Printing a Transregional Ṭarīqa: Haji Imdadullah Makki (d. 1899) and Sufi Contestations from Thana Bhavan to Istanbul

This article analyzes the prominence of print in the Sufi ṭarīqa of Haji Imdadullah Muhajir Makki (d. 1899), a pre-eminent Indian Chishti-Sabri shaykh who settled in the Ottoman Hijaz after escaping North India in the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny. It explores the transregional contexts of the publication of Haji Imdadullah’s works, in the long journey of his manuscripts from Mecca to their lithographic printing in North India and their distribution through Ottoman disciples as far as Istanbul. In this study two main lines of inquiry are followed. First, how did Imdadullah participate intimately from Mecca in the editing and publication of Arabic, Urdu, and Persian books in British India, including his famed commentary and critical edition of the Masnavi-yi Maʿnavi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273)? Second, the article follows the emergence of broader scholarly exchanges as a series of Istanbul-based Mevlevi shaykhs became invested in Imdadullah’s publications and even translated some from Persian to Ottoman Turkish. Ultimately, this article sheds light on how such Indian – Ottoman encounters in the Hijaz were catalyzed by a common investment in the Persianate disciplines of Sufi theology and classical Persian poetry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period typically seen as marking the shrinking and disintegration of the Persianate world. In so doing, the article highlights how modern Sufi discourse in Persian continued to facilitate intellectual exchange between Indian and Ottoman Sufi shaykhs through the Hijaz and formed an integral pillar of transregional Persianate print culture.