Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c10.48

c10.48

colleges, mosques and religious edifices were built in the various parts of his dominions that it is impossible to enumerate them.”¹ For the unstinted liberality of this Sulṭān towards the learned and the cause of learning, we have the testimony of the famous savant Alberuni who flourished at this time. He could not rise in the good graces of Sulṭān Maḥmūd most probably for the political antagonism that existed between him and Maḥmūd’s chancellor Maimandī. And so, like Firdausī, he took a literary man’s mild revenge upon the Sulṭān by accusing him of “having failed in the duties of a protector of art and science imposed upon him by his royal office,” and by lavishing his praise upon his successor, in whose *régime* he could obtain his full share of royal protection and encouragement.²