Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Khaled Abou El Fadl, Joshua Cohen, 

and Deborah Chasman, eds., Islam and the Challenge 

of Democracy: A Boston Review Book (Princeton, N.J.: 

Princeton University Press, 2004); Robert A. Dahl, Ian 

Shapiro, and Jose Antonio Chiebub, eds., The Democ-

racy Sourcebook (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003); 

John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, eds., Islam and 

Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); 

Noah Feldman, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for 

Islamic Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 

2003).

Deoband

Located in Saharanpur District in Uttar Pradesh, 

i

ndia

, Deoband town contains 

mosqUe

s and build-

ings from the 15th and 16th centuries and is 

mentioned in the Ayn-i Akbari of Abu’l Fazl (d. 

1602). It is famous for the Dar al-Ulum (House 

of Sciences) school, which was founded in 1867 

by a group of highly learned 

Ulama

. Principal 

among them was Mohammad Qasim Nanautawi 

(1832–77), who was trained by teachers in the 

lineage of Shah Wali Allah (1703–62), the great 

Sufi reformer and intellectual in d

elhi

. The goal 

of the institution was to create a new Indian body 

of ulama that could provide spiritual and legal 

guidance to Indian Muslims, rather than con-

tinuing to depend on scholars from the Arabian 

Peninsula or having to travel to the Middle East 

for instruction. Another paramount objective in 

the founding of the school was to counteract the 

growing influence of Christian missionaries.