History Edit
It was initially founded by Ghaziuddin Khan, a general of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, a leading Deccan commander and the father of Qamar-ud-din Khan, Asaf Jah I, the founder of the Asaf Jahi dynasty of Hyderabad, also known as the first Nizam of Hyderabad, in 1690s, and was originally termed Madrasa Ghaziuddin Khan after him. However, with a weakening Mughal Empire, the Madrasa closed in the early 1790s, but with the support of local nobility, an oriental college for literature, science and art, was established at the site in 1792.
The courtyard of Ghazi al-Din Khan's Madrassah at Delhi 1814-15
Main gate of the Anglo Arabic School
It stood just outside the walled city of Delhi outside the Ajmeri Gate, close to the New Delhi Railway Station. It was originally surrounded by a wall and connected to the walled city fortifications and was referred to as the College Bastion.
It was reorganized as the 'Anglo Arabic College' by the British East India Company in 1828 to provide, in addition to its original objectives, an education in English language and literature. The object was "to uplift" what the Company saw as the "uneducated and half-barbarous people of India." Behind the move was Charles Trevelyan, the brother-in-law of Thomas Babingdon Macaulay, the same Macaulay whose famously declared that "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia".
Dr. Sprenger, then principal, presided over the founding of the college press, the Matba‘u ’l-‘Ulum and founded the first college periodical, the weekly Qiranu ’s-Sa‘dain, in 1845.