Azlal Nasir

DPhil Research Topic

Science, Religion and Empire: The Reception and Transformation of Evolutionary Theories in Colonial India, 1860-1940.

Supervisor: Faridah Zaman and Alex Aylward

My doctoral research explores the six major figures of Muslim intellectual thought in British colonial India: Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Maulvi Muhammad Zakaullah, Shibli Nomani, Sultan Muhammad Shah, Muhammad Iqbal, and Abul Kalam Azad. By bringing these thinkers into conversation, I aim to examine how their engagement with Darwinian and Spencerian evolutionary thought produced tensions, contradictions, omissions, and creative reimaginings of Islam’s relationship with natural history.