The Funding of a Shi‘i Seminary

The Usuli Shi‘i ulama already had informal means of passing their status on to their children, of teaching them the technical expertise demanded by many ulama posts, and of controlling entry into the ulama corps. Their teaching sessions in homes produced enough Usuli clerics to meet the notable-class demand for their services in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. But with the accession of great wealth and numbers of government posts for Shi‘i clerics in the 1840s, the ulama could only take advantage of the opportunities to influence society and move upward socially by expanding and more rationally ordering their educational activities. In short, they needed formal seminaries.

After Amjad ‘Ali Shah and his chief minister, Aminu'd-Dawlah, had been in office for nearly a year, the leading mujtahids Sayyids Muhammad and Husayn Nasirabadi decided that they finally had a government with which they could work closely. They suggested that the new government formally subvent an official, expanded Shi‘i seminary (madrasah ). The ruling circles responded with enthusiasm and generosity. In May 1843 a proposed schedule was drawn up wherein the king appointed Rs. 31,200 per year for the school, with fourteen primary teachers, seven intermediate teachers, and five advanced instructors, with three principals.^[24] For Shi‘i scholars with land around their qasabahs the salaries were more of a perquisite than an income, although for Sayyids that had fallen on hard times even Rs. 240 per year could help to make ends meet.

Amjad ‘Ali Shah neglected to endow the seminary or to appoint lands permanently to generate its income, paying for it instead from the royal treasury every year by personal fiat. The king often visited the premises, at the tomb

[24] "Proposed Schedule for the Royal College, 13 Rabic II 1259 [1843]" (trans.), FDFC, 31 Oct. 1856, no. 111. Thirty advanced students received Rs. 10 per month each, fifty intermediate pupils were given Rs. 6 per month, and 125 beginners had to try to bye on Rs. 4 each month. The pay scale for the teachers ranged from Rs. 20 for the junior teachers of beginning classes, to Rs. 40 for the intermediate teachers, to Rs 70 for the advanced instructors. The principals received Rs. 150 per month.

of Nawab Sacadat ‘Ali Khan, and distributed sumptuous meals. He also funded a smaller seminary at Faizabad, at least for a time. Many of the families that staffed and attended the royal seminary had already taught Shi‘i sciences on an informal basis for some time. Amjad ‘Ali Shah simply gave permanent form and monetary support to such teaching, allowing numerous salons to coalesce into one institution.^[25]

The top administrative post at the Lucknow school fell to Sayyid Muhammad Taqi Nasirabadi (1818-72), the son of Sayyid Husayn. His emergence into prominence at the age of twenty-five marks the rise in the 1840s of the third generation of Usuli ulama. His heading tip of the school also typified the Nasirabadi family's determination to keep key clerical posts in the family; like the young executive taking over his father's business, Sayyid Muhammad Taqi's qualifications for the post lay in his family name rather than in his scholarly attainments or experience (many of the teachers he hired and fired were much senior to him on both counts). He did not even receive from his father and uncle his diplomas qualifying him to relate the oral reports of the Imams until 1845 (1262), two years after he became principal. He also held an honorary diploma from Shaykh Muhammad Hasan an-Najafi in Iraq, into whose hands the Awadh ulama had placed hundreds of thousands of rupees. In addition to his duties as principal and senior teacher at the royal seminary, he helped his father lead prayers at the Tahsin ‘Ali mosque, sometimes also leading them in his father's presence at the royal mosque. He wrote prolifically, often in Arabic, and must have felt a pressing need to provide textbooks for the new generation of two hundred students coming up through his institution.^[26]

At the school he wielded absolute administrative powers: "It appears from Wajboolarz [wajibal-card ], dated the same year in which the institution was founded, that full and plenary powers were conferred on the principal, to appoint, remove or alter salaries at his pleasure."^[27] In addition to his salary of Rs. 1,800 per year and his share of income from the family villages, he received from 1848 a complimentary stipend of Rs. 100 per month, in addition to Rs. 540 per year from the rent of shops around the Tahsin ‘Ali mosque.^[28]

[25] Kashmiri, NujumT 1:268; Nauganavi, Tazkirah , pp. 296-97 The one teacher menuoned on the staff there was S Karam Husayn (d 1845) of Zangipur, a student of the Faizabad prayer-leader S. Muhammad Deoghatavi

[26] Kashmiri, NujumT . 1:299-300; Nauganavi, Tazkirah , pp. 98-99, S. Muhammad Taqi studied with his father, S. Husayn, his uncle S. Muhammad, and with S. ‘Ali Bhikpuri, S. Ahmad ‘Ali Muhammadabadi, and S. Muhammad ‘Abbas Shushtari. See also S. Muhammad Nasirabadi, Al-Ijazahallati katabaha . . . li . . . MuhammadTaqi (Lucknow: Matbacah-'i Muhammadiyyah, n d); Muhammad Hasan an-Najafi, Al-Ijazahallatikatabaha . li'l-fadil . . . Muhammad Taqi (Lucknow: Matbacat ‘Abdu'llah, n d.)

[27] Judicial Comm to Sec Chief Comm, Oudh, 4 June 1856, FDFC, 31 Oct. 1856, no. 113.

[28] Enclosure 67A with Sec. Chief Comm Oudh, to Sec. Govt. India, 5 Jan. 1857, FDFC, 20 Feb. 1857, no. 66; Syed Mohummud Takee to Chief Comm., 4 Nov. 1862, and "Order passed by Col. S A. Abbott, Comm, Lucknow Division, in the case of Syed Mohummud Takee, Appellant," 10 July 1862, Board of Revenue, Lucknow, Lucknow File 1683.

But such formal emoluments were no doubt dwarfed by the gifts of notable-class patrons and students.

The assistant principal when the school first came into existence was Sayyid Ahmad ‘Ali Muhammadabadi (d. 1878), a middle landholder (zamindar ) and leader of a small town in British-ruled Azamgarh just south of Awadh. Trained by the Usuli prayer leaders of Faizabad and Lucknow, and by a Farangi-Mahalli, he secured notable-class patronage when he became the tutor for the sons of the sometime chief minister, Imdad Husayn Khan Aminu'd-Dawlah. Muhammadabadi's wealth and erudition and his penetration of ruling-class networks in Lucknow allowed him to marry his son to the daughter of another man who served as chief minister, Ahmad ‘Ali Khan Munawwaru'd-Dawlah.^[29] The third seminary administrator in 1843, Muhammad b. ‘Ali Fayzabadi, a close student of Chief Mujtahid Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi, also served as a preacher (vaciz ), strongly recommending Friday congregational prayers and working sermons from the New Testament and the Imam ‘Ali into his talks.^[30]

Of the five advanced teachers at Rs. 840 per year only a few can be identified from the biographical dictionaries. One, Sayyid Muhammad Siyadat Amrohavi (d. 1849), a Friday prayer leader from a zamindar background, had studied with Sayyid Husayn Nasirabadi.^[31] Another prominent advanced teacher, Sayyid Muhammad ‘Abbas Shushtari (1809-88), served as Sayyid Husayn Nasirabadi's secretary in his Arabic correspondence with Iraq. From an Iranian clerical family that settled in Awadh as court physicians and intermarried with the Awadh notable class, Sayyid Muhammad ‘Abbas forsook medicine for a religious career. At age seventeen he began studying Shi‘i sciences with Sayyid Husayn Nasirabadi, who encouraged him to become a prayer leader and sermonizer. He tutored the children of the great merchant Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali Dihlavi to earn a living and received his diploma allowing him to relate Shi‘i reports in 1841. For a time without means, he tried his hand at medicine again. He later remarked that although he came of a family renowned for its wealth, he himself at one point fell on hard times.^[32]

Finally, in the spring of 1842 Shushtari obtained a post under Muhammad ‘Ali Shah. When in May of the same year the king died and a new administration came in, he lost that position and had trouble maintaining his service-elite style of life. A year later when the Shi‘i seminary for which

[29] Nauganavi, Tazkirah , pp. 13-15, 246-47; ‘Abdu'l-Hayy al-Hasani, Nuzhat al-khawatir , 8 vols. (Hyderabad, 1959), 7:45.

[30] S. Icjaz Husayn Kinturi, Kashf al-hujubwa'l-astarcanal-kutub wa'l-asfar , ed. Muhammad Hidayat Husayn (Calcutta: Asiatic Soc., 1330/1912), pp. 45, 301, 312.

[31] Nauganavi, Tazkirah , p. 172

[32] Shushtari, "Al-Macadin adh-dhahabiyyah," p. 138: Kashmiri, Nujum T . 2:33-11; and Muhammad Hadi ‘Aziz Lakhnavi, Tajalliyat : Tarikh-i‘Abbas (Lucknow: Nizami Press, 1344/1925)

Sayyid Muhammad ‘Abbas himself helped lobby was funded, Sayyid Husayn exercised his influence to have Shushtari made a senior instructor at the age of thirty-four, at Rs. 840 per year in salary. The financial difficulties he experienced underline the strong motivation the ulama had to expand job opportunities in the economically depressed 1840s.

The seminary underwent changes over time. In 1846 the government moved it to the larger facilities at Asafu'd-Dawlah's Great Imambarah in the old part of town. The faculty expanded from twenty-nine to thirty-eight, though the number of students stayed around two hundred. The turnover was large: only eleven faculty members appointed in 1843 remained on the rolls in 1856. Often their own sons replaced instructors who died, and in any case their stipends became inherited family property. Even where teachers died leaving no one in the family capable of succeeding them at the seminary, their heirs continued to receive the stipends. They were, like many service grants in this period in Awadh, a curious mixture of salary and pious endowment, a liquid waqf , an alienated portion of the Government treasury.

Although no list survives of the students who passed through the school, and the extant lists of teachers often give only a first name, the information available indicates that the seminary functioned for upper- and middle-class Shi‘is. Further, it actually became involved in 1843-56 in elite formation in Awadh. Many of the teachers who can be identified were small or middle landholders from the Muslim lineage centers, and others derived from high service families clustered around the court in Lucknow. An example of how the seminary could be used for upward mobility is Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali "Qa'imu'd-Din" (d. 1872), who worked himself up from instructor to master and finally became a jurisconsult at Vajid ‘Ali's court and an intimate of the king.^[33]

Contemporary observers remarked on the patrimonial nature of the school's administration, and younger members of the old elite ulama families received a disproportionate number of appointments to the staff on their completion of studies at the seminary. In 1848 Sayyid Husayn appointed his son Sayyid ‘Ali Naqi Nasirabadi, then twenty-seven, deputy principal at Rs. 600 per year. Sayyid Bandah Husayn Nasirabadi (d. 1875), son of Chief Mujtahid Sayyid Muhammad, became a master teacher in 1852 at Rs. 480 per annum. The late Mufti Sayyid Muhammad Quli Kinturi's youngest son, Sayyid Hamid Husayn, was hired as a teacher when only twenty-two. In 1855 his cousin, Sayyid Ghulam Husayn Kinturi, became the daroghah at Rs. 300 per year, taking charge of the stipends, which came to over Rs. 30,000 per year at that time.^[34]

[33] Nauganavi, Tazkirah , pp. 352-54; Kashmiri, Nujum T 1:298-99.

[34] Mashhadi, Savanih , pp. 371-72, for Bandah Husayn, see Nauganavi, Tazkirah , pp 85-86; for S. Hamid Husayn, see M. M Kashmiri, NujumT . 2:25-33—he later distinguished himself as a major polemicist against Sunnism with his cAbaqatal-anwar , his descendants, the ‘Abaqati family, continuing as important representatives of Shi‘i learning even after the annexation of Awadh; for Ghulam Husayn, see S. Ghulam Husayn Kinturi, "Life " (Yacnisavanih-icumri ) (Lahore: Khadim at-Taclim Sieam Press, n.d.), pp 5-15, see also Nauganavi, Tazkirah , pp 272-75, "Statement of Endowment educational and charitable established for the maintenance and support of Asophoodaulah's College," enclosure with Judicial Comm to Sec. Chief Comm., Oudh, 4 June 1856, FDFC. 31 Oct. 1856, no. 114.

Despite the dominance of elite Usuli families established in Lucknow and Faizabad, some teachers were drawn from the qasabahs , and some came from beyond Awadh, from nearby places like Bijnor or Farrukha-bad, or even from the Punjab. The school also attracted as students literate Shi‘is from Muslim service towns throughout northern India. The Shi‘is trained at the seminar), took strict Usuli ideas hack to their provincial towns. Sayyid Muharram ‘Ali Nauganavi (d. 1889) of Moradabad left his house as a young mall without telling anyone and went to Lucknow to study at the seminary. The first Shi‘i scholar from Nauganoh to be trained in Lucknow, he taught the others who followed. He established direct contact with the Usuli tradition in Iraq by visiting the shrine cities, settling thereafter in Meerut district and Saharanpur. The Lucknow seminary helped link together widely scattered Shi‘i communitics into a network of personal acquaintance and shared expertise, as well as promoting in the qasabahs the stronger division between the trained cleric and Shi‘i layman which already existed in Usuli Lucknow and Faizabad.^[35]

Just as Farangi Mahall, with its special teaching method and rationalist emphases, had helped train bureaucrats as well as ulama, so the Shi‘i seminary performed both functions. Typical textbooks included an early-Safavid-period Usuli work in the principles of jurisprudence; a standard work on metaphysics in Arabic; Mulla Sadra's commentary on an early philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia; a work by Sayyid Husayn Nasirabadi in law; and a late-eighteenth-century Usuli commentary on law from Karbala. The syllabus mixed works often used with the Nizami method with the central textbooks favored by or produced by the Usuli revival in Iraq and in Lucknow.^[36]

Sons of notables often took classes at the seminary for a while before moving on to administrative positions. Mirza Muhammad Riza "Barq," a student at the seminary, later received an appointment as the court paymaster (bakhshi ). The high notable Mirza Riza Khan ‘Ali-Jah Bahadur pursued religious knowledge at the seminary in Lucknow, then studied in Karbala. He and his brother attained both worldly and religious leadership back in Awadh.^[37]

[35] Nauganavi, Tazkirah , pp. 347-49, 355-56; Kashmiri, Nujum T . 1:298-99; 2:198.

[36] The works. mentioned in Kinturi, Life , pp. 5-15, were Macalimal-usul , ash-Shams al-bazighah : Sharh hidayatal-hikmah , Nasirabadi's Manahij al-tadqiq ; and S. ‘Ali Tabataba'i's Sharh-i kabir . No more extensive statement of the syllabus could be found.

[37] Ardistani, "Al-hisn al-matin" 2:145; Kashmiri, Nujum T . 1 148-54; Nauganavi, Tazkirah , pp 223-24

The seminary established in the 1840s allowed the more systematic socialization of Awadh's Shi‘i ulama to Usuli values and the training of a greater number of ulama to fill the posts rapidly being created by the proclerical government. Young ulama came into the system as sons or clients of the older, established mujtahids who controlled stipends and subsequent clerical appointments. The older ulama could thus offer aspiring young clerics incentives to conform to Usuli orthodoxy. Their intellectual formation included years of studying Arabic, the rational sciences, and Usuli principles of jurisprudence and theology. Some Shi‘i notables also had their sons study at the seminary, both for the rational tools they would learn there and for the sober religious education they would receive. Notable and ulama families looked on a few years at the seminary as a way of building character, and even young students from an affluent background were often forced to live on the small stipends provided by the school. Bonds other than learning and patronage linked the middle-landholding or service-class teachers at the seminary with the high notables. Marriages tied the Muhammadabad- and Shushtari families, both represented on the faculty, to two of the wealthiest notable houses, from which chief ministers had been drawn.