Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c12.s7: 7. The Kingdom of Jaunpūr
Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c12.s7
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7. The Kingdom of Jaunpūr
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While Khāndīsh was being thus raised to a high position in the literary world, Jaunpūr was becoming at the same time a great seat of learning under its famous king Ibrāhīm Sharqī.³ About this time under the Sayyids, Western Hindustan was passing through an era of confusion and anarchy. It is therefore gratifying to notice that Jaunpūr reared its head as a tower of light, shedding its lustre far and wide in spite of the successive waves of tumult and disorder that threatened to engulf it every moment. It was here that Farīd, afterwards called Shīr Shāh, received his education at one of its colleges about a century later, when Jaunpūr continued to be an educational centre. Farīd in a letter
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³ *Ibid.*, p. 363.
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to his father wrote that it was a better place of instruction than Sasarām.¹
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¹ Ferishta vol. ii, p. 100.
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Ibrāhīm Sharqī was a famous patron of literature and learning, to whom several books were dedicated by various authors.² In his time, there flourished many learned men such as Qāẓī Shahābuddīn Daulatābādī, who was called the “king of sages” by his contemporaries. After his demise, Maulānā Shaikh Ilāhdād Jaunpūrī made himself famous by his literary compositions. Another distinguished literary man was Ẓāhir Dihlawī, to whom a noble of the time of Sikandar Lūdī had given the title of Ẓāhir on account of his freshness of style. Maulānā Ḥasan Naqshī, Maulānā ’Alī Aḥmad Nishānī and Nūrul Ḥaqq were other famous literary magnates.³ Many books were written for him, e.g. *Fatāwa-Ibrāhīm-Shāhī*, *Irshād*, etc.⁴
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² *Ibid.*, vol. iv, p. 363.
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³ *’Abdul Ḥaqq Dihlawī*, Elliot vi, pp. 487 ff.
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⁴ *Ma’āsiri-Raḥīmī*, MS. in ASB, leaf 21.
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“During Ibrāhīm’s reign (1402-40 A.D.), the Court of Jaunpūr far outshone that of Delhi, and was the resort of all the learned men of the East.”⁵
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⁵ Lethbridge’s *Topography of the Mughal Empire* (transl. from the Latin of Laët), p. 53 n.
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During the reign of Fīrūz Tughlaq, the founder of the city,⁶ there lived in it many learned men
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⁶ Jaunpūr was founded by Fīrūz Tughlaq (Gladwin’s *Ā’īni-Akbarī*, p. 321). The date of its foundation according to the *Tazkiratul-’Ulamā*,
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and professors for whom Fīrūz fixed liberal stipends.¹
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¹ Jaunpūr-Nāmah, by Khairuddīn Ilāhābādī, MS. in ASB, leaf 4.
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Sulṭān Sikandar Lūdī was very cruel to the learned men of the city. After his conquest of Jaunpūr, he ordered the destruction of all the buildings of the Sharqī Nawābs of the place. At this, the learned men came to him and prayed for the cancellation of the order on the ground that there were many mosques which would be affected by his order. They expected that the reason shown by them would achieve their object and the whole order would be withdrawn. Sikandar, however, spared only the mosques, and the order remained in force in regard to the other buildings, including the madrasahs.²
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² Ibid., leaf 30.
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About the middle of the 15th century, Bībī Rājī, the wife of Maḥmūd Shāh (son of Sulṭān Ibrāhīm) built a Jāmi' Masjid, a college and a monastery, and gave them the name of Namāzgāh. She also allotted stipends for students and professors.³
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³ Ibid., leaf 33. In this MS. as well as in its translation by Pogson whom Cunningham quotes, the date of erection of the buildings is 806 A.H. (1403 A.D.), which is evidently an error. The true date according to Cunningham is either 846 or 856 A.H., i.e. during the period of her husband's reign (vide Arch. Survey Report, vol. xi, p. 116). See J.I., p. 52.
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by Khairuddīn Ilāhābādī, MS. in ASB, leaf 3, is 772 A.H. (1371 A.D.). See J.I., p. 5.
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It is related of Mun’im Khān, Khān Khānān, that for the residence and tuition-work of the learned man Shaikhū, he built apartments near the big Jaunpūr Bridge, the inner portions of which were used by his pupils and the outer were let out. The rents thus derived met the expenses of the students.¹
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¹ *Jaunpūr-Nāmah*, MS. in ASB, leaf 43. J.I., pp. 60 ff.
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The *Tazkiratul-’Ulamā* and the *Siyarul-Mulk* as quoted in the *Tazkira* give us interesting details about this university-city, which throw a flood of light not only on the inner life of the learned men and students who lived there, but also on many other points. We learn that from the time of the foundation of the city, people from all districts of Hindustan, specially from the Subahs of Oudh and Ilāhābād, used to flock thereto for education. In the time of Sulṭān Ibrāhīm Sharqī, it was his capital, and here hundreds of madrasahs and masjids lay scattered, and scholars and teachers were granted *altamgahs* and *jāgirs* in order that they might devote themselves to learning in complete freedom from material needs and anxieties.² During Humāyūn’s reign, Jaunpūr continued to enjoy its
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² This feature is also noticeable in some of the Muslim Universities outside India, *e.g.* the Azhar University at Cairo, as also those at Baghdād, Cordova, Damascus, Nishāpūr, etc. (*vide Encyclopaedia Britannica*, 11th ed.). The Mediaeval Universities of the Europeans seem to have differed from the Muslim Universities on this point (*vide* R. S. Rait’s *Life in the Mediaeval University*).
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high reputation as a centre of learning, and remained so through Jahāngīr’s reign up to the time of Shāh Jahān, who gave it the name of Shīrāzi-Hind. It appears that up to the reign of Muḥammad Shāh, it was the usual practice of Delhi emperors to send *farmans* to the *ḥakīms* of Jaunpūr in order that they might never be amiss in their duties towards the many students and professors in the city. Reports (*Wāqi‘ai-Nigar*)¹ had to be sent to them by the Reporter stationed at Jaunpūr after carefully inquiring into the state of every madrasah. Fresh grants were made if any madrasah appeared from the report to require them. Princes and Amīrs while passing by the city used to pay visits to its madrasahs and make donations to please thereby the Delhi Sulṭāns. About 1147 A.H. (1735 A.D.) Nawāb Sa‘ādat Khān Nishāpūrī was appointed Subādār of Oudh, Benares and Jaunpūr. On one occasion he visited the city but felt insulted for the reason that the learned men of the place did not come to see him. To avenge this wrong, he gave orders for the confiscation of their stipends and *jāgirs*. The orders were carried out, and a bad time set in for Jaunpūr. The students and professors were scattered and the madrasahs became empty.² In 1187 A.H. (1774) Nawāb Āṣafuddaulah, at the instance of Mukhtaruddaulah,
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¹ *Tazkiratul-‘Ulamā*, MS. in ASB, leaves 3 ff.
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² *Ibid.*, leaves 3 ff.
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ordered the *jāgirs* to be restored to their former holders, but one Ilāj Khān protested. Jaunpūr about this time came into the hands of the British.¹
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¹ *Tazkiratul-’Ulamā*, MS. in ASB, leaves 3 ff.
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“Warren Hastings may have visited the city, Sir Eyre Coote certainly did, while Duncan’s visit in 1788 is recorded in those volumes of *Proceedings* which are mouldering unnoticed on the record-shelves of the Commissioner and Collector of Benares. He writes too favourably of the site and laments the decay of the town, telling how it once was the seat of all Muhammadan learning, and the residence of many of their learned men in so much that it was known by the appellation of the Shīrāz of India. Though no trace be now left of the schools but the story of their past fame, we have better ground than Mr. Duncan’s for saying that this city was the Shīrāz or the mediaeval Paris of India. Fīrūz determined to make it a seat of learning worthy of his cousin’s fame. Each of the princes of Jaunpūr prided himself on patronizing science, and the troubles which in the early part of the fourteenth century scattered the doctors of the ancient imperial city were eminently favourable to the rise of a school of learning in the peaceful and secure Jaunpūr. Even in Muḥammad Shāh’s time, 20 famous schools existed in Jaunpūr of which now but the names are known—the founder of one having died in the middle of the fifteenth century, and another in the middle of the seventeenth century. Nor was scholastic learning only cultivated. Of the successful cultivation of the arts, let the noble masjids of Ibrāhīm and Ḥusain bear witness.”²
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² *Archaeological Survey of India* (New Series), vol. i, (*Sharqī Architecture of Jaunpūr*), by Führer (1889), pp. 21, 22.
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Like Jaunpūr, many a great Muslim University has now ceased to exist, leaving behind only a memory of its former glory. The days are past when the Indian Musalmān universities, as also those of Dimašq, Baghdād, Nišāpūr, Cairo, Kairawān, Seville, Cordova were thronged by thousands of
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students, when a professor had often hundreds of hearers, and when vast estates set apart for the purpose maintained both students and professors.