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The Deccan was, for the better part of six centuries, one of the great learned regions of the Islamicate world. Under the Bahmanis, Mahmud Gawan built at Bidar a three-storey madrasa whose Iranian masters, astronomical instruments and library of three thousand manuscripts drew students from Shiraz, Samarkand and Baghdad. The Qutb Shahis at Golconda and Hyderabad endowed scholars, physicians and poets; the Adil Shahis of Bijapur kept a court rich in Persian and Dakhni letters.
Under the Asaf Jahi Nizams — and above all under the seventh Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan — this older tradition was renewed in modern dress. He founded a university that for the first time in India taught in an Indian language, built hospitals, libraries, engineering colleges and academies, and modernised the older seminaries without dissolving them. The institutions below sketch that long arc of Deccan learning.
Mahmud Gawan Madrasa
A three-storey Persian-style madrasa raised by the Bahmani wazir Khwaja Mahmud Gawan, its façade sheathed in turquoise tile-work. Its library was said to hold some three thousand manuscripts, and its faculty was drawn from Iran and the Arab lands — astronomers, jurists and grammarians who made Bidar a node of the wider Islamicate world.
Explore → II · Asaf Jahi · 1865City College
Founded as the Madrasa-i-Aliya in 1865, later City High School and then City College, it is among the oldest schools of Hyderabad. Its long Indo-Saracenic frontage on the Musi has educated generations of the city's poets, civil servants and physicians.
Explore → III · Asaf Jahi · 1876Jamia Nizamia
Founded by Hazrat Mawlana Anwarullah Farooqui — known as Fazilat-Jung — Jamia Nizamia is the principal Sunni Hanafi seminary of the Deccan. Still active today, with its main campus in the old city, it has trained ulama who carry the Deccan's classical Islamic scholarship into the present.
Explore → IV · Sir Salar Jung I · 1879Mahbub College
Founded by Sir Salar Jung I, the great reforming wazir of the sixth Nizam, Mahbub College was among the earliest Western-style institutions of the Hyderabad State. It introduced English-language secondary education to the twin cities and bridged the older Persianate curriculum with modern subjects.
Explore → V · Mir Mahbub Ali Khan · 1887Nizam College
Founded under Mir Mahbub Ali Khan, the sixth Nizam, Nizam College was the first modern liberal-arts college of the Hyderabad State. Affiliated now to Osmania University, its old stone building on Basheer Bagh remains one of the city's most graceful campuses.
Explore → VI · Asaf Jahi · 1891State Central Library (Asafia)
Founded in 1891 as the Asafia State Library by Mir Mahbub Ali Khan, it now houses one of the largest collections of Urdu, Persian and Arabic manuscripts in South Asia. Its long arched reading-room above the Afzal Gunj bridge is itself a piece of Asaf Jahi public architecture.
Explore → VII · Unani medicine · 1894Nizamia Tibbi College
Formally established in 1894 under Asaf Jahi patronage, the Nizamia Tibbi College gave the older Unani medical tradition of the Deccan a modern institutional form. It remains one of the principal traditional medical schools of South Asia, training hakims in the classical Greco-Arabic system.
Explore → VIII · Mir Mahbub Ali Khan · 1907Mahbubia Girls' School
Founded in 1907 by the sixth Nizam Mir Mahbub Ali Khan, Mahbubia was among the earliest girls' schools in South India and a remarkable statement of intent by a Muslim ruler of the period. It set a model for women's education that the seventh Nizam would extend in his own reign.
Explore → IX · Osmania reforms · 1918Osmania University
Founded in 1918 by the seventh Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan, Osmania was the first university in modern India to use an Indian language — Urdu — as the medium of instruction. Its vast Arts College building, designed by the Belgian architect Ernest Jasper, is one of the great monuments of Indo-Saracenic civic architecture.
Explore → X · Medical reform · 1846 / 1919Osmania Medical College
Founded in 1846 as the Hyderabad Medical School and renamed Osmania Medical College in 1919, it is among the oldest medical colleges in India. Through it the seventh Nizam folded Western medicine into the state's older Unani tradition and built around it the great Osmania General Hospital on the Musi.
Explore → XI · Anjuman-e-Taraqqi-e-Urdu · 1922Anwar-ul-Uloom College
Founded in 1922 by the Anjuman-e-Taraqqi-e-Urdu under Imadul-Mulk Sayyid Husain Bilgrami, Anwar-ul-Uloom became a principal seat of Urdu scholarship in the city. It carried the Asafi commitment to Urdu learning into a community-led, modern college on Mallepally.
Explore → XII · Jagirdars' College · 1923Hyderabad Public School
Founded in 1923 as the Jagirdars' College, it was set up to educate the children of the Hyderabad State nobility on the model of an English public school. Renamed after 1948, it became one of India's best-known boarding schools, set within the old Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung estate.
Explore → XIII · Public health · 1925Osmania General Hospital
Built in 1925 as part of the seventh Nizam's overhaul of the city's public health after the 1908 Musi floods, the great Indo-Saracenic block of Osmania General Hospital still stands on the river. It was conceived together with the Osmania Medical College as a single teaching-hospital complex.
Explore → XIV · Asaf Jahi · 1929College of Engineering
Founded in 1929 by the seventh Nizam as the Hyderabad State College of Engineering, it was the technical arm of the same modernisation project that built the city's roads, hospitals and railways. Now JNTU Hyderabad, it remains a principal engineering institution of the state.
Explore → XV · Salar Jung III · 1951Salar Jung Museum
Opened to the public in 1951, the Salar Jung Museum is the personal collection of Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salar Jung III, a wazir of the seventh Nizam. Said to be the third-largest one-man art collection in the world, its galleries gather Mughal painting, Persian carpets, Quranic manuscripts and European porcelain on the banks of the Musi.
Explore →Institutions of the Deccan in dates
- 1472Mahmud Gawan, the Persian wazir of the Bahmanis, completes his three-storey madrasa at Bidar — a library of three thousand manuscripts and a faculty drawn from Iran, Arabia, and Samarkand make it the foremost centre of learning in the Deccan.
- 1846The Hyderabad Medical School is founded under Asaf Jahi patronage — the earliest Western-style medical institution in the Deccan, later renamed Osmania Medical College in 1919 and paired with the great teaching hospital on the Musi.
- 1865The Madrasa-i-Aliya is founded in Hyderabad — among the city's oldest schools, later becoming City College and educating generations of the city's poets, civil servants, and physicians from its Indo-Saracenic building on the Musi.
- 1876Mawlana Anwarullah Farooqui (Fazilat-Jung) founds Jamia Nizamia, the principal Sunni Hanafi seminary of the Deccan — still active in the old city, training ulama in the classical Deccani tradition of Islamic scholarship.
- 1887 & 1891Nizam College is founded under the sixth Nizam Mir Mahbub Ali Khan (1887), and the Asafia State Library (1891) is established to house the growing Nizam collection of Persian, Arabic, and Urdu manuscripts — together marking the high point of sixth-Nizam patronage.
- 1894 & 1907The Nizamia Tibbi College (1894) gives the Unani medical tradition a modern institutional form; Mahbubia Girls' School (1907), founded by the sixth Nizam, becomes one of the earliest girls' schools in South India.
- 1918Osmania University is founded by the seventh Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan — the first university in modern India to teach in an Indian language (Urdu); its Arts College building by the Belgian architect Ernest Jasper is a landmark of Indo-Saracenic civic architecture.
- 1925 & 1929The Osmania General Hospital is built on the Musi (1925) as part of the post-flood reconstruction; the College of Engineering (1929) follows — together, the technical and medical pillars of the seventh Nizam's modernisation programme.
- 1951The Salar Jung Museum opens to the public — the personal collection of Salar Jung III, wazir of the seventh Nizam, said to be the third-largest one-man art collection in the world, housed on the banks of the Musi.