Osmania University is a collegiate public state university located in Hyderabad, Telangana, India.

The university was founded by and named after Mir Osman Ali Khan, the 7th Nizam of Hyderabad in 1918. It is the third oldest university in southern India, and the first to be established in the erstwhile Kingdom of Hyderabad. It was the first Indian university to have Urdu as a medium of instruction — but with English as a compulsory subject. As of 2012, the university hosts 3,700 international students from more than 80 nations.

The original seal featured the Nizam's crown as the crest, along with the phrase Noorun Ala Noor. It also contained the hadith, "I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate"

Nobel Laureate poet, Rabindranth Tagore, observed:"

I have long been waiting for the day when, freed from the shackles of a foreign language, our education becomes naturally accessible to all our people. It is a problem for the solution of which we look to our Native States, and it gives me great joy to know that your State proposes to found a University in which instructions are to be given through the medium of Urdu. It is needless to say that your scheme has my fullest appreciation........................"