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.
It is a provocative statement, paraphrased from Persian teacher Muhammad Ali Mojaradi, 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 civilization.
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 civilizations 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.
Muhammed Hamidullah was one of the two scholars invited by Mohammad Ali Jinnah to draft the Constitution of a newly founded Pakistan.
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.
In Urdu poetic circles, he is also known as Hakim-al-Shuara:
Her cheez musabbab-i-sabab se maango
Minnat se khushamad se adab se maango
Kuon ghair ke aage haath phailate ho
Bande ho agar Rab ke to Rab se maango
(Ask anything of Him
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 honors 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.
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 Prof 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 Moinuddin and Abid Ali Khan, founder of Siasat Daily and recipient of the Padma Shri Award, known for his efforts to develop and promote Urdu.
Even today, people of Hyderabadi origin continue to make their mark on the world. Mehdi Hasan, a famous journalist of Hyderabadi origin, not only shaped international political discourse, but challenged international media status quo with his work. Academics, entrepreneurs, doctors and researchers of Hyderabadi heritage are contributing to societies across the globe.
The world studies them.
The world reads them.
The world honours them.
We honor 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.
Hyderabad was also home to institutions such as State Central Library, one of India’s largest libraries, the Dar-ul-Tarjuma (translation bureau), which translated thousands of scientific and literary works into Urdu, and the renowned Osmania General Hospital. Together, these institutions reflected a civilizational confidence that invested not only in monuments, but in knowledge, scholarship and the cultivation of future generations.
Prof Sahar Ansari, born in Aurangabad, in the erstwhile Hyderabad State, who went on to become one of the most prominent Urdu poets, linguist and academician in Pakistan, famously remarked, “Hyderabad Deccan wasn’t just a state; it encompassed a whole civilisation.”
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 Moinuddin or Maududi?
A civilization 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. It is not political marginalisation.
It is 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.
“To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots” – 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.
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.
Because civilisations are not remembered for the meals they served.
They are remembered for the minds they produced, the institutions they built and the collective future of humanity they imagined.
