions for the Acceptance of Prayer' shows his manner in the pulpit: he opens with praise of God, blessings on the Prophet ﷺ and long eulogies, announces the day's subject, mixes explanation with stories and verse, closes with supplication and then says: rise to your prayer. ^{5 6 7} He comments there on the week's news; he says, for instance, that he paused at three news items, one of them a report in the newspaper Akhbar al-Yawm about a wife who took her husband to court. ^{8 9}

Abu Ishaq al-Heweny relates that in his third secondary year he stayed with his brother in Cairo, and Shaykh Kishk's mosque, the Ayn al-Hayat mosque, was two bus stops away; as a country boy he had never heard of him, and when he prayed there he heard for the first time a preacher of such eloquence, with a sorrowful voice that brought tears. ^{10 11 12} He says he prayed behind him for five years, even after returning from university, and that it was Kishk who kindled his love of the religion and laid the first brick. ^{13 14} He mentions that in those days Kishk spoke of the beard as Sunna, answering a film that mocked it, and that he then let his beard grow for the first time. ^{15 16}

Later, reading al-Albani's «Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Da'ifa», he found in it much of what he had heard from Kishk. ¹⁷ He tells how Kishk cited, in a sermon on the virtues of Abu Bakr, a hadith about God manifesting Himself to Abu Bakr in particular; the people wept and he wept with them, but his heart was not at ease with it, so he searched a bookshop next to the mosque until he found Ibn al-Qayyim declaring it fabricated in «al-Manar al-Munif». ^{18 19 20} He stood in the queue of those greeting the shaykh after the sermon and whispered this to him; Kishk replied that Ibn al-Qayyim was mistaken and said: «my son, learn before you speak». ^{21 22 23} He says the word hurt him but did him good: he went looking for a shaykh to teach him hadith and attached himself to Shaykh al-Muti'i. ^{23 24 25}

He describes Kishk's school as a "nursery" through which many passed who later became prominent before their paths diverged; he says he took from Kishk only the fervour and the idea that the lesson after the sermon should be light, and took the craft of the sermon and the drawing out of meanings from books. ^{26 27 28} He considers Kishk's tafsir closer to oratory than to tafsir; this is his view. ²⁹