Transmission of the Muslim knowledge

Question 2:

Before the eleventh century, the transmission of Muslim knowledge was not tied to any institutional structure. Islamic education took place in the scholars’ houses or mosques. Students and scholars gathered in teaching circles to recite the Qur’an and discuss the text interpretations. These discussions lead to the development of two important Islamic religious disciplines, the study of hadith and Islamic jurisprudence. Those sciences were transmitted outside of any institution for the first ten centuries except for Mosques. The Muslim place of worship was a venue of convenience from an educational point of view because of its public nature, the large space and it was already a structure associated with worship. For centuries the mosque was the primary locus for religious instruction, where the local kuttab were found and courses in hadith and grammar were given. Teaching and learning Islamic sciences could be done anywhere, in a home, on the street or in a mosque at that time.

At the beginning of the eleventh century, Muslims started to establish specifically created institutions to the transmission of religious knowledge. The madrasa, which means school in Arabic, became a distinct institution focusing in the transmission of Islamic knowledge in pre-modern Islamic cities. This new type of school, “was a boring school that combined teaching hall an living quarters for the students, visiting scholars and perhaps for the professor” (Egger, p.220) emerged in Khorasan. The madrasas are not established by governments or ecclesiastical organization but “were the result of personal patronage” (Egger, p.220) as an act of charity. Over the long haul, all through the medieval Islamic world, the madrasa became the chief institution of higher education, but it didn’t displaced the mosque as an educational institution. There was no distinguishable differences between the two since in both location education and wordship took place. The transmission of knowledge within the madrasa remained personal and informal “based on the relationship between the student and the teacher” (Egger, p.222) the way it has been before the appearance of the madrasa in the earlier centuries. No system of degree was established, the only thing that mattered was with whom the student gained his knowledge, a qualification certified by a personnel license, ijaza, issue by the teacher to his dispel. (Class notes, April12) Choosing a madrasa or a mosque by a student was based on the scholar who mastered the field in what they wanted to become proficient. The students might develop their skills on a particular subject whether it is in Quranic exegesis, Arabic grammar, Hadith studies or Shari’a by spending few months or years with a particular teacher and then move to another. Once the teacher was convinced that his student mastered the subject he will reward him by an ijaza that will establish “his link in the chain of authority stretching back to the prophet that authenticated the texts at the core of Islam.”(Egger, p.223)

In conclusion, the emergence of new institutions in the eleventh century aimed mainly the preservation and the transmission of the Muslim knowledge that was becoming a cultural legacy to the future generations.

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