Osmania University is named after its founder, Nawab Osman Ali Khan, the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad, who, through a firman(or Royal Charter), brought the University into existence in 1917. It is the seventh oldest in the country and third oldest in South India. Though the need for the University for the Hyderabad State was felt both by the intelligentsia and the people for a long time, the initiative came from a civil servant, Sir Akbar Hydari, who was then the Home Secretary to the State Government. Sir Hydari, in a memorandum to the Education Minister in early 1917, emphasized the need to establish a University of Hyderabad with 'Urdu' as the medium of instruction "as it is the language of the widest currency in India, the official language of the State, and a language understood by a vast majority of the population of the State." He believed that higher education must have its foundations deep in national consciousness.
