Madrassah

Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , pl. , ) is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whether for elementary instruction or higher learning. The word is variously transliterated ''Madrasah arifah'', ''medresa'', ''madrassa'', ''madraza'', ''medrese'', etc. In countries outside the Arab world, the word usually refers to a specific type of religious school or college for the study of the religion of Islam, though this may not be the only subject studied.

In an architectural and historical context, the term generally refers to a particular kind of institution in the historic Muslim world which primarily taught Islamic law and jurisprudence (''fiqh''), as well as other subjects on occasion. The origin of this type of institution is widely credited to Nizam al-Mulk, a vizier under the Seljuks in the 11th century, who was responsible for building the first network of official madrasas in Iran, Mesopotamia, and Khorasan. From there, the construction of madrasas spread across much of the Muslim world over the next few centuries, often adopting similar models of architectural design.

Definition

Etymology

The word ' derives from the triconsonantal Semitic root د-ر-س ''D-R-S'' 'to learn, study', using the ''wazn'' ( morphological form or template) ; , meaning "a place where something is done". Thus, ' literally means "a place where learning and studying take place" or "place of study". The word is also present as a loanword with the same general meaning in many Arabic-influenced languages, such as: Urdu,
Bengali, Pashto, Baluchi, Persian, Turkish, Azeri, Kurdish, Indonesian, Somali and Bosnian.

Arabic meaning

In the Arabic language, the word ' simply means the same as ''school'' does in the English language, whether that is private, public or parochial school, as well as for any primary or secondary school whether Muslim, non-Muslim, or secular. Unlike the use of the word ''school'' in British English, the word ' more closely resembles the term ''school'' in American English, in that it can refer to a university-level or post-graduate school as well as to a primary or secondary school. For example, in the Ottoman Empire during the Early Modern Period, madrasas had lower schools and specialised schools where the students became known as ''danişmends''.İnalcık, Halil. 1973. "Learning, the Medrese, and the Ulema." In ''The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600''. New York: Praeger, pp. 165–178.
In medieval usage, however, the term ''madrasah'' was usually specific to institutions of higher learning, which generally taught Islamic law and occasionally other subjects, as opposed to elementary schools or children's schools, which were usually known as ''kuttāb'' or ''maktab''. The usual Arabic word for a university, however, is '' ()''. The Hebrew cognate ''midrasha'' literally refers to study or learning, but has acquired mystical and religious connotations.

Meaning and usage in English

In English, the term ' or "madrasa" usually refers more narrowly to Islamic institutions of learning. Historians and other scholars also employ the term to refer to historical ''madrasah'' institutions throughout the Muslim world, which is to say a college where Islamic law was taught along with other secondary subjects. These institutions were typically housed in specially designed buildings which were primarily devoted to this purpose. Such institutions are believed to have originated, or at least proliferated, in the region of Iran in the 11th century under vizier Nizam al-Mulk and subsequently spread to other regions of the Islamic world.

History

Early history

The first institute of madrasa education was at the estate of Zaid bin Arkam near a hill called Safa, where Muhammad was the teacher and the students were some of his followers. After Hijrah (migration) the madrasa of "Suffa" was established in Madina on the east side of the Al-Masjid an-Nabawi mosque. Ubada ibn as-Samit was appointed there by Muhammad as teacher and among the students. In the curriculum of the madrasa, there were teachings of The Qur'an, The Hadith, fara'iz, tajweed, genealogy, treatises of first aid, etc. There was also training in horse-riding, the art of war, handwriting and calligraphy, athletics and martial arts. The first part of madrasa-based education is estimated from the first day of " nabuwwat" to the first portion of the Umayyad Caliphate. At the beginning of the Caliphate period, the reliance on courts initially confined sponsorship and scholarly activities to major centres.

In the early history of the Islamic period, teaching was generally carried out in mosques rather than in separate specialized institutions. Although some major early mosques like the Great Mosque of Damascus or the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Cairo had separate rooms which were devoted to teaching, this distinction between "mosque" and "madrasa" was not very present. Notably, the al-Qarawiyyin (''Jāmiʻat al-Qarawīyīn''), established in 859 in the city of Fes, present-day Morocco, is considered the oldest university in the world by some scholars,while other scholars have argued that this distinction belongs to the University of al-Qarawiyyin, also founded in 859.

*
*Kettani, M. Ali. ''Engineering Education in the Arab World''. Middle East Journal, 1974, 28(4):441. though the application of the term "university" to institutions of the medieval Muslim world is disputed. Verger, Jacques: "Patterns", in: Ridder-Symoens, Hilde de (ed.): ''A History of the University in Europe. Vol. I: Universities in the Middle Ages'', Cambridge University Press, 2003, , pp. 35–76 (35): According to tradition, the al-Qarawiyyin mosque was founded by ', the daughter of a wealthy merchant named . This was later followed by the Fatimid establishment of al-Azhar Mosque in 969–970 in Cairo, initially as a center to promote Isma'ili teachings, which later became a Sunni institution under Ayyubid rule (today's Al-Azhar University).Jonathan Berkey, ''The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), ''passim'' By the 900s AD, the Madrasa is noted to have become a successful higher education system.

The development of the formal ''madrasah''

In the late 11th century, during the late ʻAbbāsid period, the Seljuk vizier created one of the first major official academic institutions known in history as the , based on the informal ' (sessions of the shaykhs). , who would later be murdered by the Assassins ('), created a system of state madrasas (in his time they were called the Niẓāmiyyahs, named after him) in various Seljuk and ʻAbbāsid cities at the end of the 11th century, ranging from Mesopotamia to Khorasan. Although madrasa-type institutions appear to have existed in Iran before Nizam al-Mulk, this period is nonetheless considered by many as the starting point for the proliferation of the formal ''madrasah'' across the rest of the Muslim world, adapted for use by all four different Sunni Islamic legal schools and Sufi orders. Part of the motivation for this widespread adoption of the madrasah by Sunni rulers and elites was a desire to counter the influence and spread of Shi'ism at the time, by using these institutions to spread Sunni teachings.

Dimitri Gutas and the ''