"Islamic revival in British India : Deoband, 1860-1900"

In a study of the vitality of Islam in late nineteenth-century north India, Barbara Metcalf explains the response of Islamic religious scholars ( ulama) to the colonial dominance of the British and the collapse of Muslim political power. Focussing on Deoband, the most important Islamic seminary of the period, she discusses the ways in which the ulama enhanced a sense of cultural continuity in a period of alien rule. Deprived of a Muslim state, the leaders of Deoband sought to renew Islamic spiritual life by teaching early Islamic principles. To this end, they concerned themselves with popular behaviour and the education of both elite and non-elite Muslims through the spoken language, Urdu. Arguing the importance of seeing movements like Deoband from the perspective of the participants themselves, the book is based on institutional records, biographies and hagiographies, memoirs, diaries, tracts, and letters as well as on relevant government records. Only recently have movements to reaffirm Muslim tradition been recognized by scholars as major influences in Muslim societies. Here Dr Metcalf demonstrates that the world view of the Deobandis, radically different from that of their imperial administrators, prefigures in significant ways the Islamic revival movements of recent times`