Hyderabad Is More Than its Top 10 Biryani Joints – Here Are 10 of Its Most Influential Scholars
Failing cultures obsess over food. Thriving cultures conquer. Failing cultures open restaurants. Thriving cultures open institutions. If all a people can talk about is food, they have become detached from their history, their identity and, ultimately, their future.
This is a provocative sentiment, paraphrased from Persian teacher Muhammad Ali Mojaradi, and strikes at the core of the paradox Hyderabad finds itself in.
Ask the average Hyderabadi what makes our city unique and the answer is almost predictable: biryani, haleem, Irani chai, Osmania biscuits. Social media influencers compete to find the next viral haleem joint every Ramzan. Entire YouTube channels are dedicated to ranking restaurants and cafés. Our collective memory appears increasingly confined to our kitchens.
There is nothing wrong with celebrating cuisine. Every great civilisation has had one. The Ottomans, the Persians, the Abbasids, the Mughals – all left behind rich culinary traditions. But they also left behind scholars, institutions, scientific discoveries, poets, architects, statesmen and ideas that shaped humanity.
The cuisine was never the civilisation, but somewhere along the way, Hyderabad forgot this distinction.
The great Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun argued that civilisations rise through “asabiyyah” – social cohesion, shared purpose and a willingness to sacrifice for something greater than oneself. Civilisations decline not merely because they become poorer or militarily weaker, but because they lose the very spirit that once animated them.
Centuries later, Arnold Toynbee reached a similar conclusion that “great civilisations rise when they respond creatively to challenges. They decline when they retreat into comfort, nostalgia, and self-congratulation.”
If Ibn Khaldun were alive today, one wonders what he would make of Hyderabad.
For what was Hyderabad?
The side of the city many don’t know of
This was the city of Muhammed Hamidullah, one of the 20th century’s greatest scholars, whose work on Islamic law, international law and the history of the Prophet’s diplomacy continues to be studied across the world. While many Hyderabadis can recommend the city’s best biryani, very few have even read the writings of a man whose books still sit in libraries from Paris to Istanbul to Kuala Lumpur.
Speaking from personal experience, when I met the former Prime Minister of Türkiye, Ahmet Davutoğlu, in 2025, he asked me where I’m from and I said, “Hyderabad,” expecting him to not even know the name of the city. To my surprise, he responded with a smile and said, “The city of Muhammad Hamidullah.”
Even world leaders know about Hyderabad through him, but how many people in Hyderabad remember the man who died as the last passport holder of Hyderabad?
This was the city of Amjad Hyderabadi, whose poetry captured grief, resilience and spirituality with extraordinary beauty. He is best known as a poet of rubais, one of the most difficult genres of Urdu poetry.
According to Farman Fatehpuri, “Amjad is, first and last, a poet of rubais.” He authenticated this form of poetry and found space for moral and spiritual concerns in them.
Poet Amjad Hyderabadi.
In Urdu poetic circles, he is also known as Hakim-al-Shuara:
Minnat se khushamad se adab se maango
Kuon ghair ke aage haath phailate ho
Bande ho agar Rab ke to Rab se maango
And do it with respect and affection
Why do you beg before someone?
If you are his creature, seek his blessings)
This was the land that produced Syed Abul A’la Maudoodi, one of the most important Muslim intellectuals and philosopher of the modern era, whose writings continue to shape debates across continents, from Islamisation in Pakistan to the Islamic revolution in Iran and the Milli Görüş movement and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Türkiye.
Yet, Hyderabadis don’t know who he was.
According to unverified reports, Maudoodi’s book “Islamic Law and Constitution” was used as a blueprint while drafting the constitution of Iran after the 1979 revolution. He also received the inaugural King Faisal Award for Service to Islam in 1979. He was the world’s first recipient of this prestigious honorary award, which is presented by the King Faisal Foundation to individuals or institutions making extraordinary, lifelong contributions to the Muslim world.
The prize is widely considered one of the highest honours in the Muslim world.
He also played a key role in establishing and administering the Islamic University of Medinah in its early days.
Heroes have risen from the city
Aside from scholars and philosophers, Hyderabad is also home to heroes. Hundreds of years ago stood Malik Ambar.
Princess Dürrüşehvar Sultan.
In the voice of Alex Jones, “KIDS!!! MALIK AMBAR IS A LOT COOLER THAN SALEEM PHEKU.”
History remembers him as an Ethiopian slave who crossed the Indian Ocean in chains. Yet, he rose through sheer ability from slavery to becoming the prime minister of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, reorganised the Deccan’s military, pioneered guerrilla warfare against the Mughal Empire and repeatedly defeated one of the most powerful empires of its age defending the Deccan. His life is not merely a story of military genius; it is one of civilisational confidence.
“That’s destiny, that’s will, striving, that’s being a trailblazer.”
Malik Ambar refused to accept that circumstances determine destiny. He shaped it with his determination.
Then there was Princess Dürrüşehvar Sultan, granddaughter of the last Ottoman Caliph, who found a second home in Hyderabad after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and subsequent exile. She did not spend her years preserving memories of a lost empire. She built it. She championed education, healthcare and institutions that continued to benefit society long after royal power had faded.
Another notable personality from Hyderabad is professor Dr Raziuddin Siddiqui, a renowned mathematician and theoretical physicist, an alumni of Osmania University who studied and worked under both Albert Einstein in Berlin and Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig during the early 1930s.
Other prominent people from Hyderabad include Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung, the founder of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AlMIM) and revolutionary Urdu poet Makhdoom Mohiuddin and Abid Ali Khan, founder of Siasat Daily and recipient of the Padma Shri Award, known for his efforts to develop and promote Urdu.
Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung, Makhdoom Mohiuddin and Abid Ali Khan.
The world honours them.
We honour the restaurant of the year.
Making a mark through institutions
Aside from influential public figures, Hyderabad also produces institutions. At its height, Hyderabad was not merely a prosperous princely state, it was one of the intellectual capitals of the Muslim world. It fostered institutions that reflected an ambitious vision of education, science and culture.
Osmania University, founded in 1918, became the world’s first modern Urdu university, demonstrating that advanced education in medicine, engineering, law and the sciences could flourish in an indigenous language. Moreover, Hyderabad State was the first state to make Urdu its official language, a language in which the majority of Hyderabadi youth is illiterate now.
Alongside Osmania University, stood Government Nizamia Tibbi College, among the oldest surviving institutions dedicated to the formal teaching of Unani medicine, preserving a centuries-old medical tradition while integrating structured academic training.
Government Nizamia Tibbi College.
State Central Library and Osmania General Hospital
At the end of the day, it’s all about the food
Instead of learning about the people and institutions produced by Hyderabad, in Hyderabad, our public imagination appears increasingly trapped within the walls of restaurants.
Every Ramadan, debates erupt over which haleem is superior. New cafés become symbols of civic pride. Food bloggers became the Hyderabadi equivalent of Socrates and Aristotle in ancient Greece.
Meanwhile, how many young Hyderabadis can name 10 scholars from their own city or even read Urdu? How many know the institutions founded by the Asaf Jahi and Qutb Shahi rulers? What have we done to preserve them? How many have read even a single work by Hamidullah, Amjad Hyderabadi, Makhdoom Mohiuddin or Maududi?
A civilisation does not die the day its monuments collapse. It dies when its children forget why those monuments were built. What they represent. What was expected from its future generations.
So, dear Hyderabadis, explore, learn, go into space, learn mathematics, quantum mechanics, the secrets of the universe – it’s all there. Life is fiery with its beauty, its incredible detail. Don’t shatter your mind being comedians of the Urdu world, be eloquent in your speech. It’s not dignified to say “baigan pinda kiraak.” There’s so much more to life than being drowned in gluttony and sloth.
Perhaps this is the deeper crisis facing Hyderabad – it is not an economic decline or political marginalisation but civilisational amnesia.
The irony is painful. Every year, ambitious young men and women from across India arrive in Hyderabad to study, establish businesses, conduct research, build technology companies and pursue careers that shape the future. Meanwhile, too many native Hyderabadis appear content debating which restaurant serves the most authentic biryani, or if they are ambitious they go abroad, and then open a restaurant, probably at Devon street in Chicago.
– Russian philosopher Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We have inherited a civilisation that produced scholars recognised across the Muslim world, military commanders studied by historians, poets celebrated in Urdu literature, statesmen admired by political scientists and philanthropists remembered for the institutions they built.
A civilisation cannot survive on nostalgia seasoned with saffron. Thus, if Hyderabad is to reclaim its place as one of the intellectual capitals of the world, it must once again become a city that values ideas as much as recipes, libraries as much as cafés, scholarship as much as food bloggers.
The biryani can remain. The haleem can flourish. But let them be the celebration of a civilisation — not the substitute for one. Civilisations are not remembered for the meals they served but for the minds they produced and the collective future of humanity they imagined.
This article first appeared on The Siasat Daily, and has been republished with permission. It has been lightly edited for style.
This article went live on July twelfth, two thousand twenty six, at fifty-one minutes past twelve at noon.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
