In a study of the vitality of Islam in late nineteenth-century north India, Barbara Metcalf explains the response of Islamic religious scholars ( ulama) to the colonial dominance of the British and the collapse of Muslim political power. Focussing on Deoband, the most important Islamic seminary of the period, she discusses the ways in which the ulama enhanced a sense of cultural continuity in a period of alien rule. Deprived of a Muslim state, the leaders of Deoband sought to renew Islamic spiritual life by teaching early Islamic principles. To this end, they concerned themselves with popular behaviour and the education of both elite and non-elite Muslims through the spoken language, Urdu.