Al-Qaidah Al-Nooraniyyah Large Size

One of my early childhood memories is sitting cross-legged on the floor repeating nonsense sounds after my Quran teacher, as he pointed along a row of letters in a book, “Baa, Bee, Boo! Taa, Tee, Too! Thaa, Thee, Thoo!”

The Messenger ﷺ informs us that the best people are those who learn the Quran and teach it. In South Asia, as well as in Western schools that follow the South Asian system of Islamic education, the Noorani Qaidah is the most widely-used textbook for teaching novices how to read the Quran in Arabic. It is a simple primer that introduces the student to letter combinations gradually increasing in complexity, and also incorporates exercises in basic, practical Tajweed. The author of the book, Noor Muhammad al-Haqqani, was a talented Islamic scholar and visionary educator of the 19^th century, a short biography of whom is the subject of this article.

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Maulana Noor Muhammad al-Haqqani was born in 1856 in pre-Partition India in the town of Mangat, part of the Ludhiana district in the province of Punjab. He obtained his primary education there, after which he traveled to the city of Saharanpur to pursue a study of the Shariah under Maulana Muhammad Mazhar al-Nanautwi. He learned Hadith at the hands of Maulana Ahmad Ali al-Saharanpuri. He also pursued sacred knowledge in the cities of Delhi, Kanpur, and Lucknow. He was a contemporary of Shaykh al-Hind Mahmud al-Hasan, Maulana Khalil Ahmad al-Saharanpuri, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi, and other second-generation scholars of Dar al-Ulum Deoband.

Promoting education among the Muslim public was Maulana Noor’s lifelong passion. He published a newspaper called “Noorun Ala Noor” (Light Upon Light), and founded a printing press called “Matba’ah Haqqaniyyah” (Haqqani Press), thereby promoting literacy among the masses. He was also a passionate advocate of Islamic education for women. He undertook the management of a religious college for girls that his father had built. Maulana Noor originally named it Madrasah Haqqaniyyah and set upon developing a modern educational methodology for it. The school received tremendous praise from the most eminent educators of the time. They all agreed that Maulana Noor had provided the Muslims of India with an exemplary model school. Many branches of the school later opened. As for the original school, its name was later changed to Madrasah Umm al-Madaris.

Maulana Noor composed numerous books, some of which—such as the Noorani Qaidah—have achieved a high degree of acceptance among the Muslims. In the Noorani Qaidah, the Maulana carefully selected words and letter combinations that appear frequently in the Quran in order to familiarize the student with the Quran’s literary style. The unique educational methodology he adopts in his writings, which focuses on practical application rather than mere theoretical comprehension, raises him to the level of the senior educators of the era.

Maulana Noor Muhammad al-Haqqani – may Allah have mercy on him – passed away in 1925. After his passing, the running of the school was entrusted to his youngest son, the honorable Ahmad Hasan – may Allah have mercy on him. Upon the Partition, the school moved from India to Pakistan in city of Faisalabad where it exists today under the direction of his grandchildren.

I ask that the reader supplicates for the forgiveness and acceptance of Maulana Noor Muhammad al-Haqqani—and that Allah instills in all of us his passion for empowerment through education. Indeed, we are obliged to do so, for if you happen to have learned to read the Quran using his Noorani Qaidah, then he is in a very real sense your first Quran teacher.

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[1] In writing this article, I relied heavily on the Arabic article, “al-Taʿrīf bi-Mu’allif al-Qāʿidah al-Nūrāniyyah,” by Maulana Noor’s granddaughter Umm Salman Fatimah, daughter of Ahmad Hasan. Although I was not able to locate the original version of this article, it is widely available on various websites throughout the internet, and its content seems to correlate well with the entry on the Maulana that appears in the well-known biographical encyclopedia, Nuzhat al-Khawāṭir by Maulana Abd al-Hayy al-Husayni al-Laknawi (entry no. 542).

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