The imposing walls of both the Taj Mahal and Aligarh Muslim University’s Jama Masjid have Quranic verses crafted onto white marbles in black paint.
Jama Masjid on Aligarh Muslim University campus. Photo: Author provided.
Constructed nearly 250 years apart, the Taj Mahal in Agra and Jama Masjid at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) have an interesting connection.
The construction of the Taj Mahal began in 1632 and was completed in 1653, while the construction of Jama Masjid at AMU began in 1879 and was completed in 1915.
While the Taj Mahal, which is the tomb of Mughal emperor Shahjahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal, attracts millions of visitors every year, AMU’s Jama Masjid is the main mosque of the university. AMU’s Jama Masjid is, perhaps, the last enduring symbol of the Mughals, constructed when the Mughals lost their kingdom during British rule.
A surprising connection
As one enters the Taj Mahal, beautiful calligraphy adorns all four corners. Several verses from the Holy Quran crafted in black calligraphy on white marble can be seen. This is a unique form of calligraphy, and expert artisans from Persia were involved in creating it. Similar calligraphy can be seem inscribed at the tomb of Mughal King Akbar at Sikandra, Agra, and also at the AMU Jama Masjid.
A closer look at the white marble with Quranic verses in black colour adorning the walls of Jama Masjid in Aligarh Muslim University. Photo: Special arrangement.
In fact, it is believed that the artisan responsible for the calligraphy at the Taj Mahal also brought his expertise to AMU’s Jama Masjid.
Since there is a difference of nearly 250 years between the construction of both architectural wonders, it is interesting to study how this was possible.
During Shah Jahan’s regime, several buildings were constructed, including the Taj Mahal and Delhi’s historic Jama Masjid. The calligraphist used was the same.
Professor Nadeem Ali Rezavi of the Centre of Advanced Studies, Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, says that the master calligraphist in most of the buildings constructed during Shah Jahan’s regime is the same person.
“His name was Abdul Haq, and later due to his craftsmanship, his rank was elevated. He was given the title of Amanat Khan. In fact, he even signed the bands on this calligraphy with dates,” says Rezavi.
Still, there is a gap of over two centuries between these two buildings, Taj Mahal and AMU’s Jama Masjid.
The connection between the two monuments becomes clear with the involvement of Akbarabadi, one of Shah Jahan’s queens. Her original name was Aiza-un-Nisa. She, in 1650, commissioned the construction of a mosque situated in Daryaganj, Delhi, during the same period. In that mosque, Quranic calligraphy was done by the same artisan in black paint on white marble. This was around the same time as when the Taj Mahal was built.
After nearly two centuries, the Daryaganj mosque was demolished by the Britishers following the 1857 revolt. This was when Britishers gained control over the Red Fort, and the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was sent in exile to Rangoon. They destroyed many buildings which were supposed to have harboured the rebels. At the site of the destroyed Akbarabadi Mosque, a park was developed and came to be known as Edward Park in 1911, which is now called Subhash Park.
During the same period, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the founder of the Mohammadan Anglo Oriental College (which later became AMU) felt the oppression against Muslims after the revolt. He nurtured the idea of setting up an educational institution to try and uplift the community.
A visionary man, Sir Syed had the taste for collecting things, particularly artefacts which had archaeological and historical importance. He was aware of the demolition of the Akbarabadi Mosque in Delhi.
As per the AMU Gazette, the scraps generated at the demolished Akbarabadi mosque were sold to a dealer and later purchased by Sahabzada Suleman Jah Bahadur. These remains were thus sold after over 200 years. These were presented to Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who planned to use them in the Jama Masjid of the educational institution.
A closer look at the white marble with Quranic verses in black colour adorning the walls of Jama Masjid in Aligarh Muslim University. Photo: Special arrangement.
The white marbles with black calligraphy now present in the Jama Masjid of AMU depict Surah Fajr from the Holy Quran. Thus centuries apart, the two buildings carry the work of the same artisan.
“Even if you compare, it is the same thing and the only difference is in the scale. The artisans are the same who have shown their skills in the construction of the Taj Mahal,” says Prof. Rezavi.
Thus AMU’s Jama Masjid is, perhaps, the last enduring symbol of the Mughals, constructed when the Mughals lost their kingdom during the British rule. On the other hand, the domes of AMU’s Jama Masjid employed techniques of the Mughal era: they are “true domes” as they were built using lime mortar and vousseurs (wedge cornered stones/bricks).
“It is a brick structure, guava-shaped, carrying white marble with black stripes. This is the last true dome. After this, the particular technology faded out, and the buildings constructed after them have concrete domes,” said Rezavi.
Later, in 2016, AMU authorities began the conservation of the Jama Masjid. Now revived at the cost of Rs 90 lakh, the Jama Masjid has a Hauz in the courtyard, three domes, seven arches and two lofty minarets cornered by a Cricket Pavilion at its rear end. Sir Syed, the founder of the institution, was also buried in the same compound.
Faisal Fareed is a senior Lucknow-based journalist.
This article went live on June fifth, two thousand twenty one, at zero minutes past seven in the morning.
source: http://www.thewire.in / The Wire / Home> History / by Faisal Fareed / June 05th, 2021
Women’s education in nineteenth-century India was no easy task. In the case of Muslim women, the task was even more difficult due to their triply marginal identity: as colonial subjects, as women, and as Muslims. Not only did the custom of purdah added to their seclusion from the social and cultural changes, their men hated everything about the western cultural influence (being displaced as rulers by the British). As a result, the middle class (the initiators of reform) was to develop late among the Indian Muslims than their Hindu counterparts. Nevertheless, by the late nineteenth century, a middle-class among the Indian Muslims was fledging. For this, no institution of the nineteenth-century can be given more commendation than Aligarh Muslim University.
Formed in 1920, the Aligarh Muslim University just completed its hundred years as a modern residential university. There has been a perception that the Aligarh Movement, for whatever reasons, neglected the issue of modern education to Muslim women. But there is more to this argument, some things to be explored, some to be re-interpreted.
This article, therefore, attempts to trace the genesis and trajectory of women’s educational reform in Aligarh through the profile of a woman reformer – Waheed Jahan (1886-1939), wife of Shaikh Abdullah (1874-1965), and the co-founder of Aligarh’s first girls’ school. Waheed Jahan was a pioneer of Muslim women’s education at Aligarh in the early twentieth century. Her role in ending the relative isolation of Indian Muslim women, while at the same time preserving the Muslim identity of the community, is worthwhile to recall. Her biography was published in Urdu by her husband in 1954. [1]
The educational reforms among Indian women were mostly started by men. Such men started with writings advocating women’s education. In this regard, among Muslims, Nazir Ahmad (1833-1912) published his novel, Mirat-ul-Arus, in 1869; Altaf Hussain Hali (1837-1914) published Majlis-un-Nissa, in 1874. Soon, magazines and journals followed, like the Tahzib un-Niswan by Sayyid Mumtaz Ali (1860-1935), the Khatoon by Shaikh Abdullah and Waheed Jahan, and the Ismat by Rashid-ul- Khairi (1868-1936). Gail Minault regards these as ’The Big Three.’ [2] Apart from literary activism, others tried more practical measures, like opening schools for Muslim girls.
As the movement intensified, so did the opposition against it. In such an atmosphere, even the talk of women’s education by a woman herself was quite a chivalry.
Yet, unexpectedly, there were women who defied the odds and broke the ground. Rashid-un-Nissa of Patna, became the first Muslim woman to write an Urdu novel, Islah-un-Nissa in 1881 (published in 1894), when writing was a distant dream for Muslim women. Rokeya Sakhawat Husain (1880-1932), a widow herself, pioneered Muslim women’s education in Bengal. Muhammadi Begam (1878-1908) edited one of the leading ladies’ home journals, Tahzib-un-Niswan. One such icon of women’s education at Aligarh was Waheed Jahan.
Waheed was born in 1874 in a landholding family in Delhi. Her father Mirza Ibrahim Beg was of Mughal ancestry, serving as a minor municipal official in Delhi. Her only brother, Bashir Mirza went to the Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO Colege), Aligarh, where he befriended Shaikh Abdulla (a Kashmiri convert to Islam, named Thakur Das before conversion).
As was the custom, Waheed received no formal schooling. She learnt Urdu and Persian from her father and arithmetic and elementary English from a visiting English tutoress.
Ismat Chughtai, in her autobiography, Kagazi hai Pairahan, records, how Waheed Jahan, before her marriage, had dreamt of establishing a school for the girls. She would gather the servants’ children and teach them, and soon the rudimentary school became popular among her neighbours. It is noteworthy that, at a time when others (mostly men) were still imagining a school for girls (that too only in their writings), Waheed, in her own limited capacity, was practically making a difference.
In 1902, Waheed married Shaikh Abdullah – a lawyer at Aligarh, and an ardent supporter of women’s education since his school days. Following the marriage to a woman with some education, he began to consider concrete ways to promote Muslim women’s education. The Mohammadan Education Conference (MEC, founded at Aligarh by Sir Syed Ahmad in 1886) had established a Women’s Education Section (WES) in 1896 to start a Normal School for girls and to train female (zenana) teachers. In 1902, Shaikh became the secretary of WES, which by then had merely achieved anything beyond discussions and debates around women’s education.
Luckily, Waheed’s marriage to a reformist like Abdullah helped her materialize her dream. To champion women’s education, they started an Urdu monthly, the Khatoon, in 1904 with Waheed Jahan as editor. Begum Sultan Jahan (1858-1930) of Bhopal, Binnat Nazir-al-Baqir, Suharwardiya Begum, and Binnat Nasiruddin Haider were some important female contributors to the journal.
The paucity of funds made it impossible to start a Normal School. Waheed Jahan advised her husband to start a primary school for the elite (Sharif) girls. In 1904, the Mohammadan Educational Conference passed a resolution to start a girls’ school in Aligarh. Waheed proved to be an efficient manager and fund-raiser for the cause.
Her capacities as a fund-raiser and organizer were displayed in 1905, when she organized a meeting of Muslim women in Aligarh, with participants from far corners of Lahore and Bombay. Judging from the context of the time when purdah among Muslims was so harsh, even the idea of organizing such an event was quite revolutionary.
Aware of women education in Turkey and Egypt and its benefits to society, she tried to convince other women; she said:
When women meet among themselves, there will be more solidarity. . . Now there is a division between educated and uneducated women. Uneducated women, who do not go out, think that respectability is confined to the four walls of their houses. They think that people who live beyond those walls are not respectable and not worthy of meeting. But God has ordained education for both men and women, so that such useless ideas can be dispensed with. . . [3]
The meeting was a success, the exhibition of women’s craft secured good funds; finally, the women passed a resolution favouring a girls’ school in Aligarh. In October 1906, Aligarh Zenana Madrasa (girls’ school) opened its doors, and seventeen students were enrolled. Urdu, arithmetic, needlework, and the Quran formed the curriculum. Leaving her own children in servants’ care, Waheed took the responsibility of supervising the school. Within six months, the number of students increased to fifty-six. Waheed’s efforts secured the school a cumulative grant of Rs. 15,000 and a monthly grant of Rs. 250. By 1909, the school taught 100 students and shifted to a larger building.
The opposition to girls’ school took new forms. One amusing story is recorded in Shaikh Abdullah’s Urdu memoir (1969), Mushahedaat o Taaassuraat. [4] Maintaining purdah, the girls were carried in daulis (curtained carriages) to school, and some street urchins started harassing the school going girls by lifting the curtains of their daulis. The mischief only stopped when Shaikh gave one of the miscreants a good thrashing. In another incident, Shaikh confronted a tehsildar who had accused the school of making the girls insolent.
When the Abdullahs proposed a girls’ boarding school, it invited opposition from elite corners. The European principal of MAO College, W.A.J Archbold; Ziauddun Ahmad (1873-1947); and Viqar-ul-Mulk (1841-1917) opposed vehemently.
The couple, however, succeeded in 1914, witnessing the transformation of the school into a boarding school. The same year saw the culmination of Muslim women’s activism by the foundation of Anjuman-i-Khavatin-i-Islam (AKI) at the same venue. Begum Sultan Jahan (1858-1930) of Bhopal graced the foundational ceremony of the boarding school, felicitating Waheed; she urged other women to follow her example. Fyzee sisters, Abru Begum, Begum Shafi, and Begum Shah Nawaz were the other dignitaries.
The Begum was already active in various social and educational reform projects. She served as the first chancellor of AMU from 1920 until her death in 1930. Having a woman as the first chancellor was indeed a historic feat.
Only nine girls became the residents, most of them from Waheed’s own family. By the end of the year, the enrollment rose up to twenty-five. This was the result of what the historian Gail Minault calls as Abdullahs’ portrayal of girls’ school as an extension of girls’ families and also of their own. To make the school successful, Waheed used to invite the parents of girls to Aligarh, for a few days stay in the hostel, to convince them that the conditions there were safe enough to let their daughters stay, records Sheikh Abdullah, in his Mushahedaat o Taaassuraat. She supervised everything – housekeeping, laundry, shopping, and even tasted each dish cooked for the girls.
It could be said that Waheed Jahan acted as a foster mother to these girls, counselling, nursing, and treating them as a part of her own extended family. They called each other as Apa (sister), Shaikh Abdullah as Papa Mian, and Waheed Jahan as Ala Bi. This created a sense of sisterhood among the girls.
This familial system of ethos still remains unique to the Aligarh Women’s College.
The boarding school project contained other complex problems, such as maintaining proper purdah. Both Shaikh and Waheed agreed that the purdah practiced in the Sharif society was more restrictive than purdah sanctioned by the Shari’a (Islamic Law). But to secure social acceptance for their school, they chose to go with strict purdah, building fortress-like walls to fend off the male gaze, students’ mails were scrutinized, and only close relatives were allowed inside.
This accommodation of purdah within the gamut of their reformist agenda, to gain social acceptance, was indeed very astute of the Abdullahs. Thus, Waheed Jahan succeeded in preserving both the elite and the “Muslim” identity of herself and her community while simultaneously breaking the relative isolation of Indian Muslim women. The girls’ school became an intermediate college in 1925 and started degree classes in 1937 (with 250 students). Waheed passed away in 1939, only after seeing her school becoming a degree college.
The relation between education and social change is complex, varying from culture to culture and among different classes in the same culture.
True, that Aligarh movement was late to include women’s education in its fold. Even the school founded by the Abdullahs did not fulfil all its expectations – their choosing an exclusively elite (Sharif) clientele limited the impact of their reforms.
But their efforts indeed bore fruits; the educational reforms for Muslim women at Aligarh contributed to many social developments. After the formation of AKI in 1914, the number of meetings and associations (for women-only) increased rapidly in the 1930’s. The growth in the number of educated women created a market for new publications for and by women.
The Aligarh Women’s College produced many women of substance, who made sure to shine above and beyond purdah, some figuratively and others literally. These ladies excelled in various fields, from teaching to medicine to writing.
Rashid Jahan, Waheed Jahan’s daughter, became a successful physician, a radical writer, and a staunch communist. Her short stories in Angare (1932) became the opening salvo of the Urdu Progressive Writers Movement (1936). Rakhshanda Jalil, in her biographical work on Rashid, A Rebel and her Cause: The Life and Work of Rashid Jahan, writes that Angare was a “document of disquiet”; a self-conscious attempt “to shock people out of their inertia, to show how hypocrisy and sexual oppression had so crept in everyday life”. Rashid became an inspiration for a generation of women writers such as Ismat Chughtai, Attia Hosain, Sadia Begum Sohravi, and Razia Sajjad Zaheer, among others.
Like all other reform movements of that time period, the Aligarh movement had its limitations too. For a start, it did prioritize men’s education over women’s, for various reasons (a story that needs to be told elsewhere), but by the early twentieth century, things were changing. The Aligarh movement not only took up the cause of women’s education actively, but it also let women (Like Wahid Jahan) be a part of the process.
Notes
[1] Shaikh Abdullah, Savanih-i- Umri-i- Abdullah Begum, Aligarh, 1954
[2] Gail Minault, Gender, Language, and Learning: Essays in Indo-Muslim Cultural History, Permanent Black Publications, Ranikhet, 2009, p. 87
(Ishrat Mushtaq is PhD Candidate, Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University and Sajad Hassan Khan is PhD. Candidate, Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Muslim University. Article courtesy: Mainstream Weekly.)
Janata Weekly does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished by it. Our goal is to share a variety of democratic socialist perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.
source: http://www.janataweekly.org / Janata Weekly / Home / by Ishrat Mushtaq and Saad Hassan Khan / January 24th, 2021
