Sayyid Ahmad Khan
(1817–1898), Indian Muslim educator. Often given the honorific title of Sir Sayyid, Ahmad Khan is probably the most famous Indian Muslim educator. Since the seventeenth century, his family had been closely connected with the Mughal emperors, holding important positions in the Indian Muslim administration. However, in 1838, on the death of his father, who received an allowance from the Mughal court, Ahmad Khan's family faced financial difficulties, which forced him to enter the service of the East India Company. Starting as a simple clerk in the Delhi court of justice, within a few years he attained the rank of munsif ("subjudge").
While he held this position, Ahmad Khan studied education, religion, history, archaeology, and politics. In 1847, he published the famous Athar al-sanadid (Monuments of the Great). Between 1858 and 1861, he wrote two pamphlets about the so-called Great Mutiny, the 1857 insurrection against British rule in India, during which he had remained loyal to the East India Company. In these pamphlets—which influenced the subsequent policy of the colonial British government—he analyzed the reasons for the insurrection, blaming both Indians and British.
Ahmad Khan's most significant achievements were in the field of education. During the 1850s and 1860s, he established schools and a scientific society to diffuse the Urdu and English languages. After a visit to England in 1869–1870, in 1878 he established Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College, modeled after the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. Established in Aligarh, it was elevated to university rank in 1920 and became the most famous and innovative Muslim educational institution of the Indian subcontinent. In the meantime, he had launched an influential journal, Tahdhib al-Akhlaq (Social Reform), and established the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference to diffuse modern sciences and knowledge and to reform traditional Muslim religious ideas, harmonizing them with Western thought.
His attempts to demonstrate the conformity of modern sciences and doctrine with the principles of Islamic faith provoked harsh reactions from the traditional ulama and faqih (experts of religious law); their reactions were particularly violent against his demythologizing approach to the Qur'an and his "rationalistic" approach toward religion.
Loyal to his view of peaceful coexistence of Hindus, Indian Muslims, and the British, Ahmad Khan opposed the Indian National Congress and its political ideas. He argued that for Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, education was more important and effective than politics.
Further Reading
Ikram, Sheikh Mohammad. (1950) Makers of Pakistan and Modern Muslim India. Lahore, Pakistan: M. Ashraf.
Baljon, Johannes Marinus Simon. (1949) The Reforms and Religious Ideas of Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill.
Troll, W. Christian. (1978) Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan: A Reinterpretation of Muslim Theology. New Delhi: Vikas.
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