Eight Evenings in Madras
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Welcome. In the autumn of 1925, in the southern Indian city of Madras, a hall filled with listeners for eight evenings in a row. Students, teachers, businessmen, and curious visitors of many faiths.
They had come to hear a scholar from the north, Sayyid Sulaiman Nadvi. He was the beloved student of the great historian Shibli Nu’mani, and he had spent years completing his teacher’s famous biography of the Prophet ﷺ.
The organisers asked him to speak about the life of the Prophet ﷺ in a way that modern, educated listeners could understand and test for themselves.
So he did not simply tell stories. He asked a question. If humanity needs a model, a perfect example to follow, what must that model look like? And then, evening by evening, he showed his listeners how the life of Muhammad ﷺ answers that question.
These eight lectures became one of the most loved books in the Urdu language. Let us sit in that hall and listen.
