Sayyid Ahmad Khan

Indian Islamic scholar, educator, and writer

• Born: October 17, 1817
• Birthplace: Delhi, India
• Died: March 27, 1898
• Place of death: Alīgarh, India

Sayyid Ahmad’s theological writings summarized a number of important trends within Islamic thought and attempted to redirect religious thinking to meet the challenges of the modern European-dominated world. His religious views were too controversial to be widely influential, but in the field of education he founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, and in literature he created modern Urdu prose.

Early Life

Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan was an exceptional man born into an exceptional family. Although custom in well-to-do Indian families required brides to move in with their husbands’ parents, Sayyid Ahmad’s mother was the favorite daughter of a wealthy and distinguished man who wanted her to remain in his home. Sayyid Ahmad’s father enjoyed high status as a descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad, a sayyid, but he was relatively poor. Moving into his wife’s home gave him the leisure to pursue his interest in archery and swimming. In that way Sayyid Ahmad came to be reared in his maternal grandfather’s house.

The careers of grandfather and grandson resembled each other in many ways. The grandfather, Khwajah Farid ud-din Ahmad, not only held the post of chief minister in the much reduced Mughal court but also had the trust of the British, who sent him on a number of diplomatic missions. During an extended stay in Calcutta, he acted as superintendent of that city’s premier Muslim educational establishment, the Calcutta Madrasah. He enjoyed a reputation as a mathematician and astronomer.

Sayyid Ahmad’s early education took place in Khwajah Farid’s home. It involved learning the Qur՚ān and the rudiments of Persian grammar. One of his maternal uncles instructed him in mathematics. He then went to study Greek medicine (Yunani Tibb) with one of Delhi’s prominent physicians. Apart from this training, Sayyid Ahmad educated himself prodigiously in theology and history, while retaining a lifelong interest in the sciences. In addition to that small amount of formal learning, Sayyid Ahmad absorbed a deep religious seriousness. Both his mother’s and his father’s families were connected to the noted spiritual reformers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Ahmad Sirhindī and Shah Walliullah. These men and their disciples stressed a rational approach to Islam that avoided miracle-mongering and criticized the lax behavior of the Muslim masses. They also emphasized a moral earnestness that especially affected Sayyid Ahmad’s mother. He saw dedication to high moral values as her chief legacy to him.

Life’s Work

In 1838, the year of his father’s death, Sayyid Ahmad began attending the office of an uncle who worked as a subordinate judge for the British. Before the latter instituted examinations and educational qualifications for government employees, this was the most common way of securing appointment as an official. Sayyid Ahmad soon began ascending through the ranks of the East India Company’s judiciary. He served as a magistrate in a number of north Indian district towns before retiring in 1876.

Sayyid Ahmad’s literary career began during the 1840’s. He wrote a number of religious tracts encouraging the reform of Muslim social customs. He contributed to a newspaper published by his brother and edited a number of Persian works, such as the memoirs of the Mughal emperor Jahāngīr. In 1846, he published a unique book, Āthār assanadīd (Asar-oos-sunnadeed: A History of Old and New Rules, or Governments and of Old and New Buildings, in the District of Delhi , 1854), which described some of the famous buildings and personalities of Old Delhi. Though his early style of Urdu imitated the flowery diction and indirect discourse of Persian, throughout his life his writing became more vigorous and straightforward. Later writers considered him a model of clarity and acknowledged him as the creator of Urdu political rhetoric. His collected writings and speeches occupied nineteen volumes.

The Mutiny of 1857 had a lasting impact on Sayyid Ahmad’s activity and thought. During the conflict, he remained loyal to the British, even risking his own life to save a number of Englishmen as well as the Bijnor district’s cash box. After the uprising, a number of British officials blamed Muslims for fomenting the rebellion. Sayyid Ahmad spent the rest of his life refuting that notion, constantly reminding the government that many of India’s Muslims stood firmly for the empire. To his fellow Muslims, he repeated the message that the failure of the revolt proved that England’s way was the way of the future and that Muslims need not abandon their religion in order to adapt to the new order. He argued that in following the “new light,” they were being faithful to Islam’s highest ideals. After all, Islam’s advanced civilization had influenced that of Europe and made the Renaissance possible. The decline of his own day Sayyid Ahmad attributed to superstitions that had become commonplace only in the century or so before. Until then, Islam had been in the vanguard of human progress.

Sayyid Ahmad’s loyalty to the British and his liberal opinions about Islam brought him honors from the imperial government. In 1869, he became a commander in the Order of the Star of India, and in 1888 he received a knighthood in that fraternity. He became a member of the viceroy’s legislative council in 1878 and sat on this largely advisory body until 1883. When he visited England in 1869-1870, he was presented to Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales while mixing with London’s literary notables.

More tangible support came from a number of Sayyid Ahmad’s British friends. They encouraged his educational projects both in spirit and in various forms of government aid. When he founded a translation society to render English books, especially mathematics and science texts, into Urdu, the provincial education bureau supported the effort by buying most of the books published. At this stage of his career, Sayyid Ahmad’s efforts were not solely devoted to India’s Muslims. The Mughal gentry of his youth had many non-Muslim members. Hindus counted in their number masters of Persian and Urdu whose talents were equal or even superior to those of Muslims. Sayyid Ahmad was concerned that this entire class, the north Indian Urdu-speaking elite, was in danger of annihilation.

With the founding of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in 1875, Sayyid Ahmad labored increasingly for Muslims. He envisioned the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College to be a residential school on the model of Eton. He thought it essential that young boys be removed from the easy discipline of their homes and taught the virtues of diligence. In place of the intensely personal, but seemingly slipshod, educational methods of his own youth, Sayyid Ahmad installed the classroom and the fixed daily schedule of study, prayer, and sport, and regular academic examinations.

Many of the school’s first students came from families that combined landowning and government service. By the 1870’s, posts in the imperial bureaucracy increasingly required modern educational qualifications. The Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College provided the training in English, history, and the sciences that helped in obtaining those appointments. The majority of the school’s earliest graduates became officials or lawyers.

Throughout the latter years of his life, Sayyid Ahmad spent countless hours requesting contributions to the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College. Often his political stands were influenced by his belief that he should utter the sentiments most likely to ensure continued government support for the college. On the surface at least, his thinking became increasingly communal, urging Muslims to develop a separate political agenda. At the same time, Sayyid Ahmad was responding to an ever more assertive Hindu nationalism. When these groups demanded democracy, Sayyid Ahmad became fearful because the Muslim minority was bound to be overwhelmed by the majority community in any strictly representative system.

While pursuing his educational and political work, Sayyid Ahmad remained a social critic and theological controversialist. As publisher of the Urdu journal Tahzib ul-Akhlaq (moral reform), he had a forum in which to publicize his views on religious and moral subjects. Many religious scholars hotly opposed him, finding his thought dangerously close to pure rationalism. Many of the gentry attached to the accustomed ways in religion considered him too rational. Sayyid Ahmad held on tenaciously to his approach, but his opinions did not receive a hearing even in his own college. Many of his financial backers insisted that Sayyid Ahmad have no influence over religious instruction at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College. Less controversial men took charge of introducing the young to their faith.

The affairs of the college on which he lavished such great care made the last years of Sayyid Ahmad’s life miserable. In 1895, his chief clerk was caught embezzling considerable sums from the college’s funds. This led to confrontations between Sayyid Ahmad and one of his sons, who wanted to acquire more control over the college. On two occasions, the son ordered Sayyid Ahmad out of his own home. For a short period, he stayed in a dormitory but finally moved to the house of a longtime friend, where he died a discouraged and embittered man in March, 1898.

Significance

Within Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s lifetime, the last shadows of Mughal glory disappeared and India became the brightest diamond in Great Britain’s imperial diadem. Although his family had been attached to the Mughal court, Sayyid Ahmad’s achievements depended, in part, on his close association with the British. Although his early education had been conducted along traditional lines, he founded a college with a curriculum and discipline modeled on Great Britain’s public schools. He somehow found time to write extensively on religious and social matters, presenting a bold theological program that incorporated elements from Islam’s classical tradition and European sources. In the realm of politics, he encouraged Muslims to develop a renewed self-confidence. The Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College went on to become a university that would attract thousands of students not only from India but also from Africa and the Middle East. This university, with its many buildings clustered around Sayyid Ahmad’s grave, is his most obvious and fitting memorial.

Bibliography

Ahmad, Aziz. Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857-1964. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. This work provides an important discussion of Sayyid Ahmad and his critics. Tends to concentrate on Sayyid Ahmad’s political thought and work to the exclusion of his theology.

Ahmad, Aziz, and G. E. von Grunebaum, eds. Muslim Self-Statement in India and Pakistan. Weisbaden, Germany: Otto Harrassowitz, 1970. Because very little of the writings of India’s Muslims has been translated into English, this is a valuable anthology of their work. It contains selections from the writings of Sayyid Ahmad and a number of his contemporaries.

Hardy, Peter. The Muslims of British India. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1972. This is a fine overview of the political, social, and religious history of Muslims in the British period. Readers will find all the basic interpretive themes employed by contemporary scholars—both Euro-Americans and South Asians—introduced here. The chapter “The Medieval Legacy” is a good summary of the governmental style of the Mughals.

Lelyveld, David. Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977. This brilliantly written book evokes the lives of Muslims from the period of Sayyid Ahmad’s birth to the early years of the college. Not only is its scholarship first rate, but it also is written with a literary flair that makes it easily accessible to the nonspecialist.

Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Revival in British India. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982. While focusing on the school of theology founded at the town of Deoband during the 1860’s, Metcalf does a masterful job of describing the various groups of Muslim scholars and their divergent opinions. Covers the intellectual atmosphere of the period of Sayyid Ahmad’s maturity and provides accounts of a number of debates between him and theologians connected with the Deoband movement.

Ridgeon, Lloyd V. J. Crescents on the Cross: Islamic Visions of Christianity. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2001. Examines Sayyid Ahmad’s views on Christianity.

Robinson, Francis. Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims, 1860-1923. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1974. An encyclopedic treatment of individual Muslims, including Sayyid Ahmad, and the issues that concerned them in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contains a good description of the interplay between British imperial policy and Muslim politics.

Troll, Christian. Sayyid Ahmad Khan: A Reinterpretation of Muslim Theology. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978. Written by a trained theologian, this book reemphasizes the importance of Sayyid Ahmad’s theology. The author has a fund of knowledge of classical Islamic thought, and he connects Sayyid Ahmad’s views with it. He frequently refers to Sayyid Ahmad’s writings and provides in an appendix a translation of one of his most important works.