Qazi Mutasim Billah

Qazi Mu'tasim Billah Bahar (; 15 June 1933 – 15 July 2013) was a Bangladeshi Islamic scholar, teacher, author and politician. He was the principal of Jamia Shar'iyya Malibagh for over four decades, a former professor at the University of Dhaka and the founding principal of Jamia Islamia Darul Uloom Madania in Jatrabari, Dhaka. He has written many books and articles in the Bengali language and pioneered the introduction of a Bengali-medium among the Qawmi madrasas of Bangladesh.

Early life and family Qazi Mu'tasim Billah Bahar was born on 15 June 1933, to a Bengali Muslim family of Qadis in the village of Gopalpur in Kaliganj, Jhenaidah subdivision, which was then a part of the Bengal Presidency's Jessore District. Other sources claim that he was born in the village of Zamzampur in Jessore Sadar. His father, Qazi Sakhawat Husayn, was an Islamic scholar and politician, and his mother's name was Qurratun Nesa. His grandfather, Qazi Abdul Wadud, and great-grandfather, Qazi Rawshan Ali, were also prominent Sufis in the greater Jessore region.

Education Mu'tasim Billah's education began under his parents, and then at the Gopalpur primary school. He studied there until class 2, when he moved to his maternal home where he studied until class 4. After that, Mu'tasim Billah became a student at his father's workplace, the Lauri-Ramnagar Alia Madrasa in Manirampur where he completed his Fazil qualification. In 1953, he set off for Hindustan after Ramadan to study at the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary in Saharanpur, where he enrolled at the Faculty of Arts. In 1956, he enrolled at the Faculty of Hadith studies and gained a sanad from Hussain Ahmad Madani. Among his teachers in Deoband were Hussain Ahmed Madani, Ibrahim Balyawi, Izaz Ali Amrohi and Muhammad Tayyib Qasmi, Bashir Ahmad Khan and Jalil Ahmad Kairanvi. In Bangladesh, he studied under Tajammul Ali, Qamaruddin Silhati and Ashraf Ali Dharmanduli.

He was known to have memorised hundreds of poems in Bengali, Arabic, Urdu and Persian. Many of his works pertaining to tafsir and hadith have been published by the Islamic Foundation Bangladesh as well as annotated translations of the Qur'an and the Kutub al-Sittah. Mu'tasim Billah was also a member of the Islami Bishwakosh's editorial board. Although most of his works are in Bengali, he also wrote in the Arabic and Urdu languages. In his final year the Urdu-medium Darul Uloom Deoband, he competed in an annual writing competition where he wrote a research paper titled "Mawjuda Aalmi Kashmakash Aur Us Ka Hal". Six of his works have been published, with three remaining unpublished in Bengali, Urdu and Arabic respectively. In 2017, the Jamia Shariyyah Malibagh madrasa published a book in memory of his life and contributions.