Last Mughal

by William Dalrymple

Far from being a tedious chore, this was for many a thrilling business: one eager pupil who came to Delhi from a small town on the Grand Trunk Road used to go to the lectures at the Madrasa i-Rahimiyya even in the pouring monsoon rain, carrying his books in a pot in order to protect them from getting wet.30 The elderly Zakaullah remembered running at breakneck speed through the galis of Shahjahanabad, such was his excitement at the new learning - and especially the mathematics - he was being taught at the Delhi College. Even Colonel William Sleeman, famous for his suppression of the Thugs and a leading critic of the administration of the Indian courts, had to admit that the madrasa education given in Delhi was something quite remarkable: ‘Perhaps there are few communities in the world among whom education is more generally diffused than among Muhammadans in India,’ he wrote on a visit to the Mughal capital.