Scholars of Indian Subcontinent holding Equal Grasp over Traditional as well as Rational Sciences: A Descriptive and Inductive Study

Abstract

One of the characteristics of Islamic civilization is that it fulfilled the requirements of spirit and substance including the requirements of faith and knowledge and balanced them in an equitable manner. This feature gave rise to the fact that many Islamic scholars have emerged in various countries of the Islamic world throughout the ages, enjoying expertise over traditional as well rational sciences equally. They had devoted their potentials to, and became experts in various disciplines such as medicine, engineering, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and physics. It can be corroborated by the information available in the books of biography. So doing, they proved for the entire world that Islam is the religion of civilization, knowledge, revival, development, and prosperity and not the religion of backwardness and extremism as asserted by many peoples. A great number of Hadith experts have emerged in Indian subcontinent enjoying equal grasp over traditional and rational sciences and they occupied highest places by contributing distinguished services in form of books/articles writing and teaching to a great number of disciples.  This article sheds lights on the lives of such scholars highlighting their academic works with reference to their eminent contributions in rational and traditional sciences. The author adopted hybrid methodology; namely the inductive method and the descriptive one. The inductive method is employed for tracing and gathering information concerning the Hadith scholars in the biographical and history books while descriptive method has been adopted for unfolding their distinctive works in the fields of rational as well as traditional sciences. The article ends with concluding remarks.