South Asian Islamic Education in the Precolonial, Colonial, and Postcolonial Periods (original) (raw)

This chapter surveys the history of Islamic education in South Asia from the 1300s to the present day. It discusses the importance of Sufi masters in spreading Islamic teaching through both oral and written means when South Asia was under Muslim rule. The Sufi master-disciple relationship was also a template for the training of religious scholars ('ulama). In the eighteenth century, Delhi became an intellectual hub due to the influence of the Sunni reformer Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762) and his successors, their madrasa being famous for the study of prophetic traditions (hadith). With the onset of British rule in 1858, Muslim religious education changed decisively by adopting new institutional features borrowed from British models. The purpose of madrasa education also changed. No longer intended as a means of training future administrators for Muslim states, the Dar al-'Ulum, Deoband, the leading center of Sunni Muslim education in North India, and other madrasas focused on cultural preservation, training 'ulama who could provide guidance to the Muslim public in matters related to everyday life through the dissemination of juristic rulings (fatwas). Today, madrasas offer some secular