أَعُوذُ بِاللّٰهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

In the name of ALLAH, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Book "The Rise of Colleges" By George Makdisi

George Abraham Makdisi (May 15, 1920, Detroit, Michigan, USA - September 6, 2002, Media, Pennsylvania, USA) was a professor of oriental studies. He studied first in the United States, and later in Lebanon. He then graduated in 1964 in France from the Paris-Sorbonne University. Professor Makdisi was the preeminent Arabist and Islamicist at Harvard, and was a specialist in Islamic history whose publications include "The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West" (1990), and Ibn ‘Aqil: Religion and Culture in Classical Islam (1997).

George Makdisi (1920–2002) was a distinguished Western scholar who dedicated his life to studying Islam, significantly contributing to the history of Islamic thought. The book "The Rise of Colleges" (Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West) By George Makdisi is an important work, which traces the development and organisational structure of learning institutions in Islam, and reassesses scholarship on the origins and growth of the Madrasa. The book was written in order to achieve a better understanding of a pivotal period in Islamic intellectual history. Intellectual movements become more intelligible when studied in close reference to the forces which produced them. In the Islamic World, the form and content of intellectual works were intelligible in the extent to which the methods of instruction, study and composition were understood in their essential details.

The Book "The Rise of Colleges" (Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West) By George Makdisi (1981) was an attempt to concentrate on a particular institution of learning, the Muslim college, especially in its madrasa form, and on the scholastic method that was its product. Although references have been made to other periods and places, however main concern remained with the eleventh century in Baghdad, the time and the place of the flourishing of the madrasa and the scholastic method, both of which had developed in the previous century. The author has attempted to show that the madrasa (alongwith mosque /masjid) was the embodiment of Islam's ideal religious science, law, and of Islam's ideal religious orientation, traditionalism; and that law and traditionalism combined to produce the scholastic method which was the peculiar product of the middle Ages.

This book has a total of 369 pages and contains four chapters and each chapter has further sub-sections. Chapter 1 Institutions, Section I. The Rise of the Schools of Law (page 1); Chapter 2 Instruction, Section I. Divisions of the Fields of Knowledge (page 75); Chapter 3 The Scholastic Community, Section I. Professors (page 153); Chapter 4 Islam and the Christian West, Section I. Introductory Remarks, II; Institutions (page 224); and Conclusion (page 281). Appendix A: Review of Previous Scholarship (page 292); Appendix B: (page 312); Notes and References (page 313); Bibliography (page 345); Index (page 355).

The history of Islamic institutions of learning was inextricably linked with Islam's religious history, and their development was linked with the interaction of the religious movements, legal and theological. The first three chapters of this book treat therefore of this interaction which led to the development of the college, informed the methods of instruction and shaped the scholastic community. Chapter four treats of the many parallels between Islam's institutions and those which developed later in the Christian West. A review of selected previous original scholarship regarding the madrasa is given in an appendix.

A distinction should be made, at the outset, between two terms: 'schools of law', and 'colleges of law'. The latter term is applied to the institutions, the buildings in which instruction took place. The former term designates the schools of jurisprudence: (1) those groups of jurisconsults who shared the experience of belonging to the same locality, and were called 'geographical schools'; or (2) those groups who were designated as followers of a leading jurisconsult, and were called 'personal schools'.

Joseph Schacht has written about the ancient schools of law known by a geographical designation; for instance, the Kufians, the Medinians, the Syrians. Then beginning in the early part of the second century (eighth of our era), groups within these ancient schools formed themselves around individual masters; for instance, the 'disciples of Abu Hanifa' within the schools of Kufa; the 'disciples of Malik' within that of Medina; and the 'disciples of al-Auza'i' within that of Syria. By the middle of the third/ninth century, the ancient schools had transformed themselves into 'personal' schools. Some five hundred personal schools of law are said to have disappeared by the beginning of the third /ninth century. These schools continued to decrease in number until only the four Sunni schools which have survived down to our time remained.

Some historical sources, in treating of the schools of law, have classified them according to terms applied to theological movements. They have classified them as traditionalist, the term for which is ahl al-hadith, or as rationalist, the term for which is ahl ar-ra'y; or under the variations for these terms, namely, ashab al-hadith and ashab ar-ra'y. Besides the term ahl ar-ra'y or ashab ar-ra'y for the rationalists, other terms were used, such as ahl al-kalam, ahl an-nazar, and ahl al-qiyas.

It is, of course, impossible to establish the date of foundation of a school of law; impossible also to establish a date of is appearance. For there was never an act of foundation; nor was there ever an act of dissolution. The term madhab, in ordinary language, means a way or direction to follow; and technically, an opinion, a thesis. A thesis had to be defended in order to survive.

The phenomenon of the schools of law in Islam is to be found in the interplay of law and traditionalism. It is to be found in the struggle between legal traditionalism and theological rationalism, the turning-point of which struggle was the Great Inquisition, the Mihna. Moreover, it is to be found in Baghdad, cultural centre of the Muslim world.The development of the schools can best be understood when the facts regarding the development of hadith and legal studies are taken into consideration.

In the history of this development, there are two moments of great significance; they have to do with the last two schools of the four surviving schools of law: the school of Shafi'i and the school of Ahmad b. Hanbal; Shafi'i, for his synthesis of reason and authority in the law, and Ibn Hanbal, for heroically surviving the Inquisition.

Just as the Prophet was the leader with followers, each school consisted of a leader, imam, with followers, sahib, pl. ashab. The criterion of leadership was universal acceptance of the jurist with the greatest knowledge of Islamic law. The proliferation of personal schools, each with its leader, was accomplished in this manner.

It is said that a school survived because it was favoured by the prince (the ruler of the area) is to put the cart before the horse. Princes were practical politicians. They gave their support where it did the most good for themselves; they gave support where they found strength already in existence. Furthermore, to say that the geographical location was important is to fall prey, once again, to our own terminology of convenience. Our concept of a school is something that is located somewhere as an entity. But we already know that although the schools of law were referred to, early on, by geographical names, they were later designated by the names of persons. There was nothing to stop the adherents of a personal school moving from one centre to another. The Muslim seeker of knowledge was a great traveller, and in Islam, travel was untrammelled. In this he was better off than his counterpart in the Latin West; for unlike the latter, he could go from city to city and country to country without losing his 'citizenship'; he 'belonged' by virtue of his religion. There were no city-states in Islam.

The development of the schools can best be understood when the facts regarding the development of hadith and legal studies are taken into consideration. In the history of this development, there are two moments of great significance; they have to do with the last two schools of the four surviving schools of law: the school of Shafi'i and the school of Ahmad b. Hanbal; Shafi'i, for his synthesis of reason and authority in the law, and Ibn Hanbal, for heroically surviving the Inquisition. Shafi'i's achievement, with which Schacht has dealt so well, need not be dwelled upon here. Through Shafi'i,the traditionalist thesis was accepted over that of the ancient schools; that is, he replaced the 'living tradition' of a given city with the tradition of the Prophet.

One conclusion is very clear in Islamic religious history. Islam is, first and foremost, a nomocracy. The highest expression of its genius is to be found in its law; and its law is the source of legitimacy for other expressions of its genius. The traditionalists themselves had to find expression in the schools of law; and the Hanbali School is the ultimate expression of their triumph. In Islam, law, perennially a conservative force is both the legitimizing agency and the agency of moderation, for it must rest on both authority and reason. Legitimacy was sought by various movements through association with one of the schools of law; as, for instance, the Mu'tazilis who infiltrated the Hanafi School, and the Ash'aris, the Shafi'i.

One conclusion is very clear in Islamic religious history. Islam is, first and foremost, a nomocracy. The highest expression of its genius is to be found in its law; and its law is the source of legitimacy for other expressions of its genius. The traditionalists themselves had to find expression in the schools of law; and the Hanbali School is the ultimate expression of their triumph. In Islam, law, perennially a conservative force, is both the legitimizing agency and the agency of moderation, for it must rest on both authority and reason. Legitimacy was sought by various movements through association with one of the schools of law; as, for instance, the Mu'tazilis who infiltrated the Hanafi School, and the Ash'aris, the Shafi'i. As the agency of moderation, Islamic law held the line of the traditionalist development of its schools with that of the Hanbalis, eventually rejecting the Zahiri School which had gone to extremes in traditionalism by refusing to accept the principle of analogy. By the end of the third quarter of the fifth /eleventh century, this School had become extinct in Baghdad, which means that it had lost its effectiveness in that city long before that date. The significance of the emergence of the Zahiri school lies in the fact that the movement of traditionalism had been growing ever more traditionalist. It is indicative of the traditionalist momentum gone berserk. Its demise is an indication of the effectiveness of the law as an agency of moderation.

The term majlis, therefore, originally meant the position assumed by the professor for teaching after first having performed the ritual prayer in the mosque. It was then used, by extension, to apply to all sessions wherein the activity of teaching or other learned discussions took place, and later to a number of activities. The term majlis annazar and majlis al-'ilm are given by Dozy 45 as meaning the 'meeting place of scholars who discuss'. More particularly, the majlis an-nazar or majlis al-munazara meant the meeting place for disputation, whereas majlis al-'ilm was a meeting usually referring to discussions regarding hadith, and more generally, discussions on subjects whether of religious or scientific knowledge, with the term majlis al-hadith designating unequivocally the meeting place for the teaching of hadith, a classroom for the purpose. Majlis al-'ilm was also used in reference to medicine: kāna lahū majlisu 'ilmin li 'l-mushtaghilina 'alaihī bi 't-țibb (he had a seminar for those studying medicine under his direction), said of Muwaffaq ad-Din 'Abd al-'Aziz as-Sulami (d.604/1207), a physician-jurisconsult of Damascus.

The mosque preserved its primacy as the ideal institution of learning, and law, its primacy as the ideal religious science. The jami (Jamaya) as an institution of learning had halqas, study-circles, in which the various Islamic sciences were taught. The halqa was common to all jami's. The jami's of Damascus and Cairo differed, however, from those in Baghdad, in that they had zawiyas, referred to also as madrasas, where law was taught according to one of the four Sunni madhabs. The Umaiyad Mosque of Damascus, called also al-Jami al-Ma'mur, and the Cairene al-Jami' al-'Atiq, had each eight zawiyas for this purpose. 54 It is noteworthy that later under the Ottomans, the Sulaimaniya Mosque in Istanbul had also eight madrasas.

The most desirable type of foundation in Islam, and the most highly meritorious, was the mosque. But the restrictions imposed by its legal status hindered its adaptation to the developing needs of educational institutions. Although a creation of its founder, the masjid was independent of him. This situation tended to discourage their foundation as colleges. While founders wished to have their institutions serve the needs of worship as well as those of study, they preferred to accomplish these purposes while continuing to exercise control over the II. The “Typology of Institutions of Learning”, career of their creation, and to pass that control down to their descendants to the end of their agnatic and sometimes cognatic lines. Various ways were therefore tried over the years to reconcile these conflicting needs, resulting in a variety of solutions often involving the mosque in one way or another.

Because of the foregoing considerations, the mosque, whether jamia or masjid, continued to be founded as an institution of learning in conjunction with a madrasa or its cognate institutions. Cognate institutions began to be founded in earnest in the sixth/ twelfth century. These were: dar al-hadith, dar al-qur'an, and the monastery colleges, called ribat, khanqah, zawiya, turba, duwaira.

In classical Islam the madrasa was the institution of learning par excellence, in that it was devoted primarily to the study of Islamic law, queen of the Islamic sciences. The masjid, from which it developed, continued to be used for the teaching of the various Islamic sciences, including that of law. The masjid could be devoted to any one of these sciences, according to the wishes of the founder. The madrasa, on the other hand, was devoted primarily to law, the other sciences being studied as ancillaries.

Because of the centrality of the madrasa, the other institutions in Islam may be divided into two periods: pre- and post-madrasa. As Islam separated the Islamic sciences from those it referred to as the 'foreign sciences', institutions in the pre-madrasa period may further be divided into those exclusive, or inclusive, of the foreign sciences. The pre-madrasa institutions exclusive of the foreign sciences were the jamia's with their halqas, and the masjids; those inclusive of these sciences were the various institutions whose designations included the terms dar, bait, khizana, essentially libraries, as well as the hospitals, maristans, from the Persian bimaristan.

The madrasa itself, exclusive of the foreign sciences, developed without, as well as with, the adjunction of a mosque, whether of the masjid, or jami' variety. The latter type flourished especially in Egypt and the rest of North Africa. With the advent of the madrasa, the institutions inclusive of the foreign sciences began to fade away, becoming extinct by the sixth/ twelfth century. This was the century of the madrasa's cognate institution, the dar al-hadith, in Damascus, raising the rank of the professor of hadith to that of the professor of law, and at the same time adopting the term dar, as though to accentuate the triumph of traditionalism over the mortal remains of the institutions inclusive of the foreign sciences: the dar al-'ilm and cognate institutions. The following century saw the development of the dar al-qur'an, devoted to Koranic studies, though one of these is said to have been founded in Damascus around the year 400 H.

The variations of the cognate institutions were the dar al-qur'an with a jamia', and the dar al-qur'an with a madrasa; the dar al-hadith with a madrasa and a ribat, and the dar al-hadith with a khanqah; the ribat with a jami', the ribat with a madrasa, and the ribat with a masjid and mausoleum; the turba with a masjid, the turba with a masjid anda maktab, the turba with a masjid and a ribat and maktab, the turba with a jami' and madrasa, the turba with a library, and the turba with a madrasa and a library. Another type of institution was the mashad-college which consisted of a masjid and shrine of a Muslim saint. The most famous of these was the Shrine College of Abu Hanifa.

The Libraries: The various institutions cited under this rubric were essentially libraries, not locales for the teaching of regularly constituted courses of study. Y. Eche made an excellent study of these institutions. Six words are involved in the terminology used to designate them. Three of these designate locales: bait (room), khizana (closet), and dar (house); and three relate to content: hikma (wisdom), 'ilm (know- ledge), and kutub (books). From a combination of these words Eche derives seven terms designating libraries: bait al-hikma, khizanat al-hikma, dar al-hikma, dar al-'ilm, dar al-kutub, khizanat al-kutub and bait al-kutub. Two others may be added: bait al-'ilm, and al-khizana al-'ilmiya.166 Thus, all possible combinations of these terms were, in fact, used.

In the Dar al-'Ilm of Ja'far b. Muhammad al-Mausili, the books were made waqf for the use of seekers of knowledge; no one was to be prohibited from access to the library 'and when a stranger came to it seeking culture, if he happened to be in financial straits, he [Mausili] gave him paper and money'. Here, the books were made waqf for the use of seekers of knowledge without exception, and they were helped financially on an individual ad hoc basis.

The activities that took place in libraries were those involved with books, such as reading and copying. Meetings were known to have taken place there for the purpose of discussion, disputation and the like. As for the actual teaching of courses, one rare case is known regarding the library in Basra cited by the geographer al-Maqdisi when he compares it with that of Ram hurmuz. Here al-Maqdisi cites the activities of both libraries: for those seekers of knowledge who came to these two libraries and assiduously read and copied books, subsistence was given them, the difference between the two libraries being that the Basrian library was greater, more frequented and had more books.

In Arabic the scriptures, Koran and hadith, depended for their understanding on a thorough knowledge of grammar. The other point is that the Koran, hadith, and law were the most important subjects. Grammar, a term used to encompass the literary arts including poetry, was an indispensable aid to understanding the language of the Koran and hadith, though subordinate to them and to the law as a subject of the curriculum.

Poetry was justified religiously on the basis that it was quoted as textual evidence of lexical meanings of the Koranic text. Ghulam Ibn Shunbudh (d.387/997), a Koranic scholar, was heard to say: ,I know by heart fifty thousand verses of poetry as documentary proof for the meaning of words in the Koran' (ahfazu khamsīna alfi baitin mina 'sh-shi'ri shawähida li 'l-Qur'ān).

From the above texts, it is clear that "Ishtighal" (ishtighal refers to the active, independent pursuit of learning, research, and consultation) could be done at the undergraduate as well as the graduate level. Other texts show that it was done at the post-graduate level, even after the graduate jurisconsult had acceded to a teaching post. A holder of such a post who had lost it repaired to his home and, as was his custom, applied himself to working independently, as well as working others, until he was re-instated after 'one year and two-thirds'. Ishtighal was a lifetime activity for the scholar because he needed to learn constantly, to refresh his memory, to store up new knowledge and to keep it all active. Nu'aimi, in speaking of a jurisconsult, wrote that he excelled in the field of conflicting opinions (khilaf), then turned to working on Shafi'i law, working on it 'night and day', doing 'much studying and working' (wa-yuțāli'u kathiran wa-yashtaghil). A distinction is drawn here between the two activities, working being other than mere reading: reading in order 'to store up in the memory' what one reads. As already mentioned, working was distinguished from attending a lecture, 'hearing' it, since the auditing students were distinguished from the working ones. Working was that activity during which the student made his own those materials he had learned in a lecture or by reading, an activity highly prized in an education culture.

Readers familiar with the history of medieval universities and colleges can hardly fail to see some significant parallels between the system of education in Islam and that of the Christian West. These parallels can be seen in particular instances in the institutions, in the methods of instruction, in the posts, as well as in the more general phenomena, such as the prominence and pervasiveness of legal studies, the resulting decline and subordination of the literary arts, and the crowning achievement of the Middle Ages: the scholastic method in law and theology, with their quaestiones disputatae and reportationes.

The university is a form of social organization produced in the Christian West in the second half of the twelfth century. As such, it was not the product of the Greco-Roman world. Nor did it originate from the cathedral or monastic schools which preceded it; it differed from them in its organization and in its studies. The works of H. Denifle and H. Rashdall have made this quite clear. Furthermore, the university, as a form of organization, owes nothing to Islam. Indeed, Islam could have nothing to.do with the university as a corporation. Based on the concept of juristic personality, the corporation is an abstraction endowed with legal rights and responsibilities. Islamic law recognizes the physical person alone as endowed with legal personality.

The university is a twelfth-century product of the Christian West not only in its organization, but also in the privileges and protection it received from Pope and King. The granting of privileges and protection was due to the peculiar situation of scholars away from home, finding themselves as 'aliens' in a city where only local residents were 'citizens'. This concept of citizenship was also foreign to Islamic law: all Muslim believers were equal before the law anywhere in the world of Islam. Muslim students, scholars and professors travelled in the Muslim world far and wide, east and west, as 'citizens', without the need for protection or special privileges. The university was a new product, completely separate from the Greek academies of Athens and Alexandria, and from the Christian cathedral and monastic schools; and it was utterly foreign to the Islamic experience. Such was not the case, however, with the college.

Islamic interest in dialectic was dictated by its application to khilaf. While Muslim philosophers pursued the philosophy of Aristotle, Muslim jurisconsults, as such, were attracted by dialectic as if by a magnet because of its role in advancing and perfecting the process of ijma'-khilaf, sic et non. The decline of the literary arts in the West was not to last as long as it did in Islam where the reasons for it were indigenous to Islam. The Renaissance of the fifteenth century brought the classics back to the European scene. On the other hand, in Islam, under the sway of the exclusory religious sciences, the situation of the literary arts was far from having improved. When the literary renaissance, nahda, came to the Arab-Muslim world in the nineteenth century, it was due in great measure to the Lebanese movement led chiefly by the Christian writers, Jibran Khalil Jibran, Mikha'il Nu'aima, and Amin Rihani, and it drew its strength from European literatures.

Both the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn were freedoms within the context of Islam. The teaching authority, the magisterium, resided in the ulama whose opinions eventually went to make up the consensus on orthodoxy in Islam. They were those who had the responsibility of teaching and defending the faith: teaching the word of God and defending the faith against heresy. Heresy was that which went counter to the consensus of the community of doctors of the law, members of that community called the 'People of the Prophet's Sunnah and His Community's Consensus' (Ahl as-Sunna wa'l-jama'a).

There is an interesting parallel to be drawn between the position held by the ulama in Baghdad, for instance, cultural centre of the medieval Muslim world, and the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris in France, 'eldest daughter of the Church' (fille aînée del' Eglise). In Islam, where there is no Church, no ecclesiastical hierarchy, no councils or synods for the purpose of defining orthodoxy, it is understandable that such a mechanism as the consensus, ijma', should be developed in order to perform this function, and that the magisterium should reside in the doctors of the religious law. That a similar role, on the other hand, should devolve upon the doctors of theology in Paris is not quite so understandable.

Muslim institutionalized education was religious, privately organized, and open to all Muslims who sought it. It was based on the waqf, or charitable trust. It was in essence privately supported. A private individual, the founder, instituted as waqf his own privately owned property for a public purpose, that of educating a segment of Muslim society, which he chose, in one or more of the religious sciences and their ancillaries. He created his foundation by an act of his own free will, without interference from any authority or power.

Even when the founder was caliph or sultan, or other highly-placed functionary, he created his institution in his capacity as a private individual. Education was directed toward religious ends: the salvation and eternal happiness of men and the glory of God. It was directed towards the establishment of God's government on earth. The society at which it aimed was one with God as its leader; the culture it aimed at developing was one inspired by the sacred scriptures.

In the pursuit of truth and its dissemination it insisted on ijtihad, encouraging the individual effort of the jurisconsult, carried to the limits of his capacity in the study of sacred scriptures and resulting in a legal opinion for which he was rewarded in the Hereafter, right or wrong. Orthodoxy in Islam, resulting from the consensus of the doctors of the law, was secured on the basis of freedom of expression and freedom of discussion.

The state, that is, the governing power had no control over the curriculum, or the methods of instruction, any more than it did over the foundation of the institution. As regards the latter point, even when the founder was a layman, not himself a professor, his choice of an institution and its organization was usually guided by the wishes of the professor for whom he instituted his foundation. Thus the content of education and its methods were left to the teaching profession itself.

But Muslim education was not all there was to education in Islam. Institutionalized learning was not all the learning available. Philosophy, philosophical or rationalist kalam-theology, mathematics, medicine, and the natural sciences, that is those sciences referred to as the ancient, or foreign sciences, as well as all fields not falling under the category of the Islamic sciences and their ancillaries, were sought outside of these institutions, in the homes of scholars, in the hospitals, in the regular institutions, under the cover of other fields such as hadith or medicine.

A lay nomocratic theocracy, Islam is a religion based on a system of law whose legislator is God alone. It has no ecclesiastical hierarchy. The doctors of the law are its sole interpreters. The ultimate object of Islamic education is to educate in God's law, encompassing all facets of life, civil as well as religious.

The structure of the collegiate system rested on a legal basis defined, interpreted and maintained by the lawyers. Collegiate learning was so organized as to give primacy over all other fields to legal studies, which served it as its handmaids, while all rationalistic studies were excluded from the regular curriculum.

The subsequent development and proliferation of the madrasa combining the functions of the masjid and its nearby inn, in the fourth and fifth centuries (A.D. tenth and eleventh), exemplified in Saljuq times by Nizam al-Mulk's foundation of a great network of madrasas; and (4) in the significant development of other conservative institutions, such as the dar-al hadith, in the sixth century (A.D. twelfth), further rallying the forces of traditionalism. By traditionalizing the term dar, theretofore used especially for the rationalist library institutions, traditionalism was proclaiming its definitive victory over rationalism, symbolized by both dar al-hikma and dar al-'ilm giving way to dar al-hadith and dar al-qur'an.

This legal methodology became pervasive, and developed into an almost obsessive concentration on the acquisition of dialectical skills, pushing the literary arts into the background, and relating them to the role of ancillaries. The eloquence gained from the literary arts was subordinated to the feverish pursuit of the ability to analyse and synthesize, to arrive at the best possible legal opinion and the best possible defence of that opinion and its eventual consecration by the consensus of the doctors.

Legal science was placed above and beyond the literary arts, and indeed all other fields of knowledge. The ultimate goal of institutionalized learning was the jurisconsult; the ultimate good, the juris consult's legal opinion. The professor of law was set apart from all other members of the teaching staff. His designation as mudarris was peculiar to him alone. He was often the trustee-administrator of the madrasa. He alone gave an inaugural lecture as he assumed the chair of law in the madrasa, after which a robe of honour was bestowed upon him and often a banquet given in his honour. All other posts in the college were subordinate to his. For he alone was the interpreter of Islam's positive law whose sole legislator was God Himself.