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40 CHAPTER 2she tells us little about what sorts of work the ‘ulama were actuallywritingand publishing on hadith.Though it is hard to know it from Metcalf’s work on the earlyhistoryof the Deobandi ‘ulama, South Asian ‘ulama have continued to write ambitiouscommentaries throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 13The commentaries that I consider in this chapter are the sort of “elitist”works that onlya handful of the leading ‘ulama have produced. There islittle evidence of such works among modern Sunni ‘ulama outside SouthAsia, though several of those produced in South Asia have been published,in some cases repeatedly, in the Middle East. 14 Yet these writings sufficeto illustrate a significant and continuing intellectual tradition. Manyofthese writings are, no doubt, “ponderous and repetitive,” but theyserveimportant functions for the ‘ulama even when theyappear to us as “sterile.”What are these functions? How has the technologyof print affectedthe commentaries? How do such works relate to the ‘ulama’s other writings?And how do their writings help construct their religious authority?The Commentary as PolemicScholars from among the Ahl-i Hadith were at the forefront of those writingand publishing on hadith in the late nineteenth and earlytwentiethcenturies. 15 The adherents of this movement had some affinitywith theWahhabis of the Arabian peninsula and, like the latter, admired the workof Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328); the Ahl-i Hadith were also influenced by theworks of two eighteenth-centuryscholars, al-Shawkani (d. 1839) ofYemen and Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762) of northern India, both of whomhad contributed significantlyto the studyof hadith and had emphasizedthe necessityof ijtihad. 16 Conscious of the need to demonstrate their owncompetence and authority, to show the authenticity of their understandingof the true faith, and, not least, to forge ties with religious scholars ofthe Middle East, manyof the more prominent scholars of the Ahl-i Hadithoften wrote in the Arabic language. 17 Undoubtedlythe most prolific ofthese was Siddiq Hasan Khan (d. 1890), the Azhar-educated husband ofthe ruler of the princelystate of Bhopal in northern India. 18 In additionto his own writings on hadith, Qur’an exegesis, law, and a vast bodyofsectarian, polemical literature, he also arranged for manyclassical worksof hadith—including the Fath al-bari, Ibn Hajar’s (d. 1449) classic commentaryonal-Bukhari’s (d. 870) Sahih, and al-Shawkani’s (d. 1839) Naylal-awtar—to be published and widelydisseminated. 19 He is reported tohave had agents in Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Jeddah, Constantinople,and other important intellectual centers of Islam who were responsiblefor introducing and disseminating his own works (and those published