Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c12.s4: 4. The Kingdom of Gulkandah
Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c12.s4
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4. The Kingdom of Gulkandah
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In the royal dynasty of Gulkandah, the name of Muḥammad Qulī Quṭb Shāh stands high for his encouragement of education. In the middle of Ḥaidarābād, he built an elegant masjid and the *Chahār Minār*—the latter structure being a quadrangle with four arcades, each arch occupying the whole space between the minarets at its corners. Over the middle, there is a dome under which a fountain plays with its jets of clear water. Each minaret about 220 feet in height contains apartments for the use of the professors and students of the college there. It is one of the most splendid buildings in the city, and a brilliant specimen of Saracenic architecture. This college was seen by Thevenot the traveller, who visited India about 1666 A.D., and has admired it in his
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¹ Ferishta vol. iii, pp. 206, 207.
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work.¹ Besides this madrasah the king built several other colleges and public seminaries, all of which were properly furnished, and for which learned professors with liberal remunerations for their services were appointed.² One of the colleges stood in the vicinity of Ḥaidarābād.³
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¹ Thevenot's *Travels into the Levant*, Part iii, p. 95.
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² Ferishta vol. iii, p. 452; Caine's *Picturesque India*, p. 464; Maulawī 'Abdul 'Azīz's *Azīzi-Dakhan*, p. 20, gives the date of the establishment of Chahār Minār as 998 A.H. (1591 A.D.); see also *Oriental Annual* (1840), by T. Bacon, p. 168; and Fergusson's *Architecture at Bijāpūr*, p. 48.
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³ Ferishta vol. iii, p. 483.
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Over and above the bigger colleges, there were in Southern India the primary schools which were held in the houses of the masters. Shoberl gives some graphic details of these institutions :—
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The pupils sit cross-legged on a bench or on the floor. They write on paper with reed pens, or with tubes of some other kind. The paper mostly imported from China is not so good as that of Europe. It is smooth, very thin and easily tears.
The *Qur'ān*, he further informs us, " is chiefly read by the Musalmāns who also study the Persian language. Ṭīpū Ṣāhib, the last sovereign of Mysore, understood several oriental languages, and possessed a *library* enriched with all sorts of European and Eastern works."⁴
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⁴ Shoberl's *Hindustan in Miniature*, vol. iv, pp. 215, 216.