THE WISDOM
FUND
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The Madrasas of Delhi, India
by William Dalrymple
[William Dalrymple's article on the madrasas of Pakistan was awarded the prize
for Best Print Article of the Year at the 2005 FPA Media Awards. In 2007, The
Last Moghal won the prestigous Duff Cooper Prize for History and Biography.]
Colonel William Sleeman, famous for his suppression of the Thugs and a leading
critic of the administration of the Indian courts, had to admit that the
madrasa education given in Delhi was something quite remarkable: "Perhaps
there are few communities in the world among whom education is more generally
diffused than among Muhammadans [Muslims] in India," he wrote on a visit
to the Mughal capital.
"He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his
sons an education equal to that of a prime minister. They learn, through the
medium of Arabic and Persian languages, what young men in our colleges learn
through those of Greek and Latin-that is grammar, rhetoric, and logic. After
his seven years of study, the young Muhammadan binds his turban upon a head
almost as well filled with the things which appertain to these branches of
knowledge as the young man raw from Oxford-he will talk as fluently about
Socrates and Aristotle, Plato and Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna; (alias
Sokrat, Aristotalis, Alflatun, Bokrat, Jalinus and Bu Ali Sena); and, what is
much to his advantage in India, the languages in which he has learnt what he
knows are those which he most requires through life."
The reputation of Delhi madrasas was certainly sufficient to inspire the young
poet Altaf Husain Hali to flee his marriage in Panipat and walk the 53 miles to
Delhi, alone and penniless and sleeping rough, in an attempt to realise his
dream of studying in the famous colleges there: "Everyone wanted me to
look for a job," he wrote later, "but my passion for learning
prevailed." Delhi was after all a celebrated intellectual centre, and in
the early 1850s it was at the peak of its cultural vitality. It had six famous
madrasas and at least four smaller ones, nine newspapers in Urdu and Persian,
five intellectual journals published out of the Delhi College, innumerable
printing presses and publishers, and no fewer than 130 Yunani doctors. Here
many of the new wonders uncovered by Western science were being translated for
the first time into Arabic and Persian, and in the many colleges and madrasas
the air of intellectual open-mindedness and excitement was palpable.
But the biggest draw of all were the poets and intellectuals, men such as
Ghalib, Zauq, Sahbai and Azurda: "By some good fortune." wrote Hali,
"there gathered at this time in the capital, Delhi, a band of men so
talented that their meetings and assemblies recalled the days of Akbar and Shah
Jahan." Hali's family tracked him down eventually, but before they found
him, and hauled him back to married life in the mofussil (provinces), he was
able to gain admittance in the "very spacious and beautiful" madrasa
of Husain Bakhsh and to begin his studies there: "I saw with my own eyes
this last brilliant glow of learning in Delhi," he wrote in old age,
"the thought of which now makes my heart crack with regret."--William
Dalrymple, "The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty," Knopf (March 27,
2007), p.90-91
MORE at http://www.twf.org/News//Y2008/0106-Mughal.html
