Ahmad Yar Khan Naeemi

Mufti Ahmed Yaar Khan Naeemi was a Sunni Islamic scholar, commentator, jurist and Sufi from the Indian subcontinent, honoured with the title Hakim al-Ummat; he is known above all for Tafsir Naeemi, his comprehensive eleven-volume exegesis of the Qur'an.¹ The Arabic article, drawn from the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute's Encyclopaedia of Islamic Civilisation, gives his years as 1324–1391 AH / 1904–1971 CE.²

The English article states that he was born in the month of Shawwal in the year 1894 to Muhammad Yar Khan in the district of Budaun, Uttar Pradesh.¹ The Urdu biography is more candid about the muddle: it headlines 1 March 1894 paired with 4 Jumada al-Ula 1324 AH — a Hijri date that converts to 1906, not 1894 — and its birth section records both a Shawwal 1314 AH birth, from Kokab's Hayat-e-Salik, and a 1324 AH / 1906 CE reading supported by three printed biographies.³ The record follows the two articles' headline date and preserves all the readings here rather than choosing silently.

He began his education under his father until the age of ten; in 1916 he attended Madrasa Shamsul Uloom in Budaun, studying until 1919, then went to Moradabad and studied at Jamia Naeemia Moradabad under Maulana Qader Bakhsh Budauni and others, meeting Imam Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi in this period.¹ The Arabic article likewise names his teachers as his father, Qadir Bakhsh al-Badauni at Shamsul Uloom, and Muhammad Naeem al-Muradabadi and Mushtaq Ahmad al-Kanpuri at Jamia Naeemia.² After completing his studies he taught and issued fatwas in India, then moved to Pakistan; the Urdu article traces his teaching at Jamia Naeemia Moradabad, at Dhoraji in Kathiawar, at Kachhocha Sharif, and then in Gujrat, where he taught for some twelve or thirteen years at Darul Uloom Khuddam-us-Sufia and ten years with Anjuman Khuddam-ur-Rasool, and wrote all his books save Ilm al-Miras during his Gujrat years.³

His works include Tafsir Naeemi in eleven volumes, the one-volume Tafsir Noor-ul-Irfan, Mirat al-Manajih, his eight-volume commentary on the Mishkat al-Masabih, Naeem al-Bari, his commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari, Ja al-Haq — in which the beliefs and practices of Ahl al-Sunnah wa'l-Jama'ah are presented with scholarly and logical arguments — Fatawa Naeemiya, Ilm al-Miras on inheritance law, Diwan-e-Salik and Saltanat-e-Mustafa.¹ The English article's legacy section states that he was the follower and caliph of Syed Naeem-ud-din Qadri Moradabadi and that he established Madrasa Ghausia Naeemia, teaching there until the end of his life.¹

He died on 3 Ramadan 1391 AH, corresponding to 24 October 1971, in Gujrat, Pakistan, where his shrine is located.¹ The Urdu article gives the same date and adds that his grave is in Gujrat city.³

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