Najaf has been the cradle of Shī῾ī learning for many centuries.According to Najaf tradition, it has been so ever since the prominentscholar Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, called shaykh al-tā'ifa or “seniorscholar of the the sect”, migrated there shortly after the Saljuq conquestof Baghdad in 447/1055.

We have very little information about the teaching system and curriculum inNajaf before the nineteenth century. In this essay, I will try to presentthe basic elements of a Najaf ḥawza education as they exist in contemporaryIraq and compare it with a Najaf curriculum of 1913. Quite remarkably, thecurriculum, teaching methods and patronage networks have been remarkablystable over the last century. Politics and reform movements have, however,had their effects on the curriculum too, as I shall explain in the course ofthis essay.

This paper summarises an argument I make at much greater length in theforthcoming fourth volume of my book Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-IslamicWorld. For more detail and extensive footnotes and references I refer to thelonger version.

The aim of this summary is to provide an outline of a new account of therise of Islam in Sindh and more broadly the Indus borderlands — the lattercomprise Sindh, Baluchistan, the Afghan tribal areas and the Kabul wilayat,Kafiristan (the later Nuristan), the western Panjab, and, to the east andsouth of the northernmost curve of the Indus river, the Kashmir valley andits surrounding mountain zone. With the exception of about half of theAfghan tribal lands which are part of Afghanistan and the valley of Kashmirwhich is part of India today, this area is broadly coterminous with Pakistanminus Lahore.