Imam Ahmad Rida Khan al-Barelawi أحمد رضا خان البريلوي

Imam Ahmad Rida Khan al-Barelawi rahimahullah (1272-1340 AH / 1856-1921 CE) was a South Asian Hanafi-Maturidi scholar from Bareilly in northern India and the central figure of what became known as the Barelvi movement - the defense of traditional Sunni-Sufi orthodoxy against Wahhabi and Deobandi reformist challenges in the subcontinent. Educated under the leading Hanafi masters of nineteenth-century India and deepening his learning during Hajj at Makka, he authored more than a thousand works in Arabic, Urdu, and Persian spanning fiqh, kalam, tasawwuf, and the Prophetic sciences. Among his most celebrated works is al-Dawla al-Makkiyya bi-l-Madda al-Ghaybiyya, a treatise on the Prophet's knowledge of the unseen composed during his stay in Makka for Hajj in 1323 AH and presented before the scholars assembled there. His al-Mu'taqad al-Muntaqad ma'a al-Mu'tamad al-Mustanad and Anwar al-Mannan are further major contributions to the Sunni-Maturidi theological tradition.