On this day, Warren Hastings, who would soon be appointed Governor of Bengal and then Governor-General, issued his Minute on Madrasa, which would lead to the establishment of the first madrasa in Calcutta the same year.
In the Minute, Hastings says that he has been approached by a number of Muslim men of “credit and learning” to set up a madrasa in Calcutta, as the city had “already become the seat of a great empire”.
According to scholar Mahmut Cihat ìzgi, Hastings established the madrasa under the direction of Maulavi Muiz-ud-din, with 90 students, who were granted a stipend and taught natural philosophy, theology, law, religion, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, logic, rhetoric and grammar, in a seven-year-course.