Traditions of Islamicate Learning In Mughal India

Undergraduate / Graduate

An introduction to the contexts, methods, and aims of Islamic education in late-Mughal South Asia in the decades immediately prior to European colonisation. Our central focus is an 18th century 'curriculum': a list of books that were read by a student of a famous madrasa in late-Mughal Delhi. Although madrasas are now widely considered to be places of strictly 'religious' education, our curriculum reveals the wide range of disciplines a student was expected to know. As well as subjects like Qurʾānic commentary and Islamic jurisprudence, students learned Arabic and Persian grammar, ethical texts, Sufism, Hellenistic philosophy, logic, medicine, martial arts, mathematics and geometry, poetry, accounting and secretarial skills, astronomy, as well as alchemical and occult sciences. We will learn with our Mughal-era student, moving through the disciplines that he studied - progressing from the introductory aspects of his education to more advanced subjects. As we go, we will read a wide range of Arabic and Persian primary sources in translation. We will consider what it meant to learn, the contexts in which learning took place, as well as the modes of ethical comportment that education entailed. We will also consider the changing nature of the madrasa curriculum against the background of the volatile political and social climate of 18th century Mughal South Asia. We will also examine the reformist ideas that were challenging classical educational paradigms in this period.