SCHOLARLY BOUQUET

Professor Aziz Ahmad (1913-1978) wrote extensively on Indian Islam in the nine¬teenth and twentieth centuries. His two major works—Islamic Culture in the Indian Environ¬ment and Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan—are excellent examples of his scholarship and depth of understanding. While the for¬mer surveyed various trends in Indian Islam from around the ninth century onwards, the latter closely identified the landmarks of religious and political thought from 1857 to the mid-1970s. Few histo-rians in Pakistan have matched his grasp of detail, his under¬standing of the forces of con¬flict and cohesion in Indian Islam, and his rigorous analy¬sis of the nature and character of the Indian Muslim commu¬nity. Besides, as Ralph Russell points out in his essay, Aziz Ahmad was an example of a scholar who united a thorough knowledge and a critical appreciation of his native traditions with the ability to view them through truly modern eyes and to a consi¬derable extent to write frank¬ly of what he saw and what he concluded.