Al-Kawthari

Muhammad Zahid b. Hasan al-Kawthari (1296 AH-1371 AH/1879-1951) was the adjunct to the last Shaykh al-Islam of the Ottoman Empire and a Hanafi scholar and polymath.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Kemalists began a violent crackdown on the religious scholarly class. Fearing that his life maybe in danger, Kawthari fled to Cairo, then to Syria and finally returning to Cairo. There, he edited classical works of Fiqh, Hadith and Usul, bringing them back into circulation. In particular, he wrote short biographies of prominent personalities of the Hanafi school of thought.

A staunch Ashari, he held a critical view of Medieval dogmatist Ibn Taymiyya. Kawthari was one of the teachers of Moroccan scholar Abdullah al-Ghumari, who would later go on to become one of Kawthari's most prominent detractors.

Mufti Muhammad Anwar Khan Qasmi, a Deobandi scholar, has recently translated many of his works into Urdu and published them in Indian academic journals and magazines. For example, al-La Madhhabiyya Qintarat al-La Diniyya, an article Kawthari wrote equating non-conformism to irreligiousness, was translated by Qasmi and published by Deoband Islamic Center in 2013 under the title of Ghayr Muqallidiyyat: Ilhad Ka Darwaza. Also, Qasmi translated Kawthari's extensive introduction to Imam Ibn `Asakir's Tabyin Kadhib al-Muftari, published by the same Center in Deoband in 2013, under the title of Islami Firqe: Eik jaiza.

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