That’s a weird argument. So if the University of al-Qarawiyyin stops operating, then some other place becomes the first university?

No, just saying that considering the development of institutions of higher learning, there's a good chance that the first university and the oldest continuously operating one are one and the same. Not that it necessarily implies that they are one and the same.

That’s more of a modern understanding of what a university is like (and I doubt it is an accurate description of the mosque that Fatima al-Fihri made).

My point here is simply that Plato's Academy never developed into an institution like that. I'm sure that if it did, none of us would begrudge Plato the honor of being the founder of the world's oldest university.

A ‘community of masters and scholars’ one might say, or in latin ‘universitas magistrorum et scholarium’ which is the origin of the word ‘university’. The original point of Universities was the same as that of the Academy. The teaching of students is just a side effect of achieving that goal since teaching is a great way to learn.

See, here I have to disagree. The point of universities was to provide a community of masters and scholars, but explicitly for the access of the less-educated in order to perpetuate the knowledge possessed to the next generation, in the same spirit as guilds held masters and journeymen alike. All of the major institutions recognized as universities that I'm aware of (admittedly only a few, it's not my main field of interest) starting out with this more 'school-like' structure, rather than the structure of a round-table of academics. I know several developed out of more traditional church schools.

I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of the authors findings. He says she likely founded a mosque, and there is zero evidence from midevial sources and earlier, that she did anything more than that (it’s worth pointing out that her very existence is disputed by some historians because there are no references to her until centuries after her death). It’s impossible to prove a negative, but there is no evidence the mosque operated as either a library or a university at the time of its founding.

The issue is that mosques in that period are synonymous with schooling and text storage in the context of North African Islamic polities. The objection then, necessarily, is either "It's not certain that it taught the 'right' subjects to be a university immediately, therefore, we can dismiss Fatima as founder" or "Storage of academic and literary texts only counts as having a library if it's a specialized building, otherwise it's just a sparkling shelf."

So again, I can’t debunk this- nobody can - I just think it’s pretty flimsy. I could claim the world’s first university was an Egyptian temple, because they probably taught things there.

Some issues with this:

1. You could... if there was an Egyptian temple in continuous usage to the modern day that you could point to, with a long and uninterrupted history of operating as an institute of learning that has the features we generally recognize as belonging to a university.

2. Egyptian temples were used for textual storage (mostly records), but largely not teaching. Medieval Islamic mosques had a very core focus on learning, not just Friday Prayers and the Quran.

3. Al-Qarawiyyin is decisively recognized as a university now; the question of whether it 'counts' as a university is settled, the only question, then, is should the founder who created an institute for the purpose of learning, teaching, and information retention, be recognized as its founder, or should they not for some arbitrary criteria that we wouldn't apply to any other institution or founder?

I dont think it’s fair to say people are being overly pedantic because she was a Muslim women when the only reason this is getting shared in the first place is because she was Muslim woman.

It's entirely fair to say people are being overly pedantic because she's a Muslim woman when it's shared because she's a Muslim woman. How that does follow?

If I brought up a Black inventor who made something in a way that we would recognizably understand as having invented something, and the response was "Well that Black inventor didn't REALLY invent it, the concept and previous prototypes were already there", would it be unfair to point out that that's a pedantic position, simply because the inventor was brought up because he was Black? What about if the person making the response recognized other inventors as normal, even though almost all of them had established concepts and prototypes which came before them? Would you dismiss any possibility of pedantry being related to racism in that case?

Yes, actually I do. Many universities evolved out of religious institutions. That’s exactly the point. Being founded as a religious school doesn’t automatically make something equivalent to what we now define as a university.

This is your objection, here:

"I mean… It was actually a mosque focused on religious education when it was founded."

What's the difference between a Christian institution founded for the purpose of the scholastic study of theology and a Muslim one, other than cultural chauvinism?

Institutions like University of Oxford developed into degree-granting, corporately structured institutions with recognized faculties, charters, and governance systems.

And you think... Al-Qarawiyyin didn't until, what, the White Man came and Civilized Morocco in the 1960s? Because that's what you're saying when you object to Al-Qarawiyyin's existence as a university until accreditation in the 20th century AD. I guess the diplomas dating back to the early 13th century AD are just a liberal hoax.

Accreditation in the modern sense didn’t exist, sure. But formal recognition, charters, and institutional frameworks absolutely did.

So the pre-20th century formal recognition and institutional frameworks of al-Qarawiyyin don't get recognition, but all the pre-19th century institutions of European universities do. How very... convenient.

So the absence of modern accreditation doesn’t mean there were no standards or distinctions at all. The question isn’t “was there 19th-century accreditation?” it’s whether the institution functioned as a university in the historical sense of the term.

Funny then that your historical sense of the term university excludes an institution of higher learning with formal recognition, charters, and institutional frameworks, which granted degrees to graduates. But I guess they had a charter from a MUSLIM polity, which was illegitimate; only Christian polities can grant REAL charters. /s

Calling that “moving the goalposts” doesn’t make it so. It’s clarifying definitions.

You utter dipshit, you're the one who said "moving the goalposts" I made no such accusation.

Fuck's sake. Can you not keep your own thoughts in order for a single fucking comment?

And as for “tilting at windmills” that only works if the argument being challenged doesn’t exist.

Holy fucking shit, that's not what tilting at windmills means in this context.

Tilting at windmills as in attacking an argument that has not actually been presented, not that does not exist in the fucking abstract.

It is a statement of fact that it was accredited in the 20th century.

It is also a statement of fact that Oxford still isn't an accredited university.

As another example, my sister got her Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering in the 1980's from Johns Hopkins University and her degree at the time wasn't accredited. No one cared. It was Johns Hopkins.

Accreditation is like the Better Business Bureau for schools. It means nothing to big businesses but can help consumers identify shady businesses from legitimate companies. Google isn't BBB accredited because Google doesn't care. Oxford isn't acreddited because Oxford doesn't care.

I can't speak for Pug, but something they allude to but don't outright state is that the other person's position is build not on knowledge, but ignorance one step removed from bigotry. They clearly have massive gaps in their knowledge (if they even know anything about this topic), and rather than educate themselves they make assumptions according to their latent preconception that "the world's oldest continuously operating higher education institute" is a distinction too good to let filthy Muslims have. Then when the factual flaws in their argument are pointed out they reformulate their argument and repeat the process again. Pug is uniquely... uh... colorful, but being on the opposite end of such an argument about one's field of interest would I think get most people riled up proportional to their general (in)tolerance for bigotry.

TL;DR: Aknifeguy keeps making assumptions based on what is likely bigotry and pretending they know what they're talking about rather than googling stuff they don't know, and this is a good way to piss off people who know what they're talking about and don't like bigotry.

It is a statement of fact that it was accredited in the 20th century. Is there any other form of accreditation informal or formal prior to the modern accreditation? That’s what I think aknifeguy was asking/explaining is how I understood which I don’t know if I misread anything or not

Aknifeguy posited that accreditation was only afforded to the university in the 20th century AD, thus implying in the context of the dispute that it could not have been a university before that. The issue is that accreditation itself in that sense only dates to the 19th century AD, yet it is extremely doubtful that he would dismiss Oxford circa 1750 AD as a university for lack of accreditation. The only alternative would be that Aknifeguy is suggesting that informal legitimization before the invention of modern, scholarly accreditation for places of higher learning count if they come from Christian European polities, but not North African Muslim polities.

"There were no universities until the 19th century" or "Informal accreditation counts, but only for the universities I deem fit"

I find neither possibility compelling.

I’m not an educated person so bare that in mind please, this whole back and forth between you 2 seems to have gotten quite spicy. I’m just trying to figure out why you are seemingly so angry and hostile to aknifeguy as that’s how you came across to me (again I educated so I’m not qualified to judge your content, just a confused audience member here.)

I have about one semi-polite reply in me, and I used it up at the start. Having someone accuse me of saying what they said, incorrectly attempt to correct me on an idiom, and, ironically for someone who brought it up at the very start, moving the goalposts of the argument ("It wasn't accredited and it started as a religious institution" to "Well, it doesn't fit a much more specific definition of university in which both of those points are entirely irrelevant") tend to get my dander up; on top of what I regard as the absurd and pedantic nature of the position to begin with that no one would apply to any other founder of notable institutions.

Also, I'm irritable in general.

Oxford and University of Paris aren't even accredited universities. They assign degrees based on royal charter, not peer review by other institutions.

If you choose the broader definition, then al-Qarawiyyin clearly qualifies very early. If you choose the narrower juridical definition, then historians debate whether the madrasa structure fits that category prior to modern reforms.

In short, it’s not a university. And that’s okay. Trying to pigeonhole it into that definition is the issue.

"If it's the broader definition, it's a university. If it's the narrow definition, it's debatable. In short, it's not a university."

You legitimately don't see it, do you.

Yes, mosques were major centers of learning, and yes, madrasas were formal institutions of higher scholarship. No serious historian denies that. The question isn’t whether they were sophisticated or prestigious. They clearly were.

So, universities.

Madrasas generally operated through:

Endowments (waqf)

Individual scholars granting ijazahs (licenses to teach specific texts)

Study circles tied to particular teachers

Administrative oversight embedded in religious or political authority

Buddy. You just described Oxford, at least for the first couple hundred years. It's not 1:1, but it's very similar.

A single incorporated body of masters and students with collective legal standing

A standardized multi-faculty structure under one corporate identity

Degree hierarchies equivalent to bachelor/master/doctor conferred by the institution itself rather than by individual scholars

Oxford is to this day made up of 43 independent colleges that operate independently, which began as individual teachers teaching their subject. Incidentally, four of those are still today owned by religious institutions.

Do we define “university” broadly as any enduring institution of advanced learning that granted recognized credentials?

Or do we use the term in its specific medieval legal-institutional sense?

I feel like you intended this as a "gotcha," but that's literally what I mean by "no meaningful difference." Especially back in the first millennium.

If you choose the broader definition, then al-Qarawiyyin clearly qualifies very early.

If you choose the narrower juridical definition, then historians debate whether the madrasa structure fits that category prior to modern reforms.

Then you probably have to exclude every university prior to modern reforms. It's really not worth trying to split hairs for most schools.

In short, it's not a university. And that's okay. Trying to pigeonhole it into that definition is the issue.

Yeah, you really thought I was going to agree with you on the obvious answer there, but it really seems obvious to me in the opposite direction.

I've retracted "baked-in" regarding specifically education, having read more about the history, and I appreciate your comment calling me out. However, it's clear that the current status of women's education in the Muslim world is a direct result of Islam's baked-in complementarian misogyny.

I mean that the appeal does not hold up even inside the philosophical framework of a 'traditional' Islamic society. Especially as the Quran does not forbid women's education.

I mean, not every meme is a knee-slapper. Plenty of memes here are oriented towards the trivia, with the joke being secondary.