Barakatullah Mohammad (1 results)

First edition, previously owned by historian Peter Hopkirk, with his posthumous bookplate on the front pastedown and pencil note on the front free endpaper: "By Barakatullah, who accompanied Niedermayer-Hentig secret wartime mission to Kabul, and set up anti-British Indian govt in exile there. See my On Secret Service East of Constantinople". Although well represented institutionally, this is commercially scarce. The Khilafat or Khilafet movement was a pan-Islamic force in India "that arose in 1919 in an effort to salvage the Ottoman caliph as a symbol of unity among the Muslim community in India during the British raj. The movement was initially bolstered by Gandhi's noncooperation movement but fell apart after the abolition of the caliphate in 1924" (Ency. Brit.). An ardent supporter of pan-Islamism, the widely travelled Mohammad Barakatullah Bhopali (1854-1927) was an "anti-colonial revolutionary, intellectual, and social reformer" (Bakhle, p. 98). The Khilafet discusses the prospect of centralized Islamic rule, with chapters on finance, education, and propaganda, as well as "the person of the Khalif". Its foreword is by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1972-1953), an Indian-British barrister best known for "his monumental English translation of and commentary on the Qur'an, first published in 1934. perhaps the most widely circulated work of twentieth-century Islamic scholarship" (Sherif, pl. vii). In On Secret Service East of Constantinople Hopkirk describes Barakatullah as "a leading Muslim revolutionary. whose pre-war anti-British activities had obliged him to flee India" (p. 99) and "the Indian firebrand. who claimed to represent the aspirations of his country's Muslim millions" (p. 161). Hopkirk goes on to note that Barakatullah "was widely known throughout the Muslim world, not to mention to the British authorities. Indeed, his file in London described him as 'a highly dangerous individual' who was known to be working for the Germans" (p. 151). The Niedermayer-Hentig Expedition of 1915-16, of which he was a key part, was a diplomatic mission to Afghanistan organized by the Central Powers to undermine British India. Janaki Bakhle, Savakar and the Making of Hindutva, 2024; M. A. Sherif, A Biography of Abdullah Yusuf Ali: Interpreter of the Qur'an, 1994; Peter Hopkirk, On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire, 1994. Octavo. Half-tone photographic frontispiece of the author with his facsimile signature. Original buff printed wrappers, vignette of a landscape to front. Spine ends slightly chipped, corners bumped, stain to rear wrapper, light toning and some foxing internally: a very good copy.