Najib Ali Choudhury


Najib Ali Choudhury was a 19th-century Indian Islamic scholar and teacher. He was notable for his founding of the Madinatul Uloom Bagbari, the first madrasa in the South Assam-Greater Sylhet region.

Life

Born in the village Bagbari, near the city of Karimganj in what is present-day Assam, India, accounts are contradictory regarding Choudhury's ancestral origins. His family had either migrated from Ghor Province in Afghanistan during the Mughal period, or were descended from Shah Umar Yemeni, one of the 360 companions of the Sufi saint Shah Jalal.
At some point, Choudhury became a disciple of Imdadullah Muhajir Makki, a Sufi scholar of the Chishti Order. He is said to have fought alongside Makki in an uprising against the British in Shamli, a part of the greater Indian Rebellion of 1857. Upon the failure of the revolt however, both men left the Indian subcontinent and migrated to Mecca.
Tradition states that while in Mecca, Choudhury dreamt he was visited by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who instructed him to go back to India and preach Islam and provide Islamic education. Returning to his native village, in 1873, Choudhury established a madrasa in his own home, which received the name "Madinatul Uloom Bagbari Najibia Alia Madrasa" after its founder, shortened to Madinatul Uloom Bagbari. Modelled after the recently established Darul Uloom Deoband, it is considered to be the first true madrasa in the Greater Sylhet region, offering a standardised religious education in contrast to the informal institutions which had existed there previously. It came to play a very prominent role in producing Arabic language scholars in the Greater Sylhet region, a reputation it maintains to the present-day.
Choudhury himself acquired considerable renown, with tales arising of him having possessed spiritual powers. After his death, his grave became a shrine or Mazar, which is located in what is now Rauthgram, Karimganj district.
He was the father of Maulana Gulam Rob Choudhury, a distinguished Islamic scholar in his own right, and the great-grandfather of Abdul Munim Choudhury, a former Member of the Legislative Assembly of Assam.