comment The achievement of some of the heights of Muslim history has been under the aegis of great sultans.

They worried not one whit about what is nowadays called ‘Islamisation of knowledge’. They supported and protected the great scholars, scientists and artists of their age. And their support was in the highest tradition of the original meaning of ‘secular’.

Honouring the Prophet’s own tradition on the pre-eminence of the ‘ink of the scholar’ over the ‘sword of the soldier’, these sultans granted complete freedom to their intellectuals to explore, experiment, and discover the best principles of their arts and sciences.