The Mudarris: A Forgotten Class of Islamic Scholarship
Teaching Is Not a Light Matter
Too often the tradition of tadrīs (teaching) and the position of mudarris (teacher) are taken lightly. One who recognises the weight of this responsibility will find that it commands most of his time, to the point that other duties, such as giving speeches or writing, are largely transferred to other scholars. This is not to say that teachers within the late-classical tradition did not write or speak, but that the greater part of their attention was given to the duty before them, to the extent that they came to be recognised as a class within themselves.
A Class Unto Themselves
The mudarris was indeed a distinct class of scholars. Travelling through the Muslim world, one may still find the title “mudarris” inscribed on the headstones of certain scholars before their names. This is telling; it indicates that such a class not only existed, but was recognised and remembered through its primary function: producing the next generation of scholars.
A School of Mudarrisīn
The Khairābādī scholars inherited this duty and are largely remembered as mudarrisīn - teachers who produced other teachers. Even today, the graduates of a traditional Khairābādī madrasa, though they are seldom found, are sought out by seminaries to teach within them. This is a longer story that deserves its own treatment.
No Lesson Without Preparation
But one of the underlying reasons why tadrīs was considered a weighty responsibility, and was treated as such by the scholars of Khairābād in particular, is that no passage would be taught without muṭālaʿah (prior preparation), and no student would be permitted to read a new section without it.
Just in the case of muṭālaʿah, the teacher carried two responsibilities: to prepare himself, and to ensure his students were preparing. The purpose was not only to transmit knowledge correctly, but to ensure that the student himself was building the malakah (intellectual proficiency) that would one day place him in the same position as his teacher.
In Their Own Words
To this effect, Ḥakīm Maḥmūd Aḥmad Barakātī writes:
“Muṭālaʿah (prior preparation) is predominantly a term specific to the Khairābādī tradition. It was considered necessary for both teacher and student to prepare, in advance, the portion of the book currently under teaching and study, to the extent of the upcoming lesson. Such emphasis was placed on this that teachers considered it binding upon themselves to prepare even the introductory texts before teaching them. And on any day they were unable to do so, they would say candidly, without any embarrassment in the morning: "There will be no lesson today, I was not able to do my muṭālaʿah last night."”
Regarding Mawlānā ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Khairābādī, the son of the illustrious Imām Faḍl al-Ḥaqq Khairābādī, the same author writes:
“ʿAllāmah ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq had a particular fondness for teaching the Kāfiyah of Ibn Ḥājib in naḥw (syntax), and had even authored a commentary on it (Tashīl al-Kāfiyah), yet he would not teach even this without prior preparation”.
Regarding another Khairābādī teacher Mawlānā Sayyid Barakāt Aḥmad Tonkī, a student of his writes:
“He could hardly be found teaching even these simple introductory texts such as Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb and al-Quṭbī [both in simple logic] without prior preparation. He [the Sayyid] would say: "It is not permissible to teach any book without having prepared it first."”
Mawlānā ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm Sharaf al-Qādirī, the distinguished student of Mawlānā ʿAṭā Muḥammad Bandyālawī; the pride of the Khairābādī school in its later period, writes:
“Despite having taught the curricular texts dozens of times, he would prepare every book properly before teaching it, and not simply by casting a cursory glance over it, but with a naẓar-i ghā'ir: a deep, absorbed attention”.
The opening works of the original Dars-i Niẓāmī Arabic curriculum have proven over centuries to be among the most effective pathways into classical Arabic, offering precision and clarity while remaining concise.
Taught through the Khairābādī pedagogical framework, with rare scholarly elucidations of ʿAllāmah ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Lakhnavī al-Farangī Maḥallī presented throughout.
