Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Jack Goody, The Interface between the 

Written and the Oral (Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1987); Irfan Habib, Iqtidar Alam Khan, and K. 

P. Singh, “Problems of the Muslim Minority in India.” 

Social Scientist 4 (June 1976): 67–72; Paul Lund, “Ara-

bic and the Art of Printing.” Saudi Aramco World 32 

(March–April 1981): 20–35; Golnar Mehran, “Social 

Implications of Literacy in Iran.” Comparative Educa-

tion Review 36 (May 1992): 194–211; Brian V. Street, 

ed., Literacy and Development: Ethnographic Perspectives

(London: Routledge, 2001).

literature

  See a

frican

 l

anguage

 

and

 l

iterature

; 

a

rabic

 l

anguage

 

and

 l

iterature

; p

ersian

 l

anguage

and

 l

iterature

; t

urkish

 l

anguage

 

and

 l

iterature

.

literature

  

445  J

---

446

AF

J:

madhhab

  See 

sharia

.

Madina

  See m

edina

.

madrasa

A place of 

edUcation

 for Muslim religious lead-

ers and scholars. Islamic education began in the 

prophet  m

Uhammad

’s time, but centers of learn-

ing did not begin until after the first and second 

centuries of i

slam

. The most prominent of the 

earliest madrasas is e

gypt

’s al-a

zhar

, which was 

opened under the Fatimids in 970 

c

.

e

. The open-

ing in b

aghdad

 of the Nizamiyya College in 1066 

marked the beginning of the madrasa system. 

Many Nizamiyyas were opened afterward; the 

point of these madrasas and systems of madrasas 

in other regions was to create uniform opinion 

regarding Islamic law and 

theology

.

Compared to Jewish Yeshiva schools and Chris-

tian scriptural schools, madrasas concentrated on 

rote memorization of the q

Uran

, knowledge of 

correct ritual practice, and the deduction of legal 

points from the scriptures (fiqh), and, in fact, they 

eventually produced bodies of law. p

hilosophy

, 

astronomy, and 

mathematics

 were also taught 

in medieval Iranian madrasas, but opposition 

grew in a

rab

 lands during this time against the 

study of philosophy, and, after the 14th century, 

Arab madrasas instead emphasized grammar and 

rhetoric as well as religious law. Fischer argues 

that after the 11th century, madrasas in the Arab 

world displayed little innovation, and intellectual 

freedom, instead focusing on repetition and com-

mentary. Typically, a lecturer would dictate long 

quotations to his students, and then he would 

comment on meaning, content, and style.

At times friction between religion and govern-

ment arose as scholarly opinions emanating from 

madrasas began to bear legal weight, because this 

legal aspect competed with other forms of 

aUthor

-

ity

 such as the court or the state. In 16th-century 

i

ran

, the madrasa system maintained a much 

greater degree of independence from the state 

than in the Ottoman Empire, although Iranian 

rulers built madrasas and granted them endow-

ments. Yet they were also privately supported, and 

were not absorbed into the state. The o

ttoman

dynasty

, on the other hand, found it beneficial to 

control the madrasa system.

Modernizing forces in Europe in the 18th and 

19th centuries brought about a new struggle, in 

which Europeans tried to free education from 

M

---

the church, and to reform education to be more 

relevant in the Industrial Age. A similar debate 

arose in the Middle East. In Iran during the 19th 

century, this resulted in the opening of secular 

profession schools, and, by the 20th century, Ira-

nian madrasa students became an isolated yet still 

influential minority. The Ottomans reformed their 

institutions of higher learning before reforming 

the madrasa system for elementary students. In 

1924 Ataturk’s government in t

Urkey

 eliminated 

the madrasa system in favor of secular education; 

however, Islamic education was reinstated in the 

late 1940s. In the second half of the 19th century 

in Egypt, Muslim Egyptians began to attend secu-

lar schools, and a movement arose in the late 19th 

to the early 20th century to modernize al-Azhar.

Madrasa education, although replaced to a 

great degree by the rise of systems of modern 

education, still exists all over the Muslim world. 

Fazlur Rahman notes that in contemporary Paki-

stan, madrasas teaching traditional interpretations 

of Islam flourish mainly in the countryside. He also 

argues that the more any given region in the Mus-

lim world was affected by Western colonialism, the 

stronger the hold is in that region of traditional 

madrasa-style learning by the religious elite.

See also  a

ligarh

;  d

eoband

; 

kuttab

; 

Ulama

; 

z

aytUna

 m

osqUe

.

Sophia Pandya