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The learning of Persian in South Asia: the curricula

and educational institutions for teaching Persian in
South Asia

Article · September 2009

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 The learning of Persian in South Asia:
the curricula and educational institutions
for teaching Persian in South Asia

Tariq Rahman

South Asia came into contact with Persian in the late ninth cen-
tury (Ghani 1941: 74-75). However, it was established as a pres-
tigious literary language in the eleventh century as a consequence
of Ghaznavide rule over the Punjab. Indeed, by the thirteenth
century, it was established in the centres of Muslim power in
other parts of India. The literature of these centres of Persian in
pre-Mughal times has been discussed most recently and synopti-
cally by Muzaffar Alam (2003: 131-159). It has also been dis-
cussed in detail along with Persian writing during the Mughal
period, by Ghani (1929: 30) in English as well as in the three
volumes of Tārīx-e adabiyāt (Vols. 3, 4 and 5 abbreviated as
Tārīx 1971-1972) and Aḥmed (1974) in Urdu.
There is also some work on special aspects of Persian in In-
dia: the debate over Indian Persian (summed up by Alam 2003:
177-186); the contribution of Hindus to Persian literature (cAb-
dullāh 1962); letter writing (Momin 1971); bureaucratic norms
224 TARIQ RAHMAN

and conventions, especially those of the Mughals (Khan 1994).

While the poets mentioned by Sufi (d. c. 1252) in his anthology
of poets, Lubāb al-albāb may have needed little formal instruc-
tion in Persian – though presumably they too may have got les-
sons in prosody from the contemporary masters of the art – chil-
dren born and brought up in India, surrounded by languages
other than Persian, needed formal schooling in this powerful
language. The theme of curricula in Persian has been recorded by
G. M. D. Sufi in Al-Minhaj (1941) from Muhammad Tughlaq’s
time (r. 1325-1351). There are many scattered references to the
teaching of Persian in several sources. The present author too has
studied the learning of Persian among the Muslims of north India
and present-day Pakistan and connected it to world view and
power (Rahman 2002: 121-160).
The present article focuses only on the curricula of Persian
and the ways (privately or in institutions of learning) in which
the language was learned in South Asia. It also provides some
information to the teaching of Persian to females.

Pedagogical material
Most pedagogical material meant to teach children how to read
Persian dates from a period when children seem to have known
an Indian language better than the spoken language. One of the
most well known of these primers, or lexicons, is the Xāliq bārī
which is widely attributed to Amir Khusrau (Mirza 1934: 232).
However, Hafiz Shirani, a painstaking researcher, attributes it to
Ziauddin Khusro (written around 1621-1622) (Šīrānī n.d.: 7). A
number of such primers came on the scene during the fifteenth
century and were certainly used for teaching Persian through
Hindvi (the predecessor of Hindi and Urdu) while others, like
Abu Nasr Farahi’s isāb ul Sabiyān (1661) taught Arabic through
the medium of Persian (Šīrānī n.d.: 7). The Xulāṣatu ðl makātīb
(written in 1688) tells us that students were taught the alphabet,
then the primers, and then they graduated to middle level books
(Gulistān and Bustān of Sheikh Musleh al-Din Sacdi (d. 1292)
and then the more advanced books. The other books were about
prose and composition, poetry, history and ethics (For details see
 THE LEARNING OF PERSIAN IN SOUTH ASIA: THE CURRICULA… 225

Annexure 1). A boy was supposed to be four years, four months

and four days of age when he began his studies. The ceremony,
called bismillāh (in the name of God), was, however, often post-
poned till the child was seven years old. The child was taught the
Persian alphabet, the primers, the middle level books and then, if
he undertook further studies, the more advanced books (Reid
1852: para 153, p. 52). Sir Syed Ahmad Khān (1817-1898), the
great reformer of education in India, was also educated in the
same way by a private teacher (Hali 1901: 35).
The primers were not only meant for teaching the alphabet
and the rudiments of the Persian language. They also dissemi-
nated the world view on which the civilization using that lan-
guage was dependent. The moral values endorsed in the Pand
nāma and the Karīma are patriarchal and hierarchical. Hospital-
ity and silence are approved of; miserliness and talkativeness
condemned. Women are considered inferior and untrustworthy.
The advice given to the young student, presumably male and
often addressed as pisar (son, boy), is to shun women and not get
emotionally involved with them. The ām-e ḥaq is a guidebook
on ritual worship and cleanliness.
The most important part of letter writing was the knowledge
of the form of address, tiles and honorifics (alqāb or adab) (for
other constituents see Alam and Alavi 2001: 16) These were
elaborate and calibrated according to the respective power differ-
ential (be it because of disparity in age, rank, wealth, religion,
gender or whatever) of the addresser and the addressee. Then the
language of the letter had to show deference or authority, cou-
pled always with courtesy, according to circumstances. A copi-
ous vocabulary, knowledge of literature and stylistic graces were
highly appreciated. In short, a successful letter writer upheld the
values of hierarchy, conservatism (by adhering to conventions)
and intellectual brilliance without heterodox analysis (by spend-
ing one’s mental energy and learning on memorization and sty-
listic gymnastics).
What to say of the Muslims who benefited from Mughal rule,
if the Hindus too upheld the same power structure. The Mughal
king Akbar (r. 1556-1605) won their loyalty through marriage
alliances and employment and they became Muslimized in cul-
226 TARIQ RAHMAN

ture (cAbdullāh 1930). Madrasa-s, which were institutions for

education rather than only Islamic education, took in and trained
Hindus through Persian which was the instrument of this cultural
Muslimization. The graduating Hindus became the munšī-s of the
empire. Among the best known among them are people like
Chandra Bhan Brahman (d. 1045 A.H.), Harkaran Das Kambuh
(c. 1031 A.H.) and Madhu Ram (c. 1120). Chandra Bhan’s letter
to his son has a passage which gives useful insights into the edu-
cational values of that period.
Beginning by emphasizing the value of good calligraphy, he
says:

Although the science of Persian is vast, and almost beyond human

grasp, in order to open the gates of language one should read the
Gulistān, Bustān, and the letters of Mullā Jāmi, to start with.

This is followed by a long list of books on history and ethics.

Then comes an even longer list of poets – forty four among the
‘earlier’ ones and twenty four among the ‘modern’ ones – which
is cut short only because of the brevity of the communication
(cAbdullāh 1962: 240-242. Available in English [in:] Alam 2004:
130-132). What is more important for us is that throughout
Chandra Bahn Brahman advises his son to be loyal to the social
order. The author is impressed by Persian and the elite culture it
represents. This makes him a fitting symbol and tool for spread-
ing Mughal cultural hegemony (as defined by Gramsci 1978: 12)
over the ruled which, I argue elsewhere, is one of the effects of
Persian education during Muslim rule over India (Rahman 2002:
495-502).

Brief description of Persian literature and its world view.

Persian literature was not theological. It was mostly poetic and
the world view of this poetry was not Islamic as interpreted by
the culemā. Its best works were in the Sufi tradition where love
stood for divine love; the beloved, often symbolized as a beauti-
ful boy, stood for an immanent deity and wine was a metaphor of
mystic distraction. At another level, this literature celebrated
romantic love, dwelt upon boyish and female beauty, mentioned
 THE LEARNING OF PERSIAN IN SOUTH ASIA: THE CURRICULA… 227

drinking as a matter of course and with a certain iconoclastic,

heterodox pride and had several erotic passages.
One of the most popular textbooks of Persian, Bahār-e dāniš
written by Shaikh cInayatullah Kumboh (1608-1671) sometime
in 1650-1651?, was used in all the Persian schools in Mughal
India. During British rule too, according to the education reports,
it was taught in nearly all the schools and its ‘style and idiom’
were ‘regarded as the best models of composition’ (Reid 1852:
54).
The stories in it belong to the magical, medieval world view
to which the Alf laila and other medieval tales belong. The moral
values are unashamedly in the male chauvinist tradition. Women
are cunning, lustful, unfaithful, unchaste and inconstant. This is
especially driven home by the tale of four women who vow to
deceive their husbands by fornicating with a handsome youth in
the very presence of their husbands in such a way that the hus-
bands are completely fooled.
Another textbook, written in the Punjab and mentioned as
part of the curricula of Persian schools in that province (Leitner
1882: 63), was Maulana Muhammad Ghanimat’s (b. 1688) Mas̤-
navī nairang-e cišq (called Mas̤navī Ġanīmat). The story is about
Shahid, a poor boy whose beauty captivates men and women
alike. The ruler’s son, infatuated with Shahid, starts living with
him. Later, Shahid falls in love with a girl. The theme of boy-
love (amrad-parastī) is a recurrent one in Persian poetry and one
which is found even in the basic course books of students such as
the Gulistān and Bustān.
Rhymed tales, or dāstān-s, were also part of the traditional
course of Persian studies. Yūsuf-Zulaixā, Šīrīn-Xusrau and Lailā-
-Majnūn were taught by famous teachers, sometimes but not
always, attached to educational institutions. Bairam Khan, for
instance, was taught a version of the Yūsuf-Zulaixā legend by
Abdul Ghafur Lari (Badaoni 1595: 588). The tales are always
formulaic. The hero and the heroine are beautiful beyond de-
scription. They fall in love but there are circumstances which
prevent legal cohabitation. In the end they generally die. The
passion they depict is so intense that it makes the lovers oblivi-
ous of social hierarchies, norms of society, societal taboos, mate-
228 TARIQ RAHMAN

rial well-being, and even pain and death. Interpreted in a mystic

way the love passion served as a metaphor for the mystic’s
(Sufi’s) quest for an immanent deity.
The value system this literature supports was hierarchical,
male dominating and supportive of Muslim ascendancy politi-
cally and their hegemony intellectually and culturally. Likewise
it strengthened the common belief in the arbitrariness of life and
in fate which all led to political quietism and acceptance of the
prevalent gender roles and power structure.

The learning of Persian by foreigners

When Muslim kings of India were powerful, foreigners who vis-
ited their realm – especially those connected with the court itself –
learned Persian. Ibn Battuta (1303-1368 or 9), the Moroccan
traveler who came to India in 1333, learned it so well that he
conducted all his business in it. One of the earliest European
travelers, John Mildenhall (visited during 1599-1606), wrote an
application (he calls it ‘Ars’ which is a corrupted form of carẓī)
to the king asking him for trade concessions for the British. He
learned the language in six months with the help of a ‘school-
master’ (Foster 1921: 57).
Another traveler, Nicholas Withington (1612-1616) reports
that Jesuits preached ‘first in the Persian tongue, that the Arme-
nians and Moores may understand’ (Foster 1921: 223). Thomas
Coryat (1612-1617) learned Persian and it helped him immensely
in his travels across the Great Mughal’s empire (ibidem, p. 284).
The Jesuits, whose purpose was conversion, translated the Bible
into Persian. Father Jerome Xavier, who did one translation,
wrote in 1604 that an earlier translation, ‘more than 300 years
old’, had been far from Rome (Maclagen 1932: 214). They pre-
sented a translated copy to Jahangir (r. 1605-1627) in 1606
(Guerreiro 1930: 30-31) as well a Persian version of the lives of
the Apostles (ibidem, pp. 43-44).
The early British officers of the East India Company corre-
sponded with Indian princes and notables in Persian. Although
Persian was abolished as the court language in 1834, the Persian
Interpreter – an official who interpreted Persian correspondence
 THE LEARNING OF PERSIAN IN SOUTH ASIA: THE CURRICULA… 229

to high functionaries of the company and wrote letters in that

language to outsiders – was attached to the personal staff of high-
ranking officials. Thus the C-in-C (Sir Henry Fane between
1835-1838) had an interpreter on his staff during this period as
his daughter, Miss Isabella Fane, testifies (Pemble 1985: 55).
Although political power was with the British, the cultural
hegemony of the Muslim elite was still intact in the early period
of British rule. Thus we find British officers becoming ‘White
Mughals’ speaking Urdu, writing in Persian, wearing oriental
clothes in private and, of course, marrying Indian women or
keeping concubines (Darlymple 2002). Some of them actually
wrote Persian poetry as Ram Babu Saksena has described. Nota-
ble among them are: Edward Henry Palmer (1840-1887); John
Thomas (served with Begum Sumru in 1782); Lt. Col. Shadwell
Plough (1858-1903); and Lt. Col. James Skinner (1778-1841)
(Saksena 1943). Another example of Europeans taking pride in
writing letters in Persian is Antoine-Louis Henri Polier, a
Frenchman, who collected his Persian letters in two volumes
called the I cjāz-i arsalānī (1773-1779) (Alam and Alavi 2001). It
was only slowly that the British asserted their cultural and intel-
lectual hegemony and English, rather than Persian, became the
language which carried it throughout India.
The British learned Persian in formal institutions of learning
and informally from private tutors. Among the formal institutions
were the Fort William College in Calcutta which started func-
tioning in 1801 (Fort William Vol-1), and Haileybury College
established at Hertford in 1806. At both places they taught the
well known classics – T̤ūt̤ ī-nāma, Iyār-e dāniš, Bahār-e dāniš,
Qiṣṣa Ḥātim Tā ðī and Gulistān – changing one or two books here
and there (Fort William Vol-1 and Haileybury 1925). In India the
young officers (writers) hired munšī-s as did H. T. Prinsep (1792-
-1878) when he came to India in 1809 and as did even John
Beames who came in 1857 when Persian had officially been
replaced by English (Prinsep 1904: 59 and Beames 1961: 80-81).
Even in 1909, a report attributes the significance of Persian for
British rule in India because of the ‘political position’ of Iran and
because of the cultural prestige of the language among Indian
and Afghan Muslims (Treasury 1909: 117).
230 TARIQ RAHMAN

Although Indians had been visiting England from the 1600s

onwards, a certain Munshi Ismaðil seems to have been recorded
as a teacher of Persian in 1772. Others were Abdul Azim Isfahani
(1775-1776 and d. 1790); Munshi Muhammad Sami (c. 1785)
and others (Fisher 2004: 104). Iðtisam al Din visited England
between 1767 and 1769 and taught students. He also helped Wil-
liam Jones with his Persian studies (Xān 1998: 76). Mahomet
Saeed of Bengal advertised in the London newspapers for British
pupils to whom he could teach Persian (Fisher 2004: 105). Abu
Talib, who visited in 1799, tried to set up an institution to teach
Persian but did not succeed. He reports, however, that an offer
was made to him but by then he had resolved to return to India
(Talib Vol-1: 1810: 164). Indian instructors of Persian did not
regard Britain with a sense of inferiority in the eighteenth and
even up to the middle of the nineteenth century. They claimed
they ‘offered accurate and authentic language and cultural train-
ing’ (Fisher 2004: 107). They were very few, of course, taught
both to the civil servants (Haileybury) and the military officers
(Addiscombe) who would rule India. However, Addiscombe’s
cadets were even less interested in Persian, taught to them by
Hassan cAli who joined the faculty in 1810, than Haileybury’s
civil servants (Fisher 2004: 126). By 1826 attitudes had changed
as the British developed contempt for Indians and the Indian
faculty was phased out (ibidem, pp. 132-133). Soon Persian too
was phased out.
British officials kept up private correspondence with emi-
nent Indians in Persian. Asadullah Khan Ghalib, the famous
Urdu poet, tells his friend in a letter of 1858 that John Jacob dis-
couraged people from writing in Urdu while encouraging them to
write in Persian (Ġālib 1858). The poet himself wrote to the Brit-
ish Chief Secretary in Persian even in 1863 (Ġālib 1863) though
he wrote to his Indian friends (except Tipu Sultan’s maternal
grandson) in Urdu (Ġālib 1866).
Even in 1872 British officials were encouraged to learn Per-
sian. Indeed, while the reward for passing an examination in
Persian was Rs. 1200, it was only Rs. 750 for Urdu (Home 1872:
575). This importance decreased but Persian, as one of the classi-
 THE LEARNING OF PERSIAN IN SOUTH ASIA: THE CURRICULA… 231

cal languages of (Muslim) India, remained a subject in the pres-

tigious civil service examination.

Persian in the educational institutions

Records of madrasa-s, meant for training functionaries of the
state and the religious establishment, exist from the tenth cen-
tury. Mansoora (Sindh), for instance, had the madrasa of Qazi
Abu Muhammad Mansoori (c. 10 cent.); Lahore; Ajmer, Delhi,
Uchh, Multan, Deccan, Jaunpur, Badayun and Bengal all had
madrasa-s. Minhaj Uddin Siraj, the author of the history book
T̤abaqāt-e nās̤irī (c. 1260) was the administrator of Madrasa-e
Ferozi in 1227 at the orders of Nasir Uddin Qabacha (r. 1205-
1228) at Uchh (Mehr 1975: 13). They existed when Ibn Battuta
visited India in the fourteenth century (Battuta 1929: 230). In
these madrasa-s the medium of instruction was Persian and
books on Arabic grammar, such as the Mīzān us ṣarf, probably
by Siraj Uddin al-Awadhi (d. 1372), had explanations in Persian
(Baloč 1971: 69). Later, during the Mughal period, the number of
madrasa-s increased.
There is much historical evidence about royalty learning
Persian. They were generally given instruction by private tutors
engaged for this purpose. Sher Khan (d. 1545), who began life as
a landlord’s son and not a prince, however, studied at a madrasa
in Narnaul (between Hisar and Jaipur) which had been built in
1520. Here, among other things, he studied Nizami’s Sikandar
nāma and, of course, the inevitable Gulistān and Bustān (Sufi
1941: 52). The legend of Hīr Rānjhā, as narrated by Varis Shah
(1722-1798), mentions the ām-e ḥaq, Xāliq bārī as primers and
the usual canonical works of literature prose and ethics number-
ing thirteen as part of the curriculum in the Punjab (Sufi 1941:
109; also see Šāh 1986). This curriculum did not change much
since the British found it much the same when they arrived (Leit-
ner 1882: 55-57). Indeed, the madrasa-s of the Bengal and Behar
(Adam 1836: in Long 1868: 199-215) as well as present-day U.P.
also taught the same with some minor variations (Reid 1852:
para 153, p. 52).
232 TARIQ RAHMAN

Reports during the British period, such as Fisher’s Report

(1832), Leitner’s Report (1882) etc provide lists of schools func-
tioning from pre-British times. Those called maktab-s taught
rudimentary Persian while madrasa-s went on to teach more
Persian books. The British themselves established government
educational institutions where Persian was an important subject
in the beginning of their rule.
The British divided schools into several categories. The two
relevant for our purposes are the Arabic and the Persian schools.
The British officers made tours of towns in order to find out the
condition of schools. Out of a sample of sixteen tours the infor-
mation about thirty-one schools of North Western Provinces (part
of U.P. today) is as follows: there were 903 Persian schools and
150 Arabic ones in 1850 (Edn. NWP 1850: 25). Also see Rah-
man 2002: 81). In the Punjab there were 458 Persian schools in
the early 1880s. They taught 4 015 students and, according to W.
R. M. Holroyd, only 95 contained more than twelve while 247
has six or less students (Edn. P 1883: para 26, p. 10).
The British also promoted Persian studies in the Calcutta
Madrasah established in 1781 (Fisher 1832: 2). They also estab-
lished the Agra (1822) and Delhi (1826) colleges where Persian
was taught (Fisher 1832: 24-25). Private entrepreneurs, such as a
philanthropist named Fraser, opened a school in Delhi to teach
Persian to 80 Indian boys in 1814 (Fisher 1832: 25). Later, when
the universities were established from 1858 onwards, Persian
was a subject of study.
As Persian was not used in the domains of power, the de-
mand for it decreased. In 1877 some members of the Punjab
University senate complained that the study of Persian only cre-
ates paper munšī-s and hence English should be taught in its
place (Nobin et. al. 1871: 89; Khan R. 1872: 283-284). Even the
Anjuman-e Punjab agreed with this idea. Holroyd, the Director
of Public Instruction, suspected that such demands had been in-
spired by rich people who could afford to teach their sons at
home (Holroyd 1871: 117-118). However, other British officers
agreed that Persian be phased out of the school curricula: The
Governor General omitted it from the Persian courses in the
 THE LEARNING OF PERSIAN IN SOUTH ASIA: THE CURRICULA… 233

Bengal (Madrasah 1941). It was also omitted in the Punjab (Edn.

P 1914: 12) and in Sindh (Younghusband 1908).
Another change introduced by the British was the gradual
introduction of modern texts in place of the classical ones. One
reason why this was done was because they, as well as the Indian
reformers, began to find the classics embarrassingly erotic
(Rahman 2002: 506). Thus, Maulana Muhammad Hussain Azad
wrote Fārsī kī pahlī kitāb in 1870 in Lahore; Shibli Nomani
wrote iṣāb-e fārsī (1894) and so on. There were books for ma-
triculation, intermediate, BA and so on. This happened in the
high tide of Victorian prudery, but even as early as 1830 the Cal-
cutta Book Society reported new books: Roebuck’s Persian
Primer and a grammar (Fisher 1832: 90). The shift from things
Indian to British, modern products of the intellect, had begun in
the early part of the nineteenth century.
On the whole, Persian lost its importance and is taught in the
educational institutions of Pakistan and India as an optional sub-
ject. Students take it because it is taught through the memoriza-
tion and translation of selected passages from simple textbooks
which are so easy that they get high marks with little effort. They
also take it, at least in Pakistan, in the competitive examinations
for state services for the same reason. Some madrasa-s in South
Asia also teach Persian more as a symbol of continuity than for
giving actual competence in the language. Some Shica madrasa-s
teach it, however, to show their affiliation with Iran, the only
Shica state in the world. Both madrasa students and students
from secular institutions lack knowledge of modern, spoken Per-
sian and are unable to function in real life situations either in
Afghanistan or Iran. Some modern language-teaching institutions
are trying to remedy this shortcoming in order to create interpret-
ers for state and business purposes (Rahman 2002: 152-157).

Female education in Persian

Although some Muslim women always had some education,
mostly the Qurcan which was read without understanding (naz̤ -
ra), reading and writing was not always considered appropriate
for women. The Qābūs nāma, a manual of appropriate behaviour
234 TARIQ RAHMAN

dating from the eleventh century advises that a daughter need not
be taught how to read and write though she may be instructed in
the rudiments of religion (Iskandar 1951: 125). The Axlāq-e nās̤i-
rī, a widely read book of adab in Mughal India, is equally mis-
trustful of womens’ education (Naim 1987: 112-113). As educa-
tion at that time was in Persian it appears that men, while enjoy-
ing the aesthetic, amorous and erotic appeal of this literature,
were uncomfortable about their women getting exposed to it.
This became very clear during Victorian India when the Indian
reformers of education spoke out strongly against it.
Nazir Ahmad (1833?-1912), the didactic novelist, recom-
mends the study of Urdu and simple arithmetic besides the Qur-
c
an and religious books, in his novels. However, his character
Nusuh in Taūbat un- uṣūḥ (1874) teaches the Gulistān to his
wife but censors one fourth of it by blackening its lines. These,
he explains to her, were obscene (Axtar 1994: 410-411). In
Fasāna-e Mubtilā (1885) the protagonist Mubtila learns Persian
in school and the eroticism of this literature makes him conscious
of his beauty and wayward in behaviour thus ruining his life
(ibidem, p. 630). However, Persian could be safely studied under
good supervision. Thus in Majālis un-nissā (1874) Khwaja Altaf
Husain Hali (1837-1914), another reformer, shows his character
Zubaida Khatun being taught at home, first by an ustānī (female
teacher) and then by her father. Besides the inevitable Gulistān
and Bustān, she also reads the Iyār-e dāniš (Minault 1998: 36).
However, despite this bias women were educated in Persian.
Ibn Battuta found in a town in Malabar (Hinawr) ‘thirteen
schools for girls and twenty-three for boys’. This was unusual
because he remarks that it is ‘a thing which I have never seen
elsewhere’ (Battuta 1929: 230). The women of this town knew
the Qurcan by heart and, Persian being the language used by
Muslim educated people, this language was certainly taught in
these schools.
Women from the most powerful families, not having to con-
form to public opinion, did get educated. The names of such
women are found in many historical sources and are as follows:
Gulbadan Begum (born 1523), author of the Humāyūn nāma;
Salima Sultana, niece of Humayun; Nur Jahan; Mumtaz Mahal;
 THE LEARNING OF PERSIAN IN SOUTH ASIA: THE CURRICULA… 235

Razia Sultana; Chand Bibi and several Mughal princesses (Sufi

1941: 81-82; Rafīq 1982: 196-211; for Mughal princesses also
see Badaxšānī 1971: 95-98). Although details of their education
are seldom provided, it appears that princesses and women from
eminent families were instructed at home by women teachers. For
instance, Inayatullah Khan’s mother Hafiza Maryam, had been
commissioned to teach Aurangzeb’s (r. 1658-1707) accomplished
daughter, Zebunnissa Begum (1639-1689)1 (Xān 1969: 821). The
princess Jahan Ara, daughter of Shah Jahan, wrote a letter and
couplets in Persian to a ṣūfī called Mulla Shah (Aḥmed 1974:
132-133). Minor royalty of the latter period, such as the Begums
of Bhopal, seem to have regarded education as an accomplish-
ment in women of their stature. Sultan Jahan Begum, the third
woman ruler of the state, learnt Persian as well as English
(Minault 1998: 25). Her granddaughter, Abida Sultaan, also stud-
ied Persian for less than an hour daily (Sultaan 2004: 23).
Women from the ašrāf classes were educated if their fathers
taught them or kept teachers to do so. For instance, Azizunnissa
Begum (1780?-1857), Sir Syed’s mother, read elementary Per-
sian and the Qurcan (quoted from Minault 1998: 14). There is
evidence that some of the women of the Hindu Kāyasth class,
which had taken to Persian, also knew the language (Durgā
Prašād in Taẕkirat un-nissā as quoted by cAbdullāh 1962: 233).
But, ironically enough, society also gave enough autonomy to
courtesans who lived in surrogate families run by women (gha-
rānā-s), to enable them to control their education. And some of
the best of them were taught Persian. According to Leitner, who
must have conversed with ašrāf men of the Punjab, the ‘superior
class of Hetairai are known to have received an education in
Persian poetry and in calligraphy’ and this is the reason, he
claims, that Persian poetry, ‘which has an almost intoxicating
effect on the native mind, is sternly prohibited to be heard or read
by most respectable females’ (Leitner 1882: 98). Umrao Jan Ada,

1
A collection of poems called Dīvān-i Maxf ī collected in 1724, is
credited to Zeb un-Nissa. However, some ascribe it to another Makhfi. For
the English translation of the first fifty ġazāl-s see Magan Lal and Jessie
Duncan Westbrook, The Diwan of Zeb-un- issa, London: John Murray,
1913.
236 TARIQ RAHMAN

the protagonist of Mirza Hadi Rusva’s novel of the same name,

says she was taught the Karīmā, Amad nāma, Gulistān and other
books of Persian (Rusvā 2000: 54-55). While the courtesans
needed the language to entertain gentlemanly customers, this was
precisely the reason the middle class mistrusted it.
It appears, however, that in the primary schools (maktab-s)
boys and girls Hindus as well as Muslims, studied together (cAbd
ul-La[īf 1971: 34 and Leitner 1882: 105). This has been reported
as the normal practice in Pakistan’s rural areas by people in their
seventies (Malik 2005). There were also female indigenous
schools which admitted small boys in various districts of the
Punjab (Leitner 1882: 98). This was also true of other parts of
India. According to the testimony of Badruddin Tyabji before the
Hunter Commission of 1882: ‘There are some Koris [Qārī-s] or
Mullas in the chief centres of Muhammadan population who
teach the Koran and perhaps a little Hindustani and Persian to the
girls’ (Tayabji 1882: 501). Though these schools taught the Qur-
c
an (naz̤ ra), some of them taught the primers of Persian also. In
the Punjab, according to Leitner, ‘some of the ladies are good
Persian scholars, and in a distinguished Muhammadan family
that I know, I have been given to understand that several of the
ladies are excellent poets’ (Leitner 1882: 104). This was the con-
dition of the Punjab in the 1880s when Leitner collected his data.
However, even today, curiously enough, some women, otherwise
illiterate, know the Karīmā by heart and narrate it in women’s
gatherings even now in the Pakistani Punjab. It is possible that,
like the Qurcan, they also memorize the primer (personal com-
munication).
Modernity brought ideas of womens’ emancipation, espe-
cially through education. Mumtaz cAli (1860-1935), a reformer,
expressed them in his book Ḥaqūq un-nisvān. He launched the
paper ‘Tahẕīb un-nisvān’ in Urdu from Lahore in 1898. He
commends books of good Urdu style as well as the Gulistān and
Bustān (Minault 1998: 83). His wife Muhammadi Begum
(1878?-1908) learned Urdu on her own (Minault 1998: 111-112).
Mumtaz cAlī taught her Persian (ibidem, p. 112). The Anjuman-i
Ḥimāyat-i Islām made five primary schools for girls in 1885 and
increased them to fifteen by 1894. The curriculum included Per-
 THE LEARNING OF PERSIAN IN SOUTH ASIA: THE CURRICULA… 237

sian (Minault 1998: 176). At this time, indigenous schools did

sometimes teach Persian to girls. Although Persian was being
phased out of the domains of power, it had such prestige that it
was considered too much of an accomplishment to be denied
altogether to young ladies. Thus, when Syed Karamat Husain
(1854-1917) founded the Lucknow Girls’ School, Persian was
taught along with Arabic, Urdu and English (Minault 1998: 223).
Another educationist, Rokeya Sakhavat Hossain (1880-1932),
who was a Bengali also established a school in Calcutta where
Persian was taught in the beginning (Hossain 1988: 41-42). It
was phased out, like it was in the boys’ schools, but because it
could not empower the learner and not because of gender dis-
crimination.

Conclusion
Persian was learned by the Muslim elite as well as its subordinate
allies among the Hindus (such as Kāyasth-s) because it was used
in the domains of power. The purpose of the learners was to em-
power themselves individually and collectively. However, by
doing so, they helped in maintaining the cultural and intellectual
hegemony of the Indian Persianized Muslim elite. This hegem-
ony made Muslim (Mughal) political supremacy acceptable to
Indians.
The studying of Muslims and Hindus in the same schools
and the courses of study – primers, composition and epistologra-
phy, literature and ethics – created a consensus of values among
the educated elite which, in the last analysis, supported Muslim
values and perceptions of reality. Hierarchy – the superiority of
males over females, the elite over the masses, Muslims over Hin-
dus etc – was one of these values. Arbitrariness was another. It
promoted belief in fate and, therefore, political quietism. The
magical universe of Persian literature, disconnecting cause and
effect and creating a world in which things happened arbitrarily,
helped one reconcile oneself to the arbitrariness of political au-
thorities and blame their excesses on one’s fate (kismat or
karma). Yet another attitude, again connected with Persian litera-
ture, was the idea that literature was an aesthetic device com-
238 TARIQ RAHMAN

pletely alienated from real life. Thus stories of love, disregard of

the norms of society, revolt against one’s socio-economic class
(by falling in love with persons from another class), disregard of
gender (boy-love) lost their heterodox force because they were
consumed as aesthetic products and put on a pedestal which
separated them from life. Thus, the unconventional was conven-
tionalized and the subversive potential of Persian texts neutral-
ized and, indeed, recruited into supporting the power structure.
But because this subversive potential existed, women were gen-
erally kept away from it. Women powerful in their own right or
autonomous, or being on the fringes of society (courtesans), did,
however, study Persian. Middle class women too were taught the
language under strict supervision and generally at home but
sometimes in schools. The demand for learning Persian de-
creased when Persian was no longer useful for obtaining jobs in
the state or the private sector. It is now studied either for the few
jobs where it is still used, by scholars or by students who find it
easy to get high marks in it.

ANNEXURE-1

Books of Persian
taught in the educational institutions of South Asia2

Books in bold are taught even now in Pakistan’s madrasa-s (religious

seminaries)

Primers
c
At̤ t̤ ār, Farīduddīn (c. 12-13 cent.), 1959, Pand nāma, Multān:
Maktaba Širkat-e cIlmiyat, 1959 [Urdu meanings in margins
by Sajjād Ḥusain].
Buxarī, Šarfuddīn (c. 14 cent.), ām-e Ḥaq, Karachi: H. M.
Saeed Company.
2
Details are given in Sufi 1941: 77-78. Only the most commonly
studied books of Persian language and literature are given above.
 THE LEARNING OF PERSIAN IN SOUTH ASIA: THE CURRICULA… 239

Sacdī, MuÆleḥuddīn (c. 13 cent.), Karīmā, Multan: Bairoon

Bohar Gate [Urdu words in margins by Qāẕī Sajjād Ḥusain].

Prose and Composition

1. Badā ði c ul-inšā ð (or Inšā ð-i Yūsufī).
2. Prose works of Mullā Jāmī and Mullā Munīr.
3. Letters of Abū ðl-Faẓl.
4. Handbook of Šaix cInāyatullāh, secretary to Šāh Jahān.
5. Bahār-i suxan by Šaix Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ.
6. Letters of Mullā Munīr.
7. Epistles of Šaidā and Mullā T̤uġrā.
8. Story of Lāl Čand.
9. Līlāvatī translated by Šaix Faiẓī.

Literature
1. Gulistān and Bustān (beginners) by Sacdī
2. Yūsuf-Zulaixā by cAbd ur-Raḥmān
3. Tuḥfat-ul-aḥrār by Jāmī (d. 1494)
4. uzhat-ul-abrār by Jāmī
5. Sikandar nāma by Niz̤āmī Ganjavī (d. 1209)
6. Maxzan-ul-asrār by Niz̤āmī Ganjavī
7. Haft paikar by Niz̤āmī Ganjavī
8. Šīrīn Xusrau by Niz̤āmī Ganjavī
9. Lailā-Majnūn by Niz̤āmī Ganjavī
10. Qirān us-Sa cdain by Amīr Xusrau (d. 1325)
11. Mat̤ la c-ul-anwār by Amīr Xusrau
12. I cjāz-e Xusravī by Amīr Xusrau
13. Works of many poets including Sacdi, Ḥāfiz̤ Šīrāzī (d.
1389/90) and Ṣāðib Tabrīzī (d. 1651). Also the Qaṣā üid of
Badr-i-Čač, Anvarī, Xāqānī, cUrfī (d. 1592), and Faiẓī (d.
1595).
14. Fiction: T̤ūt̤ ī-nāma by Nakšābī; Anvār-e suhailī by Ḥusain
Vaðiẓ Kāšifī (d. 1504); Iyār-e dāniš by Šaix Abū ðl-Faẓl (d.
1602), and Bahār-e dāniš.
240 TARIQ RAHMAN

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ABBREVIATIONS

NDC = National Documentation Centre, Cabinet Division, Islamabad

OIOC = Oriental and India Office Collection, British Library, London
SA = Sindh Archives, Clifton, Karachi

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