Even if he began to get seriously involved in journalism from the early 1920s onwards, being appointed editor of the leading weekly Urdu newspaper "Taj" of Jabalpur in 1920 at the age of 17, he also resumed his studies as an autodidact in 1921, notably through the influence of some members of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, by studying the Dars-e-Nizami and subjects such as adab (literature), mantiq (logiq), and kalam (theology and philosophy.) Mawdudi got ijazahs (certificates and diplomas in traditional Islamic learning) but never called himself an 'alim in the formal sense because he found the Islamic scholars to be regressive, even though some Deobandi influence on him would remain:I do not have the prerogative to belong to the class of Ulema. I am a man of the middle cadre, who has imbibed something from both the systems of education, the new and the old; and has gathered my knowledge by traversing both paths. By virtue of my inner light, I conclude that neither the old school nor the new is totally in the right.