Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi

Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi (1885 – 13 July 1944) was an Indian Islamic scholar of the Deobandi movement who founded the Tablighi Jamaat in 1925 in the Mewat region.¹ The movement he began — which he would have named Tehreek-e-Imaan, the Faith Movement — became one of the most widespread grassroots Islamic movements in the world.¹

He was born in 1303 AH (1885/1886) in the village of Kandhla in Muzaffarnagar district; his birth year is computed from the chronogram of his birth name, Akhtar Ilyas, and the English article's infobox gives 1302 AH instead.¹² He memorised the Qur'an under his father's supervision in the Nizamuddin area of Delhi and studied the elementary Arabic and Persian books mostly under his father, then lived with and studied under Rashid Ahmad Gangohi until Gangohi's death in 1905.¹² In 1908 he enrolled at Darul Uloom Deoband and studied under Mahmud Hasan Deobandi.¹³

In the early 1920s he prepared a team of young madrasah graduates from Deoband and Saharanpur and sent them to Mewat to establish a network of mosques and Islamic schools.¹² The people of South Asia began calling the devotees Tableeghi, and the name Tablighi Jamaat became popular; the movement later spread to many countries, including Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom.¹ Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi wrote his biography, Life and Mission of Maulana Mohammad Ilyas.¹

He died at Delhi on 13 July 1944 (1363 AH).¹²⁴

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