History of Education in Medieval India (1192 A.D - 1757 A.D)

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The period in Indian history from the battle of Tarain near Thaneswar in 1192 A.D. when Muhammad of Ghur from Ghazni crushed the Rajputs under Prithviraj, the powerful Chauhan king of Ajmer and Delhi, to the battle of Plassey when the English East India Company under Clive defeated Siraj-ud-daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, is generally regarded as Medieval India which is often identified with the rule of Islam Islam entered through the proverbial North-West which had in the past witnessed hordes of foreign invaders from Persia, Greece and Central Asia entering India through it. However, unlike the Persians, the Greeks, the Sakas and the Hunas who merged themselves with the Indian people accepting the latter's religion and culture, the followers of Islam who settled in their conquests in India maintained distinct social and religious identity. And one of the most significant factors which helped them to do so is undoubtedly the system of education the Islamic rulers introduced in India to meet their socio-religious and political needs and requirements.

In Ancient India education was religion and religion education but not so was the Islamic education in Medieval India. Islamic education came into existence after the Prophet Muhammad had started giving discourses on the acquisition of knowledge relating to science and literature to the Arabs after the fall of Mecca and a host of foreigners from Persia, Greece, Syria, Iraq and Africa came and gathered around him at Medina to hear him on the subject. In a sense the Prophet's teachings on the subject of knowledge formed "the nucleus of an educational institution, which after years grew into universities at Baghdad and Salerno, at Cairo and Cordova" In Islam, quite in keeping with the philosophy of the Prophet's life and teachings, acquisition of knowledge came to be looked upon as the fulfilment of the Islamic religion, which also meant the spread of the religion in the non-Islamic lands.

In Medieval India in the past the attention of scholars, both European and Indian, has been primarily focused on its political history However in the wake of political, commercial and techno- logical changes in the early decades of the last century, which have more or less affected all the civilised nations of the world, the attention of the scholars has gradually shifted from a study of political history to a study of social, cultural and economic history of Medieval India. Consequently scholars on Medieval India now approach its history not only with the object of analysing the history the Muslim rulers who ruled Medieval India but also with the object of studying the state of the society and its people, religion and culture as well as the state of the economic condition of the country. As the study of history has moved from the top to the below there has been recently a greater attempt among scholars to focus attention on the condition of the people whose names never figured in the older history books, the people who were deprived or neglected in their own time and whose participation in government was minimal or non-existent, whose attitudes towards 'authority' could be deferential or resentful, passive or hostile. Such a work is possible because of the availability of new materials other than the accounts of the contemporary Muslim chroniclers and European travellers, as, for example, the records and accounts of the various European companies which had begun to establish their trading establishments in Medieval India since the beginning of the sixteenth century after Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut on 27 May 1498.

Yet in the few available works on the cultural history of Medieval India since produced, there has been hardly any attempt at delineating the Islamic education which lay at the root of it. As early as 1915 when the concept of history was yet to be broadened, Narendra Nath Law brought out a monograph of the contributions made by the Muslim rulers, chiefs, and private individuals to promote learning and diffuse education among the people of this country" and nearly two decades after him, SM Jaffar brought out another in 1936, which despite its failure to update our knowledge on the subject after Law, was able to elaborate some of Law's sundry themes such as Urdu Needless to say that these two works have hardly had any impact on the general histories of Medieval India since written, which, as before, continue to have an account of Islamic culture without an appraisal of the Islamic education. Let us first of all have a look at Law's work, Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan rule.

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