Founded at a time when the handful of Islamic Madaris in India were dormant, the school awakened political consciousness. Many of the school's Ulema had taken active roles in the events of 1857. The founder, Hazrat Nanautavi, turned lack of official support into a virtue, establishing the principle that the religious schools be run with public contributions from 'the poor masses alone'.
A center of both the Shariah and the semi-secret Tariqa from the very day of its inception, Darul Uloom has been a force explicitly counter to rationalism and secularism, which are associated with Western culture. The syllabus set at the outset "has been in force generally for more or less a century in all the Arabic schools in the country" according to the official website. The current syllabus consists of four stages, three that take eight years to complete, and Mastery Post-graduate stage, in Tafsir, Islamic theology, Fiqh or Islamic law, and literature.