Kifayatullah Dehlvi

He was born at Shahjahanpur in present-day Uttar Pradesh in 1875, into a family that had moved there from Bhopal; his father Inayatullah was poor, and the young Kifayatullah covered his own study expenses by weaving and selling caps ¹. The Urdu biography pairs his birth year itself: 1292 AH with 1875 ². He began at a local maktab, continued at Madrasa Azeeziya and at Madrasa Shahi in Moradabad, and enrolled at Darul Uloom Deoband in 1895, completing his studies in 1898 at the age of twenty-two with the highest marks in his examinations ¹. The Arabic biography names his teachers as Abd al-Ali al-Miruthi, Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri and Mahmud Hasan Deobandi ³, and the Urdu biography's teacher list likewise includes Mahmud Hasan ².

After graduating he taught at Madrasa Ainul Ilm in Shahjahanpur, where he also began answering fatwas and founded the monthly Al Burhan against Qadiani beliefs ¹. He then moved to Delhi as a teacher at Madrasa Aminia, implemented reforms in its curriculum, founded a debating assembly for the students, and in time became the madrasa's rector ¹. Over some fifty years he answered hundreds of thousands of fatwas, prized for their concision and their carefully written evidence; the courts of law preferred his rulings in religious cases, and his collected fatwas were published as Kifayat al-Mufti ¹³.

He was appointed the first, interim president of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind at its foundation in November 1919, and after Mahmud Hasan Deobandi's death became its second president on 6 September 1921, serving until 7 June 1940 ¹. He was a founding member of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, sitting on its foundation committee under Mahmud Hasan ¹. He drafted a fatwa recommending a boycott of British goods that was signed by around five hundred Muslim scholars ¹.

The English article's lead describes him in text as a Hanafi jurist ¹, the Urdu article's lead does the same ², and the Arabic biography carries al-Hanafi in his lineage ³. The English article's infobox gives his denomination as Sunni, his jurisprudence as Hanafi and his creed as Maturidi ¹; Wikidata records his religion as Islam only ⁴. The museum's data record sets out exactly how these attestations combine, and what rests on the infobox alone.

His best-known publication is Ta'limul Islam, four volumes of questions and answers in simple language for children and adults; his fatwas form Kifayat al-Mufti, and his early Arabic poem Raudur Rayyaahin appeared in 1909 ¹.

In his final years he withdrew from politics; he died of a liver illness on 31 December 1952 — a date the Urdu biography pairs as 13 Rabi' al-thani 1372 AH ² — and was buried at Mehrauli in Delhi near Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, his funeral attended by a hundred thousand people ¹.

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