It was about twenty or twenty-one years back, I was a student of class four in a well-known religious institution. In the quarterly examinations of our madrasah, I was given prize of books on our result day. This prize included one book, "Ahsan-ul-Fatawa Vol. iv". It was later learnt that there is a Mufti Sahib in Nazimabad whose collection of Fatawa, volume four, has been published and this book has been sent as Hadiya to the Talaba. Those who brought the book and other students of the madrasah told a lot about Mufti Sahib. I was specially told that Mufti Sahib emphasizes more on practical reformation than imparting educational training. I was also told that Mufti Sahib is expert in the art of 'cudgel' and every morning he takes students to a nearby garden and teaches the tactics of cudgeling. This thing stuck to my mind and I vowed that if my luck allowed, I would present myself before Mufti Sahib. Now when I look in the past I find myself in a fix while selecting one of the qualities of Mufti Sahib to discuss and why only one quality of Mufti Sahib (art of cudgel) influenced me the most? May be the reason that normally ulama and religious people never had any connection with such things, however, according to our ancestors, Ulama-e-Keram used to be expert in Tibb, calligraphy and art of cudgel before the partition of subcontinent. And now when this quality was seen in the personality of Hazrat-e-Wala, that left a strong impression on the mind. This also increased the desire of meeting of Hazrat-e-Wala. In short, after a couple of years, a group of students of our madrasah opted to pay a visit to Hazrat-e-Wala. We went to the court of Hazrat-e-Wala. Enchantment of everything there impressed us a lot that left an unknown impression on our minds and so we never came out of this impression. May be the moment I had vowed to see Hazrat-e-Wala was the moment of acceptance near Allah Almighty. Gradually we started paying frequent visits to Hazrat-e-Wala and later the time came when we belonged this institution only. With the passage of time a lot of qualities of Hazrat-e-Wala came to the fore that are normally not found in any other personality. Allah Ta'ala had created him a multi-faceted character such as are seldom bom in this world. Allah creates such people very rarely and assigns them with special task as was assigned to Mufti Sahib.

In the columns below we will discuss a few qualities of Hazrat-e-Wala which were the identity of Mufti Sahib and are more than enough for people to learn a lot from them:

* Diligence in salat and recitation of Holy Qur'an: I was told by various of my colleagues that they had been in the Darul Ifta for the last fifteen or more years and they never saw Hazrat-e-Wala not coming before the Takbir-e-Oola. He was always present in the Salat congregation before the Takbir-e-Oola. He paid great attention to the Sunnah and appearance of salat. After the Salat he used to ask who moved the hand during Salat, and this way many a people used to get lesson that moving hand or any other such manoeuvre in the Salat is not allowed. He was so anxious of listening recitation of Holy Qur'an and his state during the recitation used to make people concentrate on the recitation too. People around him and those who knew him always followed Sunnah and offered Salat with full concentration. This was all because of his better ways of teachings.

Investigation and reaching to the depth of any matter was in his nature. He spent a lot of his time in investigating various educational problems and finding their solutions in the light of Sunnah. This nature of Hazrat-e-Wala became his identity. Moreover, solving the problems of students and holding proceedings of cases of Talaba on various issues was also one of his qualities. (Questioning students to correct their nature and other habits and punish them appropriately on their mistakes was named as proceeding in his court)

* Hazrat-e-Wala was so punctual in doing things. Doing work at set tunes was also in his nature. Every single moment he spent according to pre-set schedule. Besides writing, and reformatory works, his personal life was also balanced and so organized. He was punctual in time while carrying out any responsibility. He always paid due importance to time. Our ancestors used to pay a great deal of attention to saving time and some of them were extremely cautious and famous in this regard. There are a number of books on these issues in our libraries, which can be referred anytime. It would not be an exaggeration that seeing Hazrat-e-Wala people could have set their watches by arrival and departure. Almighty Allah had given him such a health and strength that his schedules were never disturbed on health grounds.

A highly respectable personality told me that Hazrat-e-Wala's normal schedule were never disturbed even on Eid or any other important occasion. This fact is proved from his many writings where Hazrat-e-Wala mentioned date and 'Yaum-ul-Fitr' or Yaum-ul-Nahr' under his signatures. This was of course a blessing of Allah Almighty for Hazrat-e-Wala.