Maulavi Barkatullah

Abdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah, known with his honorific as Maulana Barkatullah (c. 7 July 1854 – 20 September 1927), was an anti-British Indian revolutionary with sympathy for the Pan-Islamic movement. Barkatullah was born on 7 July 1854 at Itwra Mohalla Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, India. Barkatullah fought from outside India, with fiery speeches and revolutionary writings in leading newspapers, for the independence of India. He did not live to see India free. In 1988, Bhopal University was renamed Barkatullah University in his honour.

He was educated from primary to college level at Bhopal. Later he went to Bombay and London for his higher education. He was a meritorious scholar and mastered seven languages: Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Turkish, English, German, and Japanese. Despite a poor background he topped the list of successful candidates in most of the examinations for which he appeared, both in India and England. He became the Quondam Professor of Urdu at the Tokyo University Japan.

At the age of twelve he lost his father, Munshi Shaikh Kadaratullah, who was employed in the service of Bhopal State. Barakatullah “was a very clever youth, (who) left home about 1883 and was employed as a tutor in Khandwa and later in Bombay,” notes J.C. Ker. In 1887 he came to London, giving private lessons in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, while himself learning German, French, and Japanese. He was invited by the British Muslim Abdullah Quilliam to work at the Liverpool Muslim Institute. While there he got to know Sirdar Nasrullah Khan of Kabul, brother of the Amir. He reportedly kept the Amir informed about English affairs in India, issuing a weekly newsletter to the Amir’s agent at Karachi from 1896 to 1898. He left for the United States in 1899.

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