Scroll Down to Explore the Lives of the Towering Scholars of the Farangī Maḥall Tradition.
South Asia’s Farangī Maḥall tradition became the predominant force in shaping Muslim scholarship across the subcontinent for centuries. Sayyid Ghulām ʿAlī Āzād al-Bilgrāmī (d. 1786 CE), reflecting on his time, noted that most Indian scholars traced their scholarly lineage back to this tradition—and took pride in doing so.
Even today, it is difficult to find a scholar in the subcontinent who is not connected in some way to the Farangī Maḥall through Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn al-Sihālawī, his sons, or his students.
The scholars within the immediate family of the Farangī Maḥall alone number in the hundreds. Yet, due to colonial erasure, many of these names—and the groundbreaking contributions they made—have faded from collective memory.
Khairabadi Institute has launched an initiative to revive the legacy of each of these scholars, documenting their biographies, books, commentaries, and glosses one by one.
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Mullā Quṭb al-Dīn al-Sihālawī al-Anṣārī al-Shahīd
Mullā Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shahīd, deeply immersed in the intellectual traditions passed down through the ages, was in reality the inspiration behind the eventual development of a curriculum that gave rise to the Farangī Maḥall tradition — a body of scholarship that went on to shape the intellectual landscape of the subcontinent to this day.
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Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn Sihālwī al-Farangī Maḥallī
Mullā Niẓām al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Sihālawī, the namesake of the Dars-i Niẓāmī curriculum stands tall as Ustād al-Hind (Teacher of India). His refinement of the instructional method at the Farangī Maḥall was so impactful that the curriculum there came to be known after him as the Niẓāmiyyah.
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Mullā Baḥr al-ʿUlūm ʿAbd al-ʿAlī al-Farangī Maḥallī
Coming Soon