Public lecture · Autumn 2026
Photograph · credit to be confirmed
Scholars of Faith
Muslim Girls’ Education in North India
Dr Usha SanyalVisiting Assistant Professor of History (Retired), Wingate University, North CarolinaPh.D. History, Columbia University, 1990 · M.A. Southeast Asian Studies, University of Kent · B.A. Hons. Sociology, Delhi University
Author of
Scholars of Faith: South Asian Muslim Women and the Embodiment of Religious KnowledgeOxford University Press, 2020
Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870–1920Oxford University Press, 1996 · Yoda Press, 2010 · Urdu tr. 2013
Girls’ madrasas in North India have been filling since the 1990s; in some districts of western Uttar Pradesh they now outnumber the boys’. Drawing on her work inside Jamiʿa Nur al-Shariʿat, a Barelwi girls’ madrasa in Shahjahanpur founded in 2003, Usha Sanyal traces the tradition it belongs to, from Ahmad Riza Khan’s Ahl-e Sunnat in Rohilkhand after Mughal decline to the presses, fatwas and allied pirs that carried it beyond Bareilly, and asks what changes when women claim religious authority from inside the tradition.
Saturday
17 October 2026
Time
11:00 AM CDT
9:30 PM ISTChicago · New Delhi
9:30 PM ISTChicago · New Delhi
Venue
OnlineRegistration link to follow
US West Coast
9:00 AM PDT
Toronto
12:00 PM EDT
London
5:00 PM BST
Brussels
6:00 PM CEST
Cairo
7:00 PM EEST
Singapore
12:00 AM SGT, 18 Oct
In conversation
Ali Javed
Adjunct Faculty of Intellectual History, ISMII · leads the conversation and the audience questions
