The spiritual head of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) and a renowned scholar Maulana Hamdullah Jan died. He was 104. Also known as Dagai Sheikh among his pupils and followers, he was born in 1914 at Dagai in Swabi district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. His father Allama Abdul Hakeem and uncle Maulana Muhammad Sadiq had studied at Deoband religious seminary where veteran anti-British colonialism Maulana Mehmoodul Hasan Deobandi aka Sheikh-ul-Hind, was their teacher and Anwar Shah Kashmiri was a classmate.
According to the family, Maulana Hamdullah Jan received his early education from his father and uncle at Swabi and later went to Deoband seminary in India where he had studied under another known anti-imperialism leader Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni. However, his stay at Deoband was not too long as he had been shifted to Jamia Mazahirul Uloom at Saharanpur in Delhi to study Hadith from one of the founders of Tableeghi Jamaat Maulana Zakaria and from Maulana Abdur Rehman Kamilpuri.
Maulana Hamdullah Jan completed his study of Hadith from there in 1947.
Then, he began teaching Quran and Hadith. Apart from that, he was known as a spiritual teacher of the four classes of sulook, Sufism (the sort of Islamic mysticism), but within the ambit of Shariah.
The Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar had invited him to teach in Afghanistan.