 Though his parents could not afford to send him to a private school, Sultan-Galiev was able to learn a great deal from his father and at the latter's maktab, which followed the "New Method" of maktab teaching founded by Ismail Gasprinski (1851–1914).From a young age Sultan-Galiev studied the Russian language and read many of the Russian classics from his father's library.At his father's school, he studied from age 8 to 15, learning Tatar and Arabic, history, geography, and mathematics, while also receiving a basic understanding of the Qur'an and Sharia.