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Ah yes Morocco - the 137th out of 148 countries when it comes to women rights.
If anything this “university” had an inverse effect this meme implies.
The actually reality is this:
Literally nothing is known about this woman outside of a single narrative written by a supposed 14th century Moroccan historian, Ibn Abi Zar’, who we know nothing about either outside of him being a historian. Actually, most academics doubt that he was any sort of scholar to begin with because the source of this information is not reliable.
There’s literally ZERO evidence to support that this historian was that or that this woman was even real. In fact there’s evidence that support this story is fake because the inscriptions inside the mosque use different scripts than what is claimed in the story. Most academics are skeptical of this her existence and her story is treated as a cultural legend rather than historical fact.
Also within the folktale story, which by the way was written over 600 years after her supposed death, claims that she, along with her sister, inherited the wealth from their wealthy merchant father, and they both decided to use that fortune to build two parallel mosques in the same city.
The thing is that mosques in the early islamic periods were more like community centers than purely religious institutions. So it wasn’t uncommon for mosques to have a learning center as a part of the complex. Keep in mind, these learning centers were islamic schools that taught islam. They weren’t centers for researching and preserving knowledge like modern universities.
Over time, these mosques were repurposed to the needs of their time. Some were turned into purely religious institutions, some were demolished, some were turned into political seats of power, some remained community centers, and some evolved into purely islamic madrasas. Al Qarawiyyin was one of the latter. So this post is nothing more than blatant misinformation.
Tl;dr: This story is fake, this person isn’t real, the historical source is unreliable, and the institution is not an actual university but a mosque that later became an islamic madrasa.
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al-Qarawiyyin was started as a mosque-madrasa complex.
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Science and spirituality were intricately entwined during this era. As an example, Dharmic concepts of sunya led to the conceptualization of zero and its use in mathematical operations which is foundational to many subsequent scientific advancements and necessary to our communication through this platform.
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Part of what sets al-Qarawiyyin apart is that it offered degrees or certificates of scholarly achievement before other institutions.
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This is why UNESCO’s World Heritage description of the Fez Medina explicitly calls al‑Qarawiyyin “the oldest university in the world,” and Guinness lists it as the “oldest existing, continually operating higher‑learning institution”.
Nah I think OP is right. Googling around the story seems mostly made up for bragging points. It also started as religious school not sciences 100% and probably did more harm than good for women’s rights considering Morocco is at the very fucking bottom (137th).
Interesting that googling would take precedence over UNESCO or Guinness in a science community of all places. Guinness particularly is known to have rigorous quality standards.
I’m going to trust actual organizations with institutional standards over a Google search. That’s just me though. Other readers can draw their own conclusions.
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Ahhhh yes…the Wikipedia quoting discussion, and let’s slip a bit of bigotry here , and nationalisme over here and you have thriving comment section, but again nothing new here
Yup, never let a pesky thing like the truth get in the way of a good story, especially when you have a vested ideological interest in it.
Really what this points out to me is there’s no point in caring when there are squabbles about the oldest [thing all people do]. I guess it helps teach people that the education they received growing up was inherently biased towards their local culture, and that’s OK as long as you recognize it.
It’s just white washing history.
There has been a major propaganda campaing to claim thay Islam centers were there to bring light to people through education when, no fucking shit sherlock - everything else was punishable by death by the cut weeny cult.
You know that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa hides the fact the town founder is a bad person because it’d make the town sad?
That is me trying to hold back that, upon research (reading the Wikipedia page), I found out that Fatima al-Fihriya is probably not a real person :(
I’ve come to accept that reality is far less important to our daily lives than narratives.
I mean, it’s a real depressing understanding of the world, but after you embrace it, you learn to work around it and it can even be a huge asset or tool for getting results and interacting with others.
For me personally, I want to learn the disappointing truth about everything, but for the vast majority of people, they will live their whole lives without ever needing or wanting to learn who actually said or did what in history. It’s fine. We can keep building stories to influence people to do better things. There is no cosmic arbiter of truth who is going to judge people for spreading a story that leads to better outcomes.
Hey cool a soulist
👆 This is how we get Trump and reactionaries, it’s this idiotic take right here.
I thought the antirealists were anarchists
Its not healthy to bury yourself in a false reality.
Thats some crazy ass shit.
I care more about outcomes nowadays far more than if everyone is on the same page, that’s never going to happen.
This is a crazy take. Misinformation is not all of the sudden good when it has a positive outcome.
It’s a pretty dumb trolly problem if you rather truth that hurts people than a fairy tale that actually helps people.
What’s crazy is holding onto the ideal that you can get everyone on the same page, interpreting the same things the same way. Our entire civilization is build on a palace of lies we will never have truth for, so I find I don’t feel bothered if people take inspiration from someone who may or may not have existed.
Yeah but why not just find someone who actually existed to be inspired by instead of a lie?
“We don’t know so we might as well not bother learning” is also an incredibly wild take.
Difficult to verify does not mean untrue.
Sometimes legends are important.
Lies that white wash one of the most horrendous religions in the world are indeed important - just not the way you imply.
I don’t agree here. Truth is important. The fact that women haven’t been visible in science is important. We need to explain why they weren’t visible. Creating historical figures is comforting but if their existence is not reliably documented, we should keep explaining why such figures couldn’t emerge, and why their absence is significant.
Yes to shitposts, no to fabrications (this lady looks like one - but I suppose it was in good faith)
What if the truth can’t be known as Ibn Abi Zar only wrote on this 500 years later and archaeological evidence is not definitive but the story has inspired countless young women in the Islamic world to pursue higher learning?
If an unverifiable story accomplishes the outcome of improving the visibility of women in science and higher education in general, how should we judge that? Would only 100% verifiable truth still take all precedence?
Finally, we have to ask why did this story (if it really is just a story) capture so many imaginations? What cultural current at the time made this gain popularity? Was there a thirst for women to be seen in this light that he was looking to quench?
The humanities may be considered a soft science but it’s just as important as science in my view.
Or, if she did exist but almost nobody heard about her in the 500 years after her death, why would that have happened?
(Not taking a position on her existence, but thinking about Hatshepsut and many women whose accomplishments were ignored, hidden, or credited to men)
Is it possible they did hear and it was not written down?
Or it was written down and someone had reason to destroy the evidence?
You’ve mentioned patriarchal orthodoxy. Could it be that there were powerful individuals that did not like the idea of a woman being credited with this accomplishment?
I think that both are important and can be used together as a tool. Idealism grounded in materialism. The legend itself is a tool for further discussions and inspiration. There’s a lot of power in simple ideas.
OK, I get your point - but I think then that it should be clearer if we’re talking about a historical figure or a legend. In this particular case, it’s a bit fuzzy unfortunately. Ancient historians and all that.
Science is a conversation, just like the Humanities. :) Being wrong is okay, it’s just a chance for further discussions. That’s why I encourage a bit of freeform experimenting in this space.
The oldest continuously operating university is in Bologna. The one that the post is about was actually a mosque and did not become a university until less than a century ago.
Al-Qarawiyyin is recognized by UNESCO and Guinness as the world’s oldest continually running institution of higher learning.
We can apply a purity test here (ie. what qualifies as a university) but… why except for pedantry? No matter how you frame it, it doesn’t take away from the scale or impact of the institution itself.
If you want to go that way, a lot of places could qualify as oldest university, some christian monasteries way older than al-qarawiyyin are still inactivities and the main focus of monasteries is to learn and apply “god” teachings…
I wonder why UNESCO and Guinness do not recognize those Christian monasteries then. Perhaps they did not confer degrees or certificates of scholarly competence (ijazahs) the way that al-Qarawiyyin did.
the main reason might just be whether the institution themselves claim they are educational
My nephews gets stars stickers when he successfully learn something, does it qualify as degrees and its school qualify for university?
UNESCO can say whatever they want, it never have been a university in the sense that 90% of the population would not identify it as a university… An ersatz of university? Yeah sure if it make you feel better…
We can apply a purity test here (ie. what qualifies as a university) but… why except for pedantry?
Well, because it’s only true for a veeeeeery narrow definition of “university”. If you include other schools, there are British ones that predate it by three centuries. If you don’t require current operation in the same building, or allow name changes, there are ancient Greek ones that predate it by more than a millenium.
I appreciate your examples but there must be more to the story since, as another example, it is a Buddhist monastery in India that is often regarded are the world’s oldest residential university. Perhaps dormitory style living was not part of the ancient European model. I also wonder why Western founded institutions like UNESCO and Guinness would give this designation to al-Qarawiyyin when they would likely be more familiar with the examples (albeit nonspecific) you’ve listed.
It was common for religious institutions to also be places of higher learning during this era.
The Nalanda Mahavihara (Buddhist grand monastery) is regarded as world’s oldest residential university. It is in present day India, though not operating today. Scholars such as Xuanzang (known as Mokṣadeva in Sanskrit) travelled from China (in his case Luoyang) to Nalanda for his studies and returned with thousands of sutras which were then translated. It was knowledge transfer through such universities during the Tang dynasty that brought the number system we use today (originally described in the Bakhshali manuscripts and further refined by Aryabhata and Bhramagupta) to China.
A lot of higheducation place were also a religious place. For a lot of time education was’t just seen as positive science also education of soul.
Are you saying the post is baloney ? 😁
Honestly feminists need to learn how to turn off the comment section, every time they post A WOMAN ACTUALLY DID X FIRST, the comment section is there to ruin the delusion
to ruin the delusion
So you want to be deluded?
Good advice. Feminist Hivemind Ancillary 6969 here, and yeah, all we do is post junk history and try to be deluded.
Most of us don’t give a shit who did what first and what was in their pants, I just want free tampons and less rape.
Take solace (not really) in knowing that a woman didn’t do X first, but only because of rampant misogyny (half of the time I suppose)
Plato found it
It was more of a mosque until very recently, so not really.
That depends on the the view point. It is true that it was founded as a mosque, and became a teaching centre later. Since universities are considered a European invention by some, it is argued that it was a madrassa op until the 1960’s. However, madrassa is basically Arabic for place of study, which this mosque was since the eleventh century or earlier. It was in any case a place of study before the foundation of the university of Bologna.
This Wikipedia page agrees with this comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_universities_in_continuous_operation. It lists University of Bologna as the oldest one in continuous operation from 1180–1190.
I mean…. It does and it doesn’t. Yes, al-Qarawiyyin was founded as a mosque. Yes, it became a “university” within the last 100 years. But there was a looong span of time between where it was an institution of higher learning not formally classified as a “university”
Paragraph 4 of the article you linked specifically notes that such institutions with mixed provenance were omitted from the list.
Ancient higher-learning institutions, such as those of … the Islamic world, are not included in this list owing to their cultural, historical, structural and legal differences from the medieval European university… These include the University of al-Qarawiyyin… founded as mosques in 859… These developed associated madrasas… by 1129 for al-Qarawiyyin…
Basically it is the oldest educational institution that is currently a university, as opposed to the institution having operated under the university model for the longest time.
Al-Qarawiyyin is recognized by UNESCO and Guinness as the world’s oldest continually running institution of higher learning.
That’s where the top boffins of the time invented spaghetti with tomato sauce, too!
Not long after hops became really popular as a beer ingredients. Coincidence?
She looks very fresh for a millenarian.
Damn millenials. Founding universities and doing other woke shit.
But how is that possible since Islam is meant to be inherently misogynistic, and each Quran comes with women oppression emitters?
Are you telling me that modern people are misinterpreting scripture in order to screw over women? I’m shocked, the king of Saudi Arabia would never behave like that.
No, this story is simply not true.
You say “misinterpreting scripture” as if scripture has ever been more than some nonsense somebody cooked up to arbitrarily subjugate people.
Ow the edge
