ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to shed some light on the interrelation between the middle classes and secularization in the Islamic context, by focusing on Delhi. It concentrates on the question, whether a Muslim middle class existed at all, how it was composed and from which sources it drew its cultural identity. The chapter focuses on religious changes and the moving forces behind them. It also discusses Niklas Luhmann's concept of secularization as a functional differentiation between religion and other social subsystems. Traditionally, the quickest way to ashraf status lay in military career, permitting access to both land and titles, often within a single generation. Traditional Islamic learning, prevalent in India since the advent of Muslim rule, systematized in the dars-e nizami in the beginning of the eighteenth century has been associated with the Firangi Mahal in Lucknow. Ulama were the people who possessed knowledge, the scholars, independently of the character of the knowledge implied.
