Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Michael Gilsenan, Recognizing Islam: 

Religion and Society in the Modern Arab World (New 

York: Random House, 1982); Edward Reeves, The Hid-

den Government: Ritual, Clientelism, and Legitimation 

in Northern Egypt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah 

Press, 1990); Edward Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in 

Morocco. 2 vols. (New York: University Books, 1968).

Barelwi, Sayyid Ahmad

 

(Bareilly, 

Brelwi)

 

(1786–1831)  militant religious revivalist 

leader in North India

Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi was born to a prominent 

family of 

sayyid

s (descendants of m

Uhammad

) in 

Awadh province in northern i

ndia

. After moving 

to  d

elhi

, where he studied with the son of the 

Muslim reformer Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762), he 

served in the cavalry of a Muslim ruler in central 

India for seven years (1811–18). In 1822, Sayyid 

Ahmad went on the 

haJJ

 to m

ecca

. When he 

returned to India, he combined reformist Islamic 

ideas with his military experience to launch a 

movement that quickly migrated from Delhi to 

Bengal and ultimately to a

Fghanistan

, Kashmir, 

and the Punjab in northwest India.

At a time when the Mughal Empire was in 

its death throes, Sayyid Ahmad and his disciples 

sought to bring Muslims back to what he thought 

was the true Islam and lead them to greatness 

by way of a 

Jihad

 against the British, who were 

becoming more and more powerful at this time. In 

his teachings, he called upon Muslims to give up 

un-Islamic idolatrous practices and return to the 

simple monotheism of the q

Uran

 and Muham-

mad. He condemned Muslim participation in 

Hindu social and religious practices, worship at 

saint shrines, and Shii veneration of the imams. 

He and his followers thought of themselves as 

following the path of the first Muslims under 

Muhammad’s leadership, and many believed that 

Sayyid Ahmad was the “renewer” (mujaddid) 

of the age. Some even considered him to be the 

awaited m

ahdi

 (Muslim messiah). Sayyid Ahmad’s 

opponents labeled him a “Wahhabi,” a follower of 

the puritanical Saudi form of Islam, but he did not 

consider himself as such. He was more a follower 

of the teachings of Shah Wali Allah of Delhi than 

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792), the 

founder of the so-called Wahhabi movement in 

Arabia during the 18th century.

Sayyid Ahmad decided to mount his jihad 

against the British from a base in northwest India. 

In 1826, after gathering recruits from the region 

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