Azurda (Sadr al-Din Khan)

Sadr al-Din Khan b. Lutf Allah, known as Azurda, an Indian writer of Kashmiri extraction, was born at Delhi in 1204 AH (1789). He learnt the traditional sciences from Shah 'Abd al-'Aziz and Shah 'Abd al-Qadir, and the rational sciences from Fadl-i Imam of Khayrabad, whom he succeeded in 1243 AH (1827) as the last grand mufti and sadr al-sudur of imperial Delhi. He was a great authority on the Urdu language; poets such as Ghalib and Mu'min often asked his opinion on their compositions. Before the Mutiny his house in Matiya Mahal, Delhi, was the favourite meeting-place of scholars and poets, and he was the first in India to prescribe the diwan of al-Mutanabbi as a course of study. ¹

Suspected of complicity in the Mutiny of 1857, he was gaoled; his property, including his large private library, was confiscated and auctioned, and after his release his property, though not his library, was restored to him. Before his appointment as sadr al-sudur he had been tutor to Yusuf 'Ali Khan, ruler of Rampur (1855-65). His pupils included Siddiq Hasan Khan, Fakir Muhammad Lahori, author of the Hadaiq al-hanafiyya, and Abu l-Khayr, father of Abu l-Kalam Azad. He was struck by paralysis in 1862 and died on 24 Rabi' I 1285 AH (15 July 1868). ²

Some of his works perished in the Mutiny. They include two tracts in Arabic: the Muntaha al-maqal fi sharh hadith la tushaddu al-rihal, a refutation of the arguments of Ibn Taymiyya and others that visits to the shrines of saints and scholars are unlawful; and al-Durr al-mandud fi hukm imra'at al-majkud. He also wrote a short biographical work on Urdu poets, the Mukhtasar dar hal-i rekhta-guyan-i Hind. ²