A brief overview of the life of Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab

By Amin Osman

(October 2021, Mauritius)

 

The interior courtyard of the Jummah Masjid, Port Louis, Mauritius
(Picture: Karsten Ratzke via Wikimedia Commons)

Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab was born in Mecca, in today's Saudi Arabia, in 1883. He went to India to study Islam for some years and married a Muslim Indian girl before coming to Mauritius to work as Imam of the Jummah Masjid in 1915 at the age of 32 years. After working for a number of years, he went back to India to seek help for the Muslim community. He was partially successful and in 1924, he returned to Mauritius. He was so concerned about the poor education of the Muslims generally that he left the Jummah Mosque to devote himself totally to improve their education.

The Maulana had two sons: Mohammud Abid and Abdul Hamid. They went to Saudi Arabia later and his nephew Ismail Nawwab came to stay with him to attend college at Port Louis.

Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab founded the Muslim Educational Society in 1924 and opened the Muslim High School. His close collaborators at that time were Abdool Gaffoor Abdool Raman, Goolab Malleck Amode, Dr. Hassenjee Joomye and Osman Aumeeruddy. 

The building housing the Muslim High School was the property of the Surtee Sunnee Musalman Society (SSMS) which kindly put it at the Maulana's disposal by Goolam M .Dawjee Atchia, the then president of the SSMS. The property was located in Port Louis at corner Dauphine Street and Corderie Street. The Maulana was conveniently lodged in a house belonging to the Noordally family which was living next at Dauphine Street, where now stands the Muslim Girls College in a new building.

 

Close to Haroun Nahaboo and Abdoollatif Osman

In 1951, Haroun Nahaboo accompanied Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab to the World Islamic Conference in Karachi, Pakistan. Unfortunately, soon after his return, the Maulana fell ill and peacefully passed away in July, during the month of Ramadan, at the age of 68 years. He was buried at the Riche Terre Muslim Cemetery. He was a respected scholar of Urdu and Arabic languages and he reorganized the teaching of Urdu. He got some students to study Urdu and Islam and they were housed in a Boarding School in the same building of the Muslim High School. That was a successful project.
 

Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab wrote a poem in Urdu sounding the alarm against the spread of Ahmadiyyat and Les croyances obligatoires was translated into French from English by Gaffoor Raman. It is worth mentioning that while he was Imam of the Jummah Mosque, he appeared in the Supreme Court in Frebuary1919 in the case which lasted two years, Hanafi Sunnis v/s Ahmaddiyas, as the main witness and finally, the Sunnis won the case.

On a personal note, I wish to say that he was a friend of my brother Abdoollatif Mahomed Osman and he was present at the funeral of my father, Mahomed Osman, in 1948 at 12 Hyderabad Street, Plaine Verte, Port Louis. I was a friend of Yousouf Noordally who was the Maulana's neighbour and we went to visit him quite often. He had an outstanding personality which I admired.

 

Ismail Nawwab

The Muslim Educational Society which built the new Madrassah near the Citadelle Hill (Port Louis) a few years ago, invited the son of the late Maulana and I had the privilege to meet him at the Inauguration Ceremony. I was in contact,thro' email these last years until his demise with the Maulana's nephew Ismail who had Mohamad Vayid as friend at Edinburgh University.

Ismail Nawwab stayed in Mauritius, after coming from Arabia, until the demise of his uncle. Ismail passed the General Certificate of Education (GCE) A-level and worked at the Islamic College for some time. Then, three benefactors (Abdool Rawoof Joomye, Cajee Mahmood and Hakeem Abdool Razaqque) generously financed his university studies at Edinburgh. Unfortunately, Ismail did not come back to Mauritius after Scotland but went to Malaysia for postgraduate studies. He then went back to Saudi Arabia, got married and begot two daughters: Nimah and Nesreen. I kept contact with his daughter Nimah, a world renown poetess of English language ...

In 1926, Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab set up in Port Louis the Free Tuition Muslim High School catering up to the Seventh Standard. According to Aunuth Beejadhur, with 600 pupils, of whom 200 girls, it was the biggest and most important of the country’s then 60 such private institutions. His closest collaborators included his former students as A. Gaffoor A. Rahman, Goolab Malleck Goolab Ahmad, Tayyab Tegally and Osman Aumeeruddy. “As subsidiary languages, Urdu, Arabic and Persian are taught. The girls, besides embroidery and sewing, are taught English, French and Oriental languages.”

In the early 1900s, Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab (1883-1951), of Saudi Arabia, who was the Imam of the Jummah Mosque (1915-1921), promoted Islamic teaching and learning in Mauritius. Versed in religion, Arabic, Urdu and Persian as well as a writer and educationist, who was also hakim (traditional medical doctor), he conceived the Muslim Educational Society (MES) in the 1940s. He is remembered for preparing for the madrassas a curriculum of studies which he left after his death in Mauritius itself.

(Chit Dukhira, Indians in India, Mauritius and South Africa, Osman Publishing, Mauritius, 2013, p. 341, p. 346 )

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Amin Osman is the son of Mahomed Osman.

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