Islam is frequently characterized as a “religion of the Book,” the Book in question being the
Qur’an, the central revealed scripture of Islam. The first word said to have been uttered by the
angel Gabriel in roughly 610 CE which initiated the series of divine revelations to the Prophet
Muhammad was Iqra’! (“Recite” or “read). The full verse (96:1) commands “Read in the
name of your Lord Who has created [all things].” The act of reading or reciting, in relation to
Islam’s holy book and in general, thus took on an exceptionally sacrosanct quality within
Islamic tradition and practice as did the acquisition of particularly religious knowledge by
extension. “Are those who know and those who do not know to be reckoned the same?” asks
the Qur’an (39:9). The Qur’an depicts knowledge as a great bounty from God granted to His
prophets and their followers through time (2:151-52; 4:113; 5:110;12:22; 28:14, etc.).
Believers also took to heart the Prophet’s counsel, “Seek knowledge even unto China,” which
sacralized the journey, often perilous, undertaken to supplement and complete one’s
education, an endeavor known in Arabic as rihlat talab al-‘ilm (“journey in the search for
knowledge”). The “seeker of knowledge” (Ar. talib al-‘ilm) remains until today the term used
for a student, normally in its abbreviated form (talib [masc.]/ taliba [fem.]) for all levels of
education. Another equally well-known statement of the Prophet exhorts, “The pursuit of
knowledge is incumbent on every Muslim, male or female,” a statement that has made the
acquisition of at least rudimentary knowledge of religion and its duties mandatory for the
Muslim individual, irrespective of gender. “The scholars are the heirs of the prophets” is
another important hadith invoked as proof-text to underscore the extraordinary importance of
learning and its dissemination in the shaping of communal life and as a basic, integral part of 2
an individual’s religious growth. Sanctioned by both the word of God and the words of His
prophet (the latter recorded in what is known in Arabic as hadith, lit. “speech”), the pursuit of
knowledge (Ar. ‘ilm) is regarded as a religious obligation on a par with prayer, charity, etc. It
is customary to find these sacred proof-texts extolling the merits of ‘ilm assembled and
recorded in many treatises on learning and education in both the pre-modern and modern
periods in order to exhort the believer to embark on the noble pursuit of knowledge.
1
In this article, I will first provide a brief survey of classical Islamic education and its
institutions, formal and informal, as well as identify its underlying principles and rationale. I
will then discuss some of the key features of Gulen’s perspectives on what constitutes ideal
Islamic education. The strong correspondences between the classical views and Gulen’s
perspectives will be indicated, establishing thereby a continuity and innovative engagement on
the latter’s part with the classical heritage.
Classical Centers of Education
The earliest venue of education was the mosque, the place of formal worship in Islam. During
the Prophet Muhammad’s time, his mosque in Medina served both as the locus of private and
public worship and for informal instruction of the believers in the religious law and related
matters. The mosque continued to play these multiple roles throughout the first three centuries
of Islam (seventh through the ninth centuries of the Christian or the Common era). Typically,
instruction in the religious and legal sciences would be offered by a religious scholar to
students who sat with him (and, less frequently, with her) in teaching circles (Ar. halqa,
majlis), either inside the mosque or outside in its courtyard. By the tenth century, a new
feature, the hostel (khan) was increasingly being established next to “teaching mosques” in
Iraq and the eastern provinces of the Islamic world which allowed students and teachers from
far-flung areas to reside near these places of instruction. The emergence of the mosque-khan
complex at this time is a consequence of the lengthier and more intensive period of study
required to qualify as a religious scholar. Religious learning had expanded by this time and
study of the religious law (Ar. al-Shari‘a) became more detailed and sophisticated, reflected in
the establishment of the four prominent Sunni schools of law (Ar. madhahib; sing. madhhab) 3
by the tenth century.
In the tenth and eleventh centuries of the Common Era, another important institution
developed and proliferated known as the madrasa, literally meaning in Arabic “a place of
study.”
The madrasa was a logical development of the mosque-khan complex, being both a teaching
and residential institution. In addition to the impetus of the greater systematization of
knowledge, particularly of the legal sciences, which led to the emergence of the madrasa, the
development of this institution has also been attributed in part to a reassertion of Sunni
Muslim identity in the wake of the collapse of the various Shi‘i dynasties that had ruled much
of the Islamic world in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In the tenth century, a Shi‘i dynasty
called the Buwayhids (or Buyids) established their control over ‘Abbasid Iraq and Iran, with
the Sunni ‘Abbasid caliph remaining as the nominal ruler. The Buwayhids retained their
control until the eleventh century when they were beaten back by the Sunni Saljuqs, a Turkicspeaking people from Central Asia . In 969 CE, another Shi‘i dynasty from North Africa later
called the Fatimids gained power in Cairo, Egypt and ruled the Sunni population until 1171
when they were defeated by the Saljuqs as well. One of the Fatimids’ enduring intellectual
legacies was the establishment of the oldest continuing university in the world – the al-Azhar
mosque-madrasa complex in Cairo -- in 972 CE to propagate Fatimid-Shi‘i doctrine and
learning. With the fall of the Fatimids, there was subsequently a concerted Sunni effort to roll
back the Shi ‘i influence of the past two centuries. The madrasa became in many ways the
locus classicus for waging this campaign of religious and intellectual reclamation. This is
dramatically reflected in the transformation of al-Azhar into the foremost Sunni center of
higher learning in the twelfth century, a position it enjoys until today.
Perhaps the most prominent name associated with the spread of madrasas particularly in Iraq
was Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092), the redoubtable Saljuq vizier (Ar. wazir, a “minister”). His
name is associated with the famous Nizamiyya academy in Baghdad, which boasted the
presence of famous scholars like Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111). In the twelfth century, the
Zengid ruler Nur al-Din ibn Zangi and the famous Ayyubid ruler Salah al-Din ibn Ayyub
(known as Saladin in the West) were prominent patrons of madrasas in Syria and Egypt. 4
Henceforth, the madrasa became the principal venue and vehicle for the transmission of
religious education in the major urban centers of the Islamic world, such as Baghdad, Cairo,
Damascus, and Jerusalem. It was the institution of higher learning comparable to a modern
college of which it was its precursor, as will be further discussed below.
Other Venues of Education
In addition to mosques, mosque-khans, and madrasas, other institutions developed over time
which played important, supplementary roles in the dissemination of learning. One of the most
significant institutions of this type was the burgeoning libraries from the ninth century on. The
larger mosques often had libraries attached to them containing books on religious topics. Other
semi-public libraries would additionally have books on logic, philosophy, music, astronomy,
geometry, medicine, astronomy, and alchemy. The first academy in the Islamic world, known
in Arabic as bayt al-hikma (lit. “House of Wisdom”), was built by the ‘Abbasid caliph alMa’mun (813-33), which had a library and an astronomical observatory attached to it. In this
academy, many Arab Christian scholars under their Muslim Abbasid patrons translated
significant classical Greek works first into their native Syriac and then into Arabic. Works of
Euclid, Galen, Plato etc. were thus made accessible to the following generations of primarily
Arabic speaking scholars, influencing the development of a humanistic tradition. Sometimes
wealthy private individuals endowed a library in their residences, such as ‘Ali b. Yahya (d.
888). The library known as khizanat al-hikma (Ar. “Treasury of Wisdom”) allowed students to
study all branches of learning without fee in it; it was particularly renowned for astronomy.
Other specialized institutions of learning were dar al-qur’an (lit: “house of the Qur’an”),
which specialized in the study of the Qur’an and its sciences; dar al-hadith,(lit. “ house of the
Prophet’s statements”), which concentrated on the study of the sunna, the sayings and customs
of the Prophet Muhammad; dar al-‘ilm (“house of rational sciences”), which was concerned
with the philosophical and natural sciences, and madrasat al-tibb (“schools of medicine”),
which were dedicated to the medical sciences. Three more terms — ribat, khanqa, and zawiya
— referred to Sufi lodges and conventicles where the traditional sciences were pursued.
Medical instruction also took place primarily in hospitals (maristan/bimaristan) which served 5
as schools of medicine, and also in mosques and the madrasas. At all times, informal and
formal instruction was offered by men and women in their own homes or in the private homes
of scholars and wealthy individuals. In most areas of the medieval Islamic world, such modes
of private education was more the norm than formal, collective education in a madrasa.
2
Organization and Curricula of Madrasas: the Parameters of Religious Education
Religious education was based upon what is termed in Arabic al-‘ulum al-naqliyya (lit: the
“transmitted sciences”), which consists primarily of the Qur’anic sciences, the hadith sciences,
and jurisprudence (Ar. fiqh). In addition to the “transmitted” or religious sciences were al-
‘ulum al-‘aqliyya (“the rational sciences”), which included logic, philosophy, mathematics,
and the natural sciences. The rational sciences were also termed the “foreign sciences” or
“sciences of the ancients” pointing to their largely classical Greek provenance.
In the pre-‘Abbasid period, madrasas, like the “teaching” mosques before, were primarily
devoted to religious learning based on the study of the transmitted sciences (study of the
Qur’an, hadith, and the religious law), supplemented by the ancillary sciences of grammar and
literature. George Makdisi, who has done pioneering work on Islamic education and
demonstrated the influence of the madrasa on the development of the medieval European
college, has given us a comprehensive idea of medieval curricula of study and the
organizations of learning.
3
As far as the traditional or religious sciences were concerned, it
was customary for the student to learn in sequence: the Qur’an, hadith, Qur’anic sciences
which included exegesis, variant readings of the text, and hadith sciences, which involved the
study of the biographies of the hadith transmitters. The student would then proceed to study
two “foundational sciences:” usul al-din, referring to the principles or sources of religion, and
usul al-fiqh, the sources, principles, and methodology of jurisprudence. The student would
additionally learn the law of the madhhab (school of law) he
4
was affiliated with, the points of
difference (Ar. khilaf) within the same madhhab and between the four schools of law, and
dialectic (Ar. jadal), also called disputation (Ar. munazara).
5
Following dialectic came the
study of adab or belles-lettres, including poetry, prosody, and grammar. These subjects in
essence constituted the curriculum and meant to be sequentially studied as indicated here – at 6
least as preferred by the educational theorists. In reality, however, the method and course of
study tended to be informal and unstructured and were often dependent on the proclivities of
the teachers and sometimes of the students. Thus a typical day of instruction for the famous
jurist Muhammad b. Idris al-Shafi‘i (d. 820) would involve teaching a course on Qur’an before
any other topic in the day, then one each on hadith and disputation in that order, followed by a
late morning course on the classical language, grammar, prosody, and poetry until about
noon.
6
In his famous Prolegomena written in the fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldun lists a similar
curriculum for the religious sciences, with an emphasis on the Qur’an and its sciences, hadith
and its sciences, including the study of specific hadith terminology, jurisprudence (fiqh) with
an emphasis on the complex law of inheritance and the sources of jurisprudence but with the
addition of theology (al-kalam), Sufism (Islamic mysticism; called in Arabic al-tasawwuf),
and the science of the interpretation of dreams or visions (ta‘bir al-ruya).
7
The madrasa was typically funded by a waqf, a charitable foundation or trust, a form of
institutional organization that was borrowed by the West from the Islamic world towards the
end of the eleventh century.
8
Waqf rendered a person’s property safe from confiscation by the
state by freezing it as a public asset but which could be passed on to the founder’s
descendants. Wealthy men and women thus served as benefactors of madrasas, which were
sometimes named after them or their families, out of both pious interest and pragmatic
concerns. Many had a genuine interest in furthering public education and women played a
prominent role in this particular charitable activity. For example, a renowned madrasa was
endowed in the fourteenth century by Barakat, the mother of the Mamluk Sultan al-Ashraf
Sha=ban, which became known as Athe madrasa of the mother of al-Ashraf Sha=ban.@
Another woman named Alif (Ulaf?), a member of the distinguished scholarly Bulqini family
also from the Mamluk period, created endowments to support Qur=an reciters in her
grandfather=s madrasa. 7
Methodology of Instruction and Learning
The method of teaching was by lecturing and dictation; for legal studies, munazara or
disputation was important as well. The student was expected to memorize, first of all, the
Qur’an and then as many hadiths possible. The teacher, commonly called a shaykh, would
repeat the hadiths three times so as to allow the student to remember it. In the case of hadith,
dictation (imla’) was particularly important since the text had to be precisely established.
Problems of jurisprudence were also dictated as were linguistic and literary subjects. In
relation to the Qur’an and hadith, learning by heart (talqin) was the principal method of
acquiring knowledge and a retentive memory was, therefore, greatly prized. But, at the same
time, the importance of understanding was emphasized and the students were expected to
reflect on what they had learned. The saying “learning is a city, one of whose gates is memory
and the other understanding” captures this two-pronged approach to learning well. The Arabic
term used for “understanding” is diraya and is distinct from, although related to, the activity of
memorization and transmission of particularly hadiths, a process known in Arabic as riwaya.
Diraya was decisively the higher “gate” of learning since it referred to the individual’s ability
to comprehend the contents of hadith, not merely passively memorize and transmit it, and use
them to expound upon the religious law. The related term for jurisprudence fiqh means
essentially “understanding” as well and reflects the importance attached to active
comprehension of and engagement with one’s subjects in the educational system.
11
In the study of law, the scholastic method of disputation (munazara) prevailed, a pedagogical
method that originated quite early in the Islamic milieu. It is known that the ‘Abbasid caliph
Harun al-Rashid encouraged the holding of disputations at his court. The famous jurist Malik
b. Anas used to deputize his student ‘Uthman b. ‘Isa b. Kinana (d. 797) to engage another
well-known jurist Abu Yusuf in munazara. Al-Husayn b. Isma‘il (d. 942), a hadith scholar and
jurisconsult (mufti) who was the judge of the Iraqi town of Kufa for sixty years, held regular
sessions of legal disputations at his home during his period of judgeship, often attended by
other prominent jurisconsults. Other examples of regular disputation sessions abound in the
legal literature. These sessions tended to be very popular and often attracted large audiences,
frequently running from sunset to midnight.
128
The method of disputation required that the disputant have a) a comprehensive knowledge of
khilaf, which referred to the divergent legal opinions of jurisconsults; b) a thorough
acquaintance with jadal or dialectic; and acquire skill through practice in c) munazara. Law
students had to have memorized a thorough list as possible of the disputed matters of law and
know the answers for them. By virtue of their skill in disputation the students earned their
licence or certificate, known in Arabic as ijaza, to teach law and issue legal opinions.
13
The “rational” or “ancient” sciences
The so-called “rational sciences” (al-‘ulum al-‘aqliyya) or “the sciences of the ancient” (al-
‘ulum al-awa’il) usually consisted of seven main components: 1) logic (al-mantiq) which was
the foundation of all others; 2) al-arithmatiqi, arithmetic, including accounting (hisab); 3) alhandasa, geometry; 4) al-hay’a, astronomy; 5) al-musiki, music, which dealt with the theory
of tones and their definition by number, etc.; 6) al-tabi‘iyyat (“the natural sciences”), which
was concerned with the theory of bodies at rest and in motion — human, animal, plant,
mineral and heavenly, important subdivisions of which were medicine (al-tibb) and agriculture
(al-falaha); and, finally, 7) ‘ilm al-ilahiyyat, metaphysics.
14
As early as the middle of the 8
th
century during the Abbasid period, strong interest began
developing in the learning of the ancient world, particularly its Greek sources, but also to a
lesser extent in its Persian and Indian ones as well. The intellectual awakening that this interest
spawned has rendered this age especially illustrious in the annals of Islamic and world history.
Due to the political and territorial expansion of Islam beyond the original Arabian peninsula,
Muslims became the heir of the older and more cultured people whom they conquered or
encountered. In Syria and Iraq, they adapted themselves to the already existing Aramaic
civilization which had been influenced by the later Greek civilization in Syria and by the
Persian civilization in Iraq. In three-quarters of a century after the establishment of Baghdad,
the Arabic-reading world was in possession of the chief philosophical works of Aristotle, of
the leading Neo-Platonic commentators, and of most of the medical writings of Galen, as well
as of Persian and Indian scientific works. In only a few decades Arab scholars would
assimilate what had taken the Greeks centuries to develop. 9
India acted as an early source of inspiration, especially in the wisdom literature and
mathematics. About 771 CE, an Indian traveller introduced into Baghdad a treatise on
astronomy which by order of the caliph al-Mansur was translated by Muhammad al-Fazari (d.
between 796-806). Al-Fazari subsequently became the first astronomer in Islam. The stars had
of course interested the Arabs since pre-Islamic times, but no scientific study of them was
undertaken until this time. Islam had a particular interest in the study of astronomy as a means
for fixing the direction of prayer towards the Ka`ba. The famous mathematician al-Khwarizmi
(d. 850) based his widely known astronomical tables (Ar. zij) on al-Fazari's work. From alKhwarizmi’s name we get the word “algorithm.” Other astronomical works were translated in
this period from Persian into Arabic, especially during the time of Harun al-Rashid. In the
field of literature and the arts, the Persian contribution was the strongest.
In 765, the Caliph al-Mansur, afflicted with a stomach disease which had baffled his
physicians, sent for Jurjis ibn Bakhtishu‘, a Nestorian Christian physician from Iraq who
served as the dean of the hospital at Jundishapur (Gondishapur) in Persia. In the ancient world,
Jundishapur was noted for its academy of medicine and philosophy said to have been founded
about 555 by the great Persian king Anushirwan. When the school of Alexandria was closed
during the Christian period, many of its scholars are said to have fled to the school at
Jundishapur. The science of the institution was based on the ancient Greek tradition, but the
language of instruction was Aramaic. Jurjis soon won the confidence of the caliph and became
the court physician while retaining his Christian faith. It is reported that on being invited by
the caliph to embrace Islam, he retorted that he preferred the company of his fathers,
regardless of whether they were in heaven or in hell.
15
He appears not to have suffered any ill
consequences on account of his candor. In Baghdad, Ibn Bakhtishu` became the founder of a
brilliant family dynasty of medical practitioners which for six or seven generations, that is
covering a period of two centuries and a half, exercised an almost continuous monopoly over
the court medical practice. Jurjis' son Bakhtishu‘ (d. 801) and his grandson Jibril (Gabriel)
served as court physicians to Harun al-Rashid.
16
At the time of the Arab conquest of the Fertile Crescent, the intellectual legacy of Greece was
unquestionably the most precious treasure at hand. Under the two Abbasid caliphs al-Mahdi
and his son Harun al-Rashid in particular, the Muslim army won decisive victories over the 10
Byzantine enemy forces. The young Harun actually led his father's campaign against the
Byzantines; in 782, the Arab army reached the Bosphorus, at the very doors of Constantinople
itself. The Byzantine queen-regent at that time, Irene (who held the regency in the name of her
son Constantine VI) was forced to sue for peace and conclude a treaty with the Muslims. The
various Abbasid military excursions into the land of the Byzantines or as the Arab chroniclers
say, the land of the Romans, resulted in the introduction, among other objects of booty, of
Greek manuscripts. Al-Ma'mun is said to have sent his ambassadors as far as Constantinople,
to the Byzantine Emperor Leo the Armenian himself, in search of Greek manuscripts. AlMansur is requested and received a number of books, including Euclid, from the Byzantine
emperor. The Arab Muslims were not able to read the Greek originals; therefore they had to
depend on translations made by their subjects who did know Greek: Nestorian Christians. The
Nestorians first translated the Greek works into Syriac and then from Syriac into Arabic.
One of the most important achievements of al-Ma'mun's rule is his establishment of the
previously mentioned Bayt al-Hikma (the House of Wisdom) in 830. This House of Wisdom
was a combination library, an academy, and a translation bureau. One historian has described
the Bayt al-Hikma as the most important educational institution since the foundation of the
Alexandrian Museum in the first half of the third century B.C. Under al-Ma'mun, the Bayt alHikma became the center of translation activity. This era of avid translation would last
through the early tenth century.
17
Before the age of translation was brought to an end, practically all the works of Aristotle that
had survived to that day, had been translated into Arabic. Two Muslim chroniclers tell us that
no less than a hundred works of Aristotle, whom the Muslims called “the philosopher of the
Greeks,” had been translated. Some of these works attributed to Aristotle, however, are now
known to be forgeries. This intellectual floruit in the Islamic world was taking place while
Europe was almost totally ignorant of Greek thought and science. Its later rediscovery of it
was through the Arabic translations which in turn would spur the Western Renaissance. One
modern historian has remarked, "While al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun were delving into Greek and
Pesian philosophy, their contemporaries in the West, Charlemagne and his lords, were
reportedly dabbling in the art of writing their names."
18
Aristotle's works on logic and
particularly two of his works, Rhetoric and Poetics, became, along with the study of Arabic 11
grammar, the basis of humanistic studies (Ar. adab) in Islam. As these works available in
translation progressively took intellectual circles by storm, the Islamic world, like Patristic
Christianity before it, had to grapple with “the problem of how to assimilate the ‘pagan’
knowledge of the Greeks to a conception of the world that included God as its creator.”
19
The
tension between the two led to a creative accommodation and synthesis as well as to a
festering uneasiness and outright hostility in the medieval world, a range of responses that in
some measure still influences modern discourses on the nature and parameters of education in
Islamic societies.
In the early ‘Abbasid period, the rational sciences were taught in special institutions called dar
al-‘ilm (lit. “house of knowledge”) which flourished until about the middle of the eleventh
century when they began to cede ground to the madrasa. Like the madrasa, the dar al-‘ilm
was also often a waqf institution, established by a private Muslim individual using his or her
private property for a public charitable purpose. In addition to these institutions, the rational
sciences were typically taught in private homes and in other non-institutional locations.
Because of the largely non-institutional nature of this kind of education, it has been assumed
by some historians that instruction in the rational sciences considerably declined and then
well-nigh disappeared after the twelfth century, just as Europe was beginning to experience a
surge in learning inspired by its contacts with the Islamic world. It appears that these
historians had been looking for ‘ilm in all the wrong places because once the madrasa with its
mandated curriculum of religious sciences became the predominant institution of formal
learning, the rational subjects were taught primarily in informal study circles in private homes,
libraries, and in the dar al-‘ilm institutions until they faded away. Since most modern scholars
have tended to focus on the madrasa as the locus classicus of Islamic education, non-formal
and non-institutionalized modes of learning tended to be downplayed.
Recent research based on unpublished manuscripts, charitable foundation deed documents,
and biographical works on scholars yields a revised picture. In favorable circumstances, the
rational sciences continued to be taught and studied openly even in madrasas, sometimes even
in mosques, and certainly in informal study-circles and libraries. This was a natural
consequence of the fact that the broadly educated person who had acquired mastery in several
fields, including the Hellenistic subjects, remained the ideal throughout the pre-modern period, 12
in contradistinction to our era of specialization. Thus biographical dictionaries from the
Mamluk period (1256-1571) refer to shaykhs (professors and learned notables) in Damascus
who had achieved enviable mastery (Ar. riyasa, imama) in a number of subjects, including
theology, belles lettres, medicine, mathematics, natural science, and the Hellenistic sciences.
A Hanafi jurist is described in one biographical entry as having taught logic and scholastic
dialectic in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus during the Mamluk period.
20
In a mosque or
madrasa environment, the studying and teaching of Hellenic philosophy could be the most
problematic, since some of its postulations were at variance with monotheistic doctrines such
as the existence of an omnipotent, personal, and providential God, the finiteness of the world,
and bodily resurrection. Thus a philosopher who had studied with the well-known theologian
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209) was accused by some of his colleagues of corrupting his
students at the madrasa where he lived and taught. The rational sciences along with the
Islamic sciences could always be taught discreetly by professors who had a partiality for both
types of learning under a neutral or concealing umbrella rubric like hadith. Even in
unfavorable political circumstances, such as during the reign of the twelfth century Ayyubid
rulers al-Mu‘azzam and al-Ashraf who tried to forbid the teaching of philosophy, the teaching
of the Hellenistic sciences continued unabated.
21
George Makdisi, who still remains after his
death the preeminent scholar on Islamic education, has pointed to the fact that the “ancient
sciences” remained accessible and avidly pursued through the High Middle Ages, even by
“conventional” scholars such as the Shafi‘i jurisconsult Sayf al-Din al-Amidi (d. 1234). In
regard to these sciences, he remarked that “Not only was access easy, it was in turn concealed,
condoned, allowed, encouraged, held in honour, according to different regions and periods, in
spite of the traditionalist opposition, the periodic prohibitions, and autos-da-fé.”
22
Humanistic studies (Adab)
Another very important part of education in the Islamic milieu was the humanistic sciences,
termed in Arabic adab, which was based primarily upon the study of literature (poetry, belleslettres, prosody) and the linguistic sciences (grammar, syntax, philology). In addition to
religious or sacred literature, “profane” or secular literature was also being produced since the 13
Umayyad period (661-750). In the field of literature and the arts, the Persian contribution was
the strongest. The earliest literary prose work in Arabic that has come down to us is Kalila waDimna, a translation of a wisdom tale from Pahlavi (Middle Persian), which in turn was a
translation from the Sanskrit. The original work was brought to Persia from India, together
with the game of chess, during the reign of the Persian King Anusharwan (531-78) and would
become hugely popular in world literature upon its translation into various languages. The
book Kalila and Dimna was part of the burgeoning mirrors-of-princes literature and thus
intended to instruct princes in the art of administration by means of animal fables. It was
rendered into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, a Persian Zoroastrian convert to Islam, whose life
spanned the late Umayyad and ‘Abbasid periods. Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ was a member of the
powerful, highly educated secretarial class which was largely responsible for the emergence
and development of adab. As Islamic realms expanded and a sophisticated, complex
bureaucracy evolved, the epistolary (prose-essay) genre arose which eventually would spawn a
rich secular, administrative literature. Many from among this class of royal secretaries and
courtiers continued to provide adaptations and translations of Indian-Persian wisdom literature
for the entertainment and edification of the upper class. Among the translated works were
ancient histories and legends, fables and proverbs – almost anything that appealed to the
literary sophisticate and social dilettante. Poetry had dipped in popularity in the early Islamic
period but began to enjoy a resurgence in the eighth century. Pre-Islamic poetry in fact was
minutely studied by Muslim philologists and religious scholars because of the proximity of its
language to that of the Qur’an and thus it’s beneficial role in elucidating abstruse words or
locutions in the sacred text.
As a consequence of these intellectual and cultural trends, a specifically Islamic humanism
emerged based on the concept of adab, which according to probably the most famous bellelettrist in Arabic literature, Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz (d. 869), may be defined as “1) the total
educational system of 2) a cultured Muslim who 3) took the whole world for his object of
curiosity and knowledge.”
23
Adab, according to the first part of this definition, is the
equivalent of the Greek notion of paideia, according to which a holistic education contributes
to the moral development of the individual. One can even speak of a multiplicity of humanistic
trends (humanisms) in this period of extraordinary intellectual and cultural floruit, including 14
philosophical, religious, and legalistic humanism.
24
As our sources show, adab in the broad
sense of humanistic studies became an integral part of the curriculum in mosques, madrasas,
and libraries. The sciences of the Arabic language (‘ulum al-‘Arabiyya) were necessary
ancillaries to the religious sciences from the very beginning. According to the well-known
philologist al-Anbari (d. 1181), a full range of offerings in the Arabic sciences would include
grammar, lexicology, morphology, metrics, rhyme, prosody, history of the Arab tribes, Arab
genealogy, as well as the science of dialectic for grammar and the science of grammatical
theory and methodology.
25
Secular, belle-lettristic works were sometimes taught even in
mosques; the biographer al-Safadi mentions that a shaykh taught al-Hariri’s famous Maqamat
and other adab works in the Umayyad mosque.
26
Being a polymath was a matter of pride and
scholars won renown for their breadth of learning in various religious and secular subjects
rather than for a narrow specialization. Thus the elder Subki, father of the famous biographer
and chronicler Taj al-Din Subki, is described by his son as not atypically having mastery over
jurisprudence, hadith, Qur’anic exegesis and recitation, didactic and speculative theology,
grammar and syntax, lexicography, belles-lettres and ethics, medicine, scholastic dialectic,
khilaf (points of difference among the law schools, logic, poetry, heresiography, arithmetic,
law, and astronomy.
27
Physicians were also commonly learned in adab and the legal sciences
just as many jurists were also learned in medicine.
28
Role of Women Scholars
The master narrative on Islamic education in both Islamic (Arabic, Persian, Urdu, etc.) and
Western languages has traditionally minimized the role of women in scholarship, creating the
impression that their influence has been slight. Yet, not-as-frequently consulted sources like
biographical dictionaries establish that women’s contribution particularly in the transmission
of hadith and in other areas of religious scholarship has been considerable and recognized as
such by their contemporaries. For example, ‘A’isha, the Prophet’s widow, was a prolific
transmitter of hadith; a significant number of her reports have been recorded by al-Bukhari (d.
870), author of the most authoritative Sunni hadith compilation. She was also renowned for
her exegesis of the Qur’an and was consulted widely by the closest associates of the Prophet 15
on account of her knowledge of the religious law.
29
During the later period, we have evidence of impressive scholarship evinced by women as
recorded in biographical dictionaries, such as the one composed by Muhammad b. ‘Abd alRahman al-Sakhawi (d. 1497).
30
An overwhelming number of the 1,075 women referred to in
al-Sakhawi’s chapter on women are distinguished for their exemplary religious piety and for
their excellence in and dedication to religious scholarship. The general picture that emerges is
of women who were active in both receiving and imparting religious knowledge, particularly
in the transmission of hadith. The notion of sexually segregated space that we take for granted
as a defining feature of medieval Muslim society is challenged by what these biographical
accounts have to tell us about the formal and informal settings in which women scholars
conducted their activity. Women are depicted as freely studying with men and other women;
after becoming credentialed as teachers, they would go on to teach both men and women. The
settings include the madrasa, informal study circles (halaqas) and private homes. Two of the
most important madrasas mentioned by name are the Zahiriyya and the Salihiyya in Cairo,
Egypt where some of these women received their education and later taught.
31
Our
protagonists are mostly women from elite backgrounds; almost without exception, they are
described as being of noble birth, and/or from families which were already distinguished for a
tradition of learning, and for producing religious and legal scholars. The male relatives of
these women appear to have been quite encouraging of the desire of these women to acquire
advanced religious instruction. Clearly, these women were empowered by their specific social
and familial circumstances which appear not to have recognized a gender barrier in the
acquisition and dissemination of religious scholarship.
These women scholars, like their male counterparts, spent years in scholarly apprenticeship,
making the usual rounds of academic circles, choosing to study closely with particular,
renowned teachers, and finally earning the coveted ijaza, the teaching certificate which
permitted them to instruct others. Like their male colleagues, they clearly worked hard to
make their entré into the world of formal religious training. The actual academic training of
the best of these women scholars appear to match that of the best male scholars in rigor and
thoroughness, a fact that was acknowledged in their own time, given the amount of academic
recognition that came their way as a result. This is reflected primarily in the number and 16
quality of the students they supervised, which included al-Sakhawi himself, and prior to him,
his own teacher, the famous Ibn Hajar, for example. Some women traveled quite far and wide
in their scholarly quest. For example, Fatima bt. Muhammad b. >Abd al-Hadi obtained her
teaching certificates in Damascus, Egypt, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and other places, studying
with renowned scholars like the famous hadith scholar Muhammad Ibn >Asakir, among
others. Rabi=, daughter of the celebrated Ibn Hajar mentioned above, received teaching
certificates from a large number of Egyptian and Syrian scholars. Her rihlat talab al-ilm
(Atravel in the pursuit of knowledge@) began at the age of four when her father took her to
Mecca to listen to al-Zayn al-Maraghi.
A key descriptive term used for some of these distinguished women scholars is ra’isa
(literally, “a female leader”) and the more elevated form kathirat al-ri‘asa (“having plenitude
of leadership”). These terms are particularly significant since they connote exceptional
mastery in the scholar’s field(s) of expertise and her authority. One scholar, Halima bt. Ahmad
b. Muhammad, who is described as possessing kathirat al-riyasa or “plenitude of leadership,”
is clearly deserving of this accolade. She is described as having being subjected to a rigorous
examination before being granted her certificate to teach by her board of examiners which was
constituted by a number of the most distinguished scholars of the day. After her certification,
prominent scholars audited her transmission of hadith.
34
Participation of Religious Minorities
The participation of religious minorities, mainly Christians and Jews, in the intellectual and
academic life in Islamic societies is well-documented in various sources. We have already
referred to the enormous contributions of Jacobite and Nestorian Christians to the
efflorescence of Islamic civilization starting in the 8
th
century through their translation
activities funded by their Muslim patrons. Inter-faith dialogue and dialectics were sometimes
conducted at the caliphal court to promote a critical understanding of the other’s religion. For
example, the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi (d. 785) convened formal discussions on theological
matters with the Catholicos Timothy, leader of the Nestorian church in Iraq in the eighth 17
century.
Biographical sources in particular are a valuable repository of information about interreligious scholarly exchanges and collaboration taking place in study-circles and other venues.
One source mentions that a certain Muslim scholar learned in grammar and the rational
sciences held study sessions in his house attended not only by Muslims but also by Jews,
Christians, “heretics,” and Samaritans,
35
while another shaykh, ‘Izz al-Din al-Hasan al-Irbili
(d. 1262) is said to have read rational sciences and philosophy with fellow-Muslims, the
“People of the Book,” and philosphers.
36
Other such examples occur in valuable biographical
works of the period. Lessons in non-Muslim scriptures were also sometimes given by Muslim
scholars. According to one source, a professor in Damascus convened study-circles on the
New Testament which were attended by Christians, and held others on the Old Testament
attended by Jews.
37
The celebrated Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, called in Arabic
Musa ibn Maymun, served as Saladdin’s court physician and wrote most of his philosophical
treatises in Arabic. Highly respected for his scholarship, he moved easily in learned Muslim
and Jewish circles. When he died in 1204, his death was officially mourned by Jews and
Muslims alike for three days in Cairo where he was born. In Persia, the Syrian Jacobite
Catholicos Abu al-Faraj Ibn al-‘Ibri (d. 1286) lectured in the thirteenth century at the famous
Il-Khanid observatory and library of Maragha on Euclid and Ptolemy.
38
This kind of
ecumenical scholarly collegiality was a major ingredient in the formidable edifice of learning
in the medieval Muslim world.
M. Fethullah Gulen’s Views on Education
Our survey to date established the general receptivity of early Muslims to knowledge,
religious and secular, regardless of its provenance, as long as the acquisition of such
knowledge did not contribute to moral turpitude and did not violate Islamic norms of decency.
As we discussed earlier, Greek, Persian, Indian, and Syriac learning was selectively
synthesized with Islamic scholarship and values which enriched the religious sciences and
fostered the cultivation of the natural sciences, philosophy, belles-lettres, and mathematics,
among other disciplines. We have recorded instances of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Dr. Asma AAfsaruddin.doc FGC 9/25/2005 4:50:00 PM Page 18 of 26
“heretics” (as called by some of the sources) studying with and learning from one another in a
common educational enterprise. Education, in many ways, was a great equalizer. Therefore, as
we have seen, women often had the opportunity to excel in the study and teaching of the
religious sciences, whose names and accomplishments are gratefully recorded in their works
by their male students and colleagues. As noted before, local rulers, notables, and the state
sometimes tried to impose restrictions on the curricula of madrasas but many scholars simply
ignored them or found creative ways to circumvent them.
Education served its best purpose when it fostered honest, intellectual inquiry based on critical
study of texts and dialectal (and, ideally, also respectful) engagement with one’s peers.
Scholarly disagreement was welcomed and, as we saw, even publicly staged, in legal and
intellectual circles. A statement attributed to the Prophet states, “There is mercy in the
differences of my community.” This hadith embodies a deep-seated awareness that the
hermeneutics of reading scripture – or any other text – yields a multiplicity of equally valid
readings at any given time or place. Re-emphasis upon scriptural and classical Islamic values
of tolerance for a diversity of opinions and of reasoned dissent and receptivity towards the
participation of religious minorities and women in public and intellectual life are in accord
with the orientation of liberal educational systems.
Upon careful study, Fethullah Gulen’s philosophy of a wholistic educational system which
promotes spiritual enrichment and critical thinking for men and women, Muslim and nonMuslim, appears to be very closely derived from and highly compatible with the classical
philosophy of Islamic education which prevailed in the early pre-modern era. As we have
already affirmed, the foundational texts of Islam emphasize the acquisition and dissemination
of learning as a fundamental religious duty. Thus the Qur’an (3:79) states, “Be you masters in
that you teach the Scripture and in that you yourselves study [it].” Fethullah Gulen’s
passionate commitment to learning as a means of training both the body and the soul to do the
will of God in this world is well-documented and along the lines of classical Muslim
pedagogical principles based on the Qur’an and sunna. Gulen thus remarks in one of his
works, “We are creatures composed of not only a body or mind or feelings or spirit; rather, we
are harmonious compositions of all these elements.”
39
Proper training of all these aspects of
the human condition in concert promote the wholistic development of the individual – 19
spiritually, morally, rationally, and psychologically.
In his pedagogical views, Gulen does not set up a misleading demarcation between an
assumed hermetically sealed religious sphere and a secular sphere. As is well-known, he
realized the importance of mastering the physical sciences and rightly emphasized that there
was no cognitive disjunction between spiritual truth and scientific inquiry, and thus no
dissonance between Islamic principles and scientific methodologies. Like al-Ma‘arri, he
bemoaned the artificial rupture effected by some between faith and reason and saw that as a
violation of Islam’s true purpose in bringing about a synthesis between the two. In a recent
study of the Gulen movement, a young biology teacher from the movement was quoted as
saying, “For a Muslim, studying or learning science is equivalent to worship. The same is true
for teaching science.”
40
This statement encapsulates Gulen’s personal reverence for the
sciences and its centrality to a wholistic educational program which blends faith and science.
The Qur’an after all exhorts humans to “reflect on the creation of the heavens and Earth
(3:190), which Gulen understands as an invitation
to discover the Divine mysteries in the book of the universe and through
every new discovery that deepens and unfolds the true believer, to live a life
full of spiritual pleasure along a way of light extending from belief to
knowledge of God and therefrom to love of God; and then to progress to the
Hereafter and God’s pleasure and approval – this is the way to become a perfect,
universal human being.
41
Studying God’s creation is thus a natural consequence of an individual’s faith in and love for
Him, leading to deeper knowledge of matters of the mind and the spirit and ultimately to
“annihilation in and subsistence with God.”
42
Expressed in Sufi terms, this last quoted phrase
underscores the desirability of rooting one’s scientific learning in the higher purpose of Dr. Asma AAfsaruddin.doc FGC 9/25/2005 4:50:00 PM Page 20 of 26
serving the Almighty (hizmet) and not for material gain or worldly glory. Hizmet, service to
God through one’s work, particularly teaching, is a central crucial tenet of Gulen’s educational
philosophy and has been taken to be indicative of “worldly asceticism” on his part.
43
It should be noted, however, that teachers in Gulen schools in a highly secular country such as
Turkey and outside of Turkey do not currently overtly proclaim their adherence to Islam nor
teach the sciences from a religious perspective, since both might invite the disapproval of the
authorities. Gulen suggests instead that it is enough to be a faithful Muslim while imparting
secular knowledge because “knowledge itself becomes an Islamic value when it is imparted by
teachers with Islamic values and who can show students how to employ knowledge in the
right and beneficial Islamic way.”
44
In a similar vein, Gulen emphasizes the importance of
temsil for his followers in general: to represent the best of Islam through their personal
behavior and interactions with others.
45
Exemplary, loving conduct towards others is the best
witness one can provide for one’s moral integrity and fidelity to God.
In addition to the sciences, Gulen also lays emphasis on a humanistic approach to education,
which reflects earlier pattersn of classical education in the Islamic world. Such a broad-based
humanistic approach, according to Gulen, would include the inculcation of religious, ethical
and traditional cultural values,
46
values which in their application are universal and broadly
humanitarian. One should also not be severed from the history of one’s community, whether
as individuals or as nations, because a highly developed historical consciousness lends
valuable contextualized perspective on one’s contemporary life. Gulen comments,
Improving a community is possible by elevating the coming generations
to the rank of humanity, not by obliterating the bad ones. Unless the seeds
of religion, traditional values, and historical consciousness germinate
throughout the country, new bad elements will inevitably grow up in the
place of every bad element that has been eradicated.
47
Gulen evinced much admiration for the Ottoman empire and the values of the high civilization
it had spawned, for which he was sometimes labeled a “reactionary” (irticaci) by those 21
unsympathetic to him and his cause.
The Role of Women and Religious Minorities
The Gulen movement supports increased educational and work opportunities for women.
Many women work particularly as educators in schools and universities, and sometimes as
administrators in certain areas. Women’s access to religious education in particular was never
disputed in the medieval period and during some eras led to a remarkable floruit in women’s
scholarship, as we have previously remarked.
48
The Gulen schools continue this venerable
tradition in the contemporary period.
With regard to religious minorities, Gulen, like his mentor Said Nursi before him, was a firm
believer in dialogue and the establishment of cordial, tolerant relations with them. On account
of such tolerant proclivities, fostered in fact by a strong Islamic identity on the part of the
teachers, Gulen schools have been successful in putting down roots in various milieux, in and
outside of Turkey. In return, they have been welcomed in places as diverse as Albania and
Russia. Gulen often quotes Mevlana Rumi’s comment to the effect that the individual should
be “like a pair of compasses, with one end in the necessary place, the center, and with the
other one in the 72 nations [millet],” referring to the different millets or religious communities
which co-existed peacefully under the Ottomans.
49
Gulen schools, whose curricula are not
specifically religious, are open to students of any faith background. Such a spirit of tolerance
and inclusiveness reflects the spirit which characterized the madrasas and informal learning
circles of the medieval period, which, as we indicated before, welcomed the active
participation of religious minorities in their intellectual life. The inter-faith academic milieu
provided valuable opportunities for dialogue and friendly debate in medieval learning circles,
as it does now. Inter-faith dialogue in fact remains a priority for Gulen and his followers
today, as evinced in the following statement made by Gulen,
Interfaith dialogue is a must today, and the first step in establishing it is
forgetting the past, ignoring polemical arguments, and giving precedence
