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Jamia Nizamia is the principal traditional Islamic seminary of the Deccan. It was founded in 1876 at Hyderabad by Hazrat Mawlana Muhammad Anwarullah Farooqui — known by his Asafi title Fazilat-Jung — a jurist trained at Mecca, Madina and Cairo who served as tutor to the sixth Nizam and as the first Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Hyderabad State. The seminary teaches the classical Sunni Hanafi syllabus — Quran, hadith, fiqh, tafsir, kalam, Arabic grammar and rhetoric — in the curriculum known as the Dars-i-Nizami, and has issued the standard fatwas of the Deccan Hanafi tradition for almost a century and a half.
The founder
One of the most learned ulama of nineteenth-century India
Mawlana Anwarullah Farooqui was among the most learned ulama of nineteenth-century India. After study at Mecca, Madina, Cairo and the Arabic schools of Hindustan, he returned to the Deccan, served as tutor to the young Mir Mahbub Ali Khan and was raised to the rank of Fazilat-Jung. He founded the seminary as part of a wider effort to consolidate the Sunni religious establishment of the state on a firm scholarly footing.
The seminary
The eight-year Alim and Fazil programmes of the old city
The main campus stands at Shibli Gunj in the old city, with subsidiary branches across Hyderabad. Its students — drawn from across the Deccan and increasingly from outside India — follow the eight-year Alim and Fazil programmes that mark the standard Indian madrasa curriculum, supplemented by specialist courses in Quranic recitation, hadith studies and the principles of jurisprudence.
Fatawa and continuing role
A seminary whose graduates serve across the Deccan and beyond
The seminary's Dar al-Ifta has issued thousands of fatwas across the twentieth century; its graduates serve as imams, qazis and teachers across the Deccan and the wider South Asian diaspora. Jamia Nizamia is one of the small number of pre-1948 Hyderabad institutions to have survived the political transformations of the twentieth century without significant rupture.