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From the World Heritage Site citation for the Medina of Fez (see World Heritage Site official website): "Founded in the 9th century and home to the oldest university in the world, Fez reached its height in the 13th–14th centuries under the Marinids, when it replaced Marrakesh as the capital of the kingdom. The urban fabric and the principal monuments in the medina – madrasas, fondouks, palaces, residences, mosques and fountains - date from this period. Although the political capital of Morocco was transferred to Rabat in 1912, Fez has retained its status as the country's cultural and spiritual centre."
Looking at this page and the 'list of oldest universities' page and their associated talk pages, I really get the feeling someone is holding out desparately against an obvious and almost universally agreed conclusion. Time to go with the majority view, me thinks.
Why is this university not in the List of oldest universities in continuous operation mentioned in the article? SDC 09:36, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the undocumentd claim that Gerbert, later " Pope Sylvester II, who is credited with introducing the use of Arabic numerals and the concept of zero to Europe, is said to have studied at the university."
Bubnov dismisses the story that Gerbert travelled to Cordoba (to say nothing of further travels to Seville and Morocco) as a fable. Nicolaus Bubnov, Gerberti, postea Silvestri II papae, Opera Mathematica (972-1003), Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1963, reprint of the Berlin, 1899 edition, p. 383, n. 32. -- SteveMcCluskey 00:16, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
for intsance [1] does not mention Fez [2] [3] S711 20:25, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Who is he? The uncle of Mohammed al-Zawawi? Abu'l 'Abbas Ahmad ibn Musa ibn 'Aziz al-Zawawi (d. 884/1479)? Is he such a notable scholar? What is the source? S711 ( talk) 10:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
I do not see any information about Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdullah University in Fez, Morocco. Was wondering why this university is not included in the discussion about Fez. 216.49.238.254 ( talk) 19:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Here are sources calling this place a university:
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (
link)I am restoring university in place of madrassa. That word means "school" and this is more than an ordinary school. nableezy - 22:10, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
So this Al-Karaouine place was considerably more coherent as an institution in 1090 than oxford, and given 9'th century islaic culture as compared, say 13th century Western European culture, it was probably alot more liberal, enquiring and foward thinking in its outlook. No less so, anyway, I'd guess.
So, it seems this islamic univserity took a different trajectory, and does not to teach secular subject matter. Until pretty recently, no one did. so It has a better claim than Oxford or Paris, in my view. Not that anyone having such a claim makes any sense. I await a postmodernist tome on the subject, which will be hilarious. Duracell ( talk) 23:20, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Thus the university, as a form of social organization, was peculiar to medieval Europe. Later, it was exported to all parts of the world, including the Muslim East; and it has remained with us down to the present day. But back in the middle ages, outside of Europe, there was nothing anything quite like it anywhere. [1]
'Broad parallels may be drawn between the medieval European university, the Islamic madrasa, and the academy in Sung (960.1279) China. In all three settings, students and teachers lived in a community joined by the common pursuit of learning and regulated by standards of behaviour based on particular cultural and social norms and rooted in differing ideologies(Christianity, Islam, Confucianism), The transmission and interpretation of Confucian textual tradition was the educational mission of the academy ('shu-yuan), corresponding to the Qur'anic legal tradition in the madrasa and Christian theology in the medieval European university. All made use of pedagogical techniques that combined memorization and recitation of texts along with disputation. Despite obvious ideological, cultural, and even institutional differences, a remarkable degree of consistency can be seen in the ordering of academic life in these schools.' (Linda A. Walton, Academies and society in Southern Sung China, University of Hawai'i Press, 1999pp.3-4)
I have a need to link to a page on the al-Karaouine mosque (that is, as distinct from the school, albeit encompassing it). But there is no separate page on the mosque, and the bottom half of this page contains much information about it. My temptation is to separate the information about the mosque into a new page. But that would decimate this article, since the school is so tied up with it, so I am tempted to just leave it alone and link here. On the other hand, the title makes that inadequate. After all, the title "university of al-Karaouine" is a very modern one, and refers only to the school part, not the institution as a whole. I am wondering if it would be more efficient to simply change the article title to "al-Karaouine", the institution, historical and present, with a section on the school, and another on the mosque? Opinions? Walrasiad ( talk) 16:27, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm dying to know what makes O'Neil's Historical Facts: Middle Ages and Swartley's Encountering the World of Islam reliable sources. Nev1 ( talk) 00:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
Sigh...do we really have to fight about this? Time magazine isn't a scholarly historical source, especially when it is stating something that can be easily shown wrong.
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Gun Powder Ma, your long-standing attempt at denigrating any source that goes against your view that a Muslim institution cannot be called a university is not based on any Wikipedia policy. There are several sources that say that this university was established in 859, among them EB which says The Qarawīyīn Mosque is the centre of a university that was founded in ad 859. That they do not convince you of that fact is immaterial, what matters is that reliable, verifiable sources give that as the founding year of the university. I get that you want to claim that the university is a Christian concept and that Muslims had no such thing, but the sources disagree with you, and here that is what counts. nableezy - 14:28, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
There is now as then not a single source cited which does the following:
Madrasahs and universities are separate institutions. This is WP consensus, evidenced by the fact that both have separate articles. Calling a madrasah a university just because both have in common being centres of higher education is just as wrong as calling a mosque a church just because both have in common being places of worship. All you have done is taking some sources which just use the word "university" as a loose generic term, but none really argues for Muslim madrasahs being Christian universities (unsurprisingly so, because this would be like arguing that mosques are churches). For a start, please quote from the Guiness Book of Records verbatim and explain why we should treat it here as a reliable and relevant source. Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 12:55, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
Is outlasting the opposition the goal here? Is there a reason why you continue to push this POV in against the sources? I am, once again, reverting your changes. A large number of sources say that this place was founded as a university. The sources continue to trump your personal views on this topic. nableezy - 20:49, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
The is unreal. An entire section that has nearly nothing to do with this article is repeatedly added without anything resembling a consensus. A balanced sentence that says that X considers it the first university and Y does not is removed. A source that says that this was founded as a university in 859 is distorted by now using it say no it was only a "madrasa" (a word that you people do not seem to understand). The claim the university was founded in 1947 is completely, unapologetically, bullshit. Athenean, please explain why you are inserting bullshit into an encyclopedia article. nableezy - 15:51, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
This is the historically and conceptually correct and accepted scholarly standard view: The madrasa was the institution of higher learning of the medieval Muslim world. The university was the institution of higher learning of the medieval Christian world. Both were the highest institutions of education in their respective cultural and religious realms, but they were distinct in terms of origin, conception, organization and subjects; the madrasa was not the university just as the university was not the madrasa. It was only in recent times, in the course of modernization, that the Muslim world, as everywhere else, adopted the university from the Western world as its highest centre of learning (with the madrasa relegated to purely theological and religious-judicial matters). But the fact that today many madrasas have become universities does not justify calling them university at the time of their founding or, indeed, the longest time of their existence.
Let us cite some leading international scholars of the history of the university on the uniqueness of the medieval Christian university:
Walter Ruegg in his editorial outline on the history of the university again. Note this is from the multi-volume publication of the European University Association with contributions by most international experts. In other words, all these experts agree to this interpretation because it is the editorial line of the book they have contributed to:
The university is a European institution; indeed, it is the European institution par excellence. There are various reasons for this assertion. As a community of teachers and taught, accorded certain rights, such as administrative autonomy and the determination and realization of curricula (courses of study) and of the objectives of research as well as the award of publicly recognized degrees, it is a creation of medieval Europe, which was the Europe of papal Christianity...
No other European institution has spread over the entire world in the way in which the traditional form of the European university has done. The degrees awarded by European universities – the bachelor's degree, the licentiate, the master's degree, and the doctorate – have been adopted in the most diverse societies throughout the world. The four medieval faculties of artes – variously called philosophy, letters, arts, arts and sciences, and humanities –, law, medicine, and theology have survived and have been supplemented by numerous disciplines, particularly the social sciences and technological studies, but they remain none the less at the heart of universities throughout the world.
Even the name of the universitas, which in the Middle Ages was applied to corporate bodies of the most diverse sorts and was accordingly applied to the corporate organization of teachers and students, has in the course of centuries been given a more particular focus: the university, as a universitas litterarum, has since the eighteenth century been the intellectual institution which cultivates and transmits the entire corpus of methodically studied intellectual disciplines. (Rüegg, Walter: "Foreword. The University as a European Institution", in: Ridder-Symoens, Hilde de (ed.): A History of the University in Europe. Vol. I: Universities in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-36105-2, pp. XIX–XX)
And now Jacques Verger, one of the contributors and internationally leading experts, in his introduction:
No one today would dispute the fact that universities, in the sense in which the term is now generally understood, were a creation of the Middle Ages, appearing for the first time between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is no doubt true that other civilizations, prior to, or wholly alien to, the medieval West, such as the Roman Empire, Byzantium, Islam, or China, were familiar with forms of higher education which a number of historians, for the sake of convenience, have sometimes describes as universities.Yet a closer look makes it plain that the institutional reality was altogether different and, no matter what has been said on the subject, there is no real link such as would justify us in associating them with medieval universities in the West. Until there is definite proof to the contrary, these latter must be regarded as the sole source of the model which gradually spread through the whole of Europe and then to the whole world. We are therefore concerned with what is indisputably an original institution, which can only be defined in terms of a historical analysis of its emrgence and its mode of operation in concrete circumstances. (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, ISBN 978-0-521-54113-8, pp. 35–76 (35))
George Makdisi, a third internationally renowned scholar concludes his study of the differences between the university and the madrasa with a stress on the uniqueness of the Christian university:
In studying an institution which is foreign and remote in point of time, as is the case of the medieval madrasa, one runs the double risk of attributing to it characteristics borrowed from one's own institutions and one's own times. Thus gratuitous transfers may be made from one culture to the other, and the time factor may be ignored or dismissed as being without significance. One cannot therefore be too careful in attempting a comparative study of these two institutions: the madrasa and the university. But in spite of the pitfalls inherent in such a study, albeit sketchy, the results which may be obtained are well worth the risks involved. In any case, one cannot avoid making comparisons when certain unwarranted statements have already been made and seem to be currently accepted without question. The most unwarranted of these statements is the one which makes of the "madrasa" a "university". (Makdisi, George: "Madrasa and University in the Middle Ages", Studia Islamica, No. 32 (1970), pp. 255–264 (255f.))
Thus the university, as a form of social organization, was peculiar to medieval Europe. Later, it was exported to all parts of the world, including the Muslim East; and it has remained with us down to the present day. But back in the Middle Ages, outside of Europe, there was nothing anything quite like it anywhere. (Makdisi, George: "Madrasa and University in the Middle Ages", Studia Islamica, No. 32 (1970), pp. 255–264 (264))
And finally, a fourth view from a monograph on the history of the university:
In many respects, if there is any institution that Europe can most justifiably claim as one of its inventions, it is the university. As proof thereof and without wishing here to recount the whole history of the birth of universities, it will suffice to describe briefly how the invention of universities took the form of a polycentric process of specifically European origin. (Sanz, Nuria; Bergan, Sjur (eds.): The Heritage of European Universities, Council of Europe, 2002, ISBN 978-92-871-4960-2, p. 119)
All of these are top notch sources by leading international scholars working on the history of the university. Nableezy's 'sources', by contrast, are largely a googled potpourri of misinterpreted, miscited and miscontrued phrases by random non-expert authors taken out of context (or, rather, without the necessary context). The bottom line is: Al-Karaouine cannot have been the first university, because it was no university at all; it was founded and run as a madrasa. Universities only existed in the West for a long time in history. Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 12:00, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
I am not sure you are taking away what should be taken from these sources. (That the title of the collection is called History of the University in Europe, suggests a more limited qualifer than you are allowing.) For instance, you seem to completely ignore the subsequent paragraph in Ruegg:
It seems more plausible to derive the organizational pattern of the Medieval university from the Islamic schools of learning (the importance of the latter for scholarly activity in philosophy, natural science and medicine is evident in chapters 10 and 11.) British Islamic scholars give an affirmative answer to the question: "Did the Arabs invent the university". They maintain that Islamic institutions of learning were the source of the idea of organizing foreign students into nations and that they were also the source of the ideas of universal validity of the qualification for teaching conferred by the venia docendia, of the academic robe, and the title of the baccalarius. Of course, the invocation of such affinities often confuses propter hoc with the post hoc; it does not does not demonstrate whether and how the later forms emerged from the earlier ones. The term baccalarius could not be an Islamic importation from the twelfth century because it was already in use in the ninth century as the Latin designation of a preparatory or auxiliary status in a variety of social careers. The American Islamicist Makdisi, who is to be taken more seriously, has discovered eighteen substantial affinities between the Islamic and occidental patterns of the organization of learning and their transimissiomn through institutional arrangements more or less like universities. He has concluded however that "the university is a twelfth century product of the Christian West of the twelfth century, not only in its organization, but also in the privileges and protection it received from the Pope and King." But the situation is different with regard to the colleges, which he does derive from the Islamic model. (Ruegg, p.8)
which should have alerted you to the fact that it is not as cut-and-dried as you seem to want to make it.
Similarly, it seems to me puzzling that you could read Verger, and then come up with the whopper that "Not every medieval university was a studium generale, only the largest and most prestigious were." (as you did here). That entire article was about Studia generale! Forgive me if I doubt you actually read it beyond that one paragraph.
So I am curious as to where you are obtaining your ideas. There doesn't seem to me to be anything more in the statements you have cited than to try to say that Studia generale did not derive from Islamic models - and even then, not particularly strong statements, just about some minor organizational features - the central board, the chancellor, the papal charter - that are obviously not derived. But it doesn't mean that Islamic models cannot be characterized as universities. After all, on the basis of the features they do share - organization of colleges, degrees, robes, higher curricula, universal catchment, and most importantly of all, the jus ubique docendi, which many scholars (including myself) consider the distinctive feature of Studia generale (relative to other studia).
Now, I am not going to come out and say that necessarily makes them universities (although if we apply that criteria, then they certainly are). But at the very least, it implies flexibility, a flexibility which I and many others are willing to grant and have proposed workable compromises before. But you seem to be quite more absolutist, without being clear to me on what basis you are grounding your views which such adamant confidence. Certainly does not seem to be based on Ruegg nor Verger - at least not a careful reading of them. So I am still wondering what sources you have used? Walrasiad ( talk) 13:39, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
@GunPowderMa: You can read it, but do you understand it? Studium generale is highly related - it is the definition of the Medieval university in Europe. One and the same thing. That you evinced confusion on that point raised a red flag, suggesting that perhaps you are not as familiar with the history of universities as you seem to claim, and raising doubt that you actually read the articles you are citing.
The matter is quite subtle and ambiguous, but your claims show little restraint or caution. Ruegg, like any other scholar, has an opinion - an opinion far more careful than the claims you ascribe to him. He has merely suggested that the Studium generale in Europe was not an imported institution, although with codicils allowing that certain parts may have been. There are other scholars with other opinions, which he recognizes and you ignore. It implies nothing about how al-Qaraouine or Islamic institutions ought to be characterized, which you seem to trying to run away with. Not to say your opinion is necessarily incorrect - a case can be made - but it is not a "settled" issue, not made by the cited sources, and definitely not as absolute as you are trying to present it.
It seems to me your understanding of this matter rests primarily on opinions you have formed in advance, not actually derived from sources, but plucking loose phrases out of context from articles you haven't read. Walrasiad ( talk) 16:28, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
Note that it does not, as GPM has claimed, say that the university was transformed into a modern institution, pulled from the depths of Arab ignorance into modernity thanks to the wise European tradition of higher learning only in 1947. nableezy - 16:25, 26 July 2012 (UTC)Higher education has always been an integral part of Morocco, going back to the ninth century when the Karaouine Mosque was established. The mosque school, known today as Al Qayrawaniyan University, became part of the state university system in 1947.
The Muslim community maintained, favoured, and organized the institutions for higher education that became the new centres for the diffusion of Islamic knowledge. These centres were places where teachers and students of that time would meet and also where all intellectuals would gather and take part in extremely important scientific debates. It is not a coincidence that around the 9th centurey the first university in the world, the Qarawiyyin University in Fez, was established in the Muslim world followed by az-Zaytuna in Tunis and Al-Azhar in Cairo. The university model, that in the West was widespread starting only from the 12th century, had an extraordinary fortune and was spread throughout the Muslim world at least until the colonial period.
Islamic scientists and scholars developed the first universities as centers for scholarship in North Africa and Egypt; the universities of Al-Azhar in Cairo, founded in AD 988, and of Al-Karaouine in Fez (Morocco), founded in 859, are the world's oldest ongoing universities
Also, for the claim that a "madrasa" cannot be a "university" you have the following citation: Encyclopedia of Islam has an entry on "madrasa" but notably lacks one for a Muslim "university". Is that supposed to be a joke? A Wikipedia editor finds it "notable" that an encyclopedia has an entry on one term but not the other? How is that a source? nableezy - 16:54, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
And there still is not a single source for the claim that the university was established in 1947. Whereas there are several sources that say that it was established in 859. nableezy - 17:18, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
And now your pal has completely removed the fact that what he is putting into an encyclopedia article is an unashamed distortion of what Shillington wrote. Marvelous. nableezy - 17:38, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
[[Da Capo Press] seems reliable, as another editor already pointed out, so you should take it to the WP:RS board if you disagree. Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 17:55, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Did the following modifications:
A user asserts that dictionaries don't define the medieval university as European institutions only. This is simply not true, in fact this is the standard definition given in dictionaries and encyclopedias, accurately reflecting the main view of scholarship.
The university came into being in the 12th century. On a general level, it was certainly a manifestation of the great transformations that characterised European society during the centuries following the year 1000. The debate begins when we seek to fix its origin more precisely: was the university an evolution of the 11th- and 12th-c. cathedral schools or, on the contrary, of lay municipal schools (of grammar, notariate, law)? Did it have antecedents in the higher legal schools of late Roman Antiquity? Does it show analogies with the teaching institutions of the Islamic world? In reality, the university was an original creation of the central centuries of the Middle Ages, both from the point of view of its organisation and from the cultural point of view, notwithstanding what it owed, in the latter aspect, to the cathedral schools (especially for philosophy and theology). ( Vauchez, André; Dobson, Richard Barrie; Lapidge, Michael (eds.): Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Vol. 1, Routledge, 2000, ISBN 978-1-57958-282-1, p. 1484 (entry "university"))
The modern university evolved from the medieval schools known as studia generalia; they were generally recognized places of study open to students from all parts of Europe. The earliest studia arose out of efforts to educate clerks and monks beyond the level of the cathedral and monastic schools...The earliest Western institution that can be called a university was a famous medical school that arose at Salerno, Italy, in the 9th century and drew students from all over Europe. It remained merely a medical school, however. The first true university was founded at Bologna late in the 11th century. It became a widely respected school of canon and civil law. The first university to arise in northern Europe was the University of Paris, founded between 1150 and 1170. ( Encyclopædia Britannica: "University", 2012, retrieved 26 July 2012)
Although the name university is sometimes given to the celebrated schools of Athens and Alexandria, it is generally held that the universities first arose in the Middle Ages. ( Pace, Edward: "Universities", The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 15, Robert Appleton Company, New York, 1912, retrieved 27 July 2012)
The first universities appeared around 1200. They traced their own origins to ancient roots. Paris, for instance, in the 13th cent. portrayed itself as founded by Charlemagne and hence as the final station of a translatio studii founded in Athens and transmitted via Rome...In reality, the mediaeval universities as institutions enjoyed no form of continuity with the public academies of Late Antiquity...The early universities as institutions were not clearly legally defined, and had no consistent, comprehensive bureaucratic structure. They emerged from collective confraternities at a place of study. Teachers and students would join together in corporate groups (universitas magistrorum et scholarium, as at Paris before 1200, and at Oxford and Montpellier before 1220) or, indeed, students alone (universitas scholarium, as at Bologna before 1200). Sometimes universities resulted from secessions from these first foundations (as at Cambridge from the University of Oxford before 1220, at Padua from the University of Bologna in 1222). Retrospectively at least, however, the foundation and its legal privileges (protection, autonomy, financial basis, universal licence to teach – licentia ubique docendi) had to be confirmed by a universal power, either by the pope or, more rarely, the emperor. Only then did an institution attain the true status of a studium generale. ( Brill's New Pauly: "University", Brill, 2012)
It is a good idea to give some definitions of the madrasas. This helps to understand that it was (still is) an institution distinct from the university and which is to be treated and analysed on its own terms by historians.
Madrasa, in modern usage, the name of an institution of learning where the Islamic sciences are taught, i.e. a college for higher studies, as opposed to an elementary school of traditional type ( kuttab); in mediaeval usage, essentially a college of law in which the other Islamic sciences, including literary and philosophical ones, were ancillary subjects only. (Pedersen, J.; Rahman, Munibur; Hillenbrand, R.: "Madrasa", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, Brill, 2010)
A madrasa is a college of Islamic law. The madrasa was an educational institution in which Islamic law ( fiqh) was taught according to one or more Sunni rites: Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanafi, or Hanbali. It was supported by an endowment or charitable trust ( waqf) that provided for at least one chair for one professor of law, income for other faculty or staff, scholarships for students, and funds for the maintenance of the building. Madrasas contained lodgings for the professor and some of his students. Subjects other than law were frequently taught in madrasas, and even Sufi seances were held in them, but there could be no madrasa without law as technically the major subject. ( Meri, Josef W. (ed.): Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, A–K, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-96691-7, p. 457 (entry "madrasa"))
Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 18:13, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
This article is not university. This article is about the University of al-Karaouine. Pushing into the lead of this article material that has absoluetely nothing to do with this article, such as the 13+kB you just pushed into the lead, violates several core policies, among them WP:NPOV (repeatedly stating as fact, in Wikipedia's voice, a contested POV), and WP:OR (doing such things as saying that although X is the "standard view", all these other people say the wrong thing). Kindly take your pride in Europe to a place where it is relevant. nableezy - 14:28, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
There is middle ground - but the pub takes the prize tonight ;). -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 19:56, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
{{
unreliable source}}
tag to a line that contains no source at all, replacing the {{
cn}}
tag that actually applies. He also removed a {{
failed verification}}
tag for a source that does not contain what is claimed, and inserted a contested POV as though it were unchallenged fact. Thank you, WMC. That was fantastic. And done just because you like it more.
nableezy -
23:19, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Athenean, where exactly is the source calling Yahya Pallavicini a Muslim activist? Where exactly is the source for your favored position being the "standard view"? BLP violations go well beyond what I have observed to be the generally low quality of your edits, kindly remove it. And if you want to remove a citation request, add a citation. It really is not that difficult of a concept. nableezy - 18:59, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
And asking that people provide sources for their assertions is not "wikilaweyering" (and I thought you were telling others to be civil, funny how that works out). nableezy - 19:07, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Back to the point. Is there or is there not a reliable source describing Yahya Pallavicini as an "activist". Is there a reason why his view should suffer from such well-poisoning? Should any European cited have their view prepended by "according to the white European ..."? You cannot add such material about a living person without a reliable source. If you do not remove it I will. An editor has, in good faith, challenged your addition as a BLP violation. Do you plan on removing it, or will this have to go another route?
Regarding the assertion that there is a standard view on the topic, no, you cannot say that given the number and the content of historians of the university provided above, it is pretty clear that this represents a consensus among the scholarly literature. That is a classic case of original research by WP:SYNTH. A reliable source that directly supports the material you placed in the article is required, and requesting that citation is not wikilawyering. Either provide the citation, or remove the phrase. nableezy - 19:41, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
As far as the BLP violation, you can take it to BLP/N if you want to, thats up to you. I am however removing it as a straight-forward BLP violation without any source, and will remind others of WP:BLP#Restoring deleted content. nableezy - 20:13, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
I feel claims if canvassing are unfair - I was also asked to take part by GPM and I had disagreed with GPM before.
I think the standard view point is the only one I'm not sure on. I think on balance that unless it can be explicitly sourced it should be removed. The point is strongly implied from the other text. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 10:41, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
As promised I have provided a compromise proposal which can be viewed here. In the meantime I have reverted back to a previous uncontroversial edit by me.
Thoughts? -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 17:42, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
Here we go. Based on Eraserhead1's changes
from above to which I mostly agree I would like to like make further proposals in order to achieve finally a stable version.
1. I agree to the removal of Fergusson, James: Taliban: The Unknown Enemy, Da Capo Press, 2011,
ISBN
978-0-306-82033-5 as an not completely reliable source per the discussion on the RS noticeboard. I remove "Being the oldest madrasa in the world..." as a statement now unsourced (sources to this effect can be included any time later, of course).
2. I agree to shortening the opening wording to "the view expounded by historians of the university, encyclopedias and dictionaries of the Middle Ages", leaving out "standard view". The large difference in quality to sources backing up the university claim which was also acknowledged by most users on the neutrality board discussion is still obvious enough from the following enumeration.
3. I maintain that the sourced statement "The first universities were rather all located in Western Europe" is integral to the status discussion, because it demonstrates that the first universities emerged there and not in Morocco, the Maghreb or the Islamic world where Al-Karaouine is located. However, I agree to remove the mentioning of the universities of Bologna and Paris as an attempt to compromise.
4. I add another source (Belhachmi 2003) which shows that the university was really only founded in the 20th century. I change the title of this sub section accordingly.
5. Request a page number for Civilization: The West and the Rest. Tagged too EB which does not claim Al-Karaouine to be the oldest university.
6. With several sources calling medieval Al-Karaouine explicitly a madrasa at the time of its founding and two dating its transformation into a university as late as the 20th century, not to mention all the other fine sources which make clear that there were no universities in medieval Islam at all, I consider the section name "Madrasa" clearly better founded per WP:RS than the unnecessarily evasive "early history".
7. There is no question that WP:lead requires us to move the entire discussion from the lead into the main text where it belongs. This has also the advantage of greatly reducing the debate in size by avoiding doubled contents. In the lead ideally, only a single sentence summing up the discussion should remain. I merge the introduction into the status section and leave the lead void of any such summary for the moment. Please let us discuss the wording of the summary here first, proposals are welcome.
8. I propose to group together footnotes wherever possible in order to tighten the footnote apparatus. This, however, should be best only done after agreement on a stable version.
9. Finally, I propose to remove the two article templates as unnecessary once we have agreed on a stable version and I hope we can achieve this in the spirit of cooperation pretty soon. Regards Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 20:58, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
nableezy - 05:14, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
I've added a POV title tag as given it was only clearly a University in the 20th century the current title seems to be pushing a POV. I think this can probably wait until the other issues are fixed so we don't get confused, but in the meantime I have added a tag to the article. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 19:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
OK, I concede the point about there being POV issues in general with the title containing "University of" and I've adjusted the tag on the article accordingly.
With regards to there being too much content on the general debate, do you think this version has too much such content in the lead? -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 17:26, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
Lets start at the top. I presume there is a justification for re-adding the 10,000 transliterations, and to changing the founding date back from just a date? And what about removing a source I added for the size of the mosque? Why exactly was that worthy of reversion. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 22:53, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
Gun, please can you stop reverting my HTML changes, yes I accept that you might not fully understand them, but they make no content changes at all, and they make editing the article easier. Having quotes in references is great, but using normal line breaks just makes it extremely difficult to work out where you are. <p></p> tags do exactly the same thing in terms of rendering on the page, they merely make it easier to work out where you are. Adding extra line breaks after references makes no difference to the page display but it also makes it easier to see edit the article as the text after the end of the reference starts on a new line. I don't understand why you want to make the page harder to edit for future editors. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 17:25, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
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From the World Heritage Site citation for the Medina of Fez (see World Heritage Site official website): "Founded in the 9th century and home to the oldest university in the world, Fez reached its height in the 13th–14th centuries under the Marinids, when it replaced Marrakesh as the capital of the kingdom. The urban fabric and the principal monuments in the medina – madrasas, fondouks, palaces, residences, mosques and fountains - date from this period. Although the political capital of Morocco was transferred to Rabat in 1912, Fez has retained its status as the country's cultural and spiritual centre."
Looking at this page and the 'list of oldest universities' page and their associated talk pages, I really get the feeling someone is holding out desparately against an obvious and almost universally agreed conclusion. Time to go with the majority view, me thinks.
Why is this university not in the List of oldest universities in continuous operation mentioned in the article? SDC 09:36, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the undocumentd claim that Gerbert, later " Pope Sylvester II, who is credited with introducing the use of Arabic numerals and the concept of zero to Europe, is said to have studied at the university."
Bubnov dismisses the story that Gerbert travelled to Cordoba (to say nothing of further travels to Seville and Morocco) as a fable. Nicolaus Bubnov, Gerberti, postea Silvestri II papae, Opera Mathematica (972-1003), Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1963, reprint of the Berlin, 1899 edition, p. 383, n. 32. -- SteveMcCluskey 00:16, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
for intsance [1] does not mention Fez [2] [3] S711 20:25, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Who is he? The uncle of Mohammed al-Zawawi? Abu'l 'Abbas Ahmad ibn Musa ibn 'Aziz al-Zawawi (d. 884/1479)? Is he such a notable scholar? What is the source? S711 ( talk) 10:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
I do not see any information about Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdullah University in Fez, Morocco. Was wondering why this university is not included in the discussion about Fez. 216.49.238.254 ( talk) 19:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Here are sources calling this place a university:
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (
link)I am restoring university in place of madrassa. That word means "school" and this is more than an ordinary school. nableezy - 22:10, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
So this Al-Karaouine place was considerably more coherent as an institution in 1090 than oxford, and given 9'th century islaic culture as compared, say 13th century Western European culture, it was probably alot more liberal, enquiring and foward thinking in its outlook. No less so, anyway, I'd guess.
So, it seems this islamic univserity took a different trajectory, and does not to teach secular subject matter. Until pretty recently, no one did. so It has a better claim than Oxford or Paris, in my view. Not that anyone having such a claim makes any sense. I await a postmodernist tome on the subject, which will be hilarious. Duracell ( talk) 23:20, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Thus the university, as a form of social organization, was peculiar to medieval Europe. Later, it was exported to all parts of the world, including the Muslim East; and it has remained with us down to the present day. But back in the middle ages, outside of Europe, there was nothing anything quite like it anywhere. [1]
'Broad parallels may be drawn between the medieval European university, the Islamic madrasa, and the academy in Sung (960.1279) China. In all three settings, students and teachers lived in a community joined by the common pursuit of learning and regulated by standards of behaviour based on particular cultural and social norms and rooted in differing ideologies(Christianity, Islam, Confucianism), The transmission and interpretation of Confucian textual tradition was the educational mission of the academy ('shu-yuan), corresponding to the Qur'anic legal tradition in the madrasa and Christian theology in the medieval European university. All made use of pedagogical techniques that combined memorization and recitation of texts along with disputation. Despite obvious ideological, cultural, and even institutional differences, a remarkable degree of consistency can be seen in the ordering of academic life in these schools.' (Linda A. Walton, Academies and society in Southern Sung China, University of Hawai'i Press, 1999pp.3-4)
I have a need to link to a page on the al-Karaouine mosque (that is, as distinct from the school, albeit encompassing it). But there is no separate page on the mosque, and the bottom half of this page contains much information about it. My temptation is to separate the information about the mosque into a new page. But that would decimate this article, since the school is so tied up with it, so I am tempted to just leave it alone and link here. On the other hand, the title makes that inadequate. After all, the title "university of al-Karaouine" is a very modern one, and refers only to the school part, not the institution as a whole. I am wondering if it would be more efficient to simply change the article title to "al-Karaouine", the institution, historical and present, with a section on the school, and another on the mosque? Opinions? Walrasiad ( talk) 16:27, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm dying to know what makes O'Neil's Historical Facts: Middle Ages and Swartley's Encountering the World of Islam reliable sources. Nev1 ( talk) 00:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
Sigh...do we really have to fight about this? Time magazine isn't a scholarly historical source, especially when it is stating something that can be easily shown wrong.
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Gun Powder Ma, your long-standing attempt at denigrating any source that goes against your view that a Muslim institution cannot be called a university is not based on any Wikipedia policy. There are several sources that say that this university was established in 859, among them EB which says The Qarawīyīn Mosque is the centre of a university that was founded in ad 859. That they do not convince you of that fact is immaterial, what matters is that reliable, verifiable sources give that as the founding year of the university. I get that you want to claim that the university is a Christian concept and that Muslims had no such thing, but the sources disagree with you, and here that is what counts. nableezy - 14:28, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
There is now as then not a single source cited which does the following:
Madrasahs and universities are separate institutions. This is WP consensus, evidenced by the fact that both have separate articles. Calling a madrasah a university just because both have in common being centres of higher education is just as wrong as calling a mosque a church just because both have in common being places of worship. All you have done is taking some sources which just use the word "university" as a loose generic term, but none really argues for Muslim madrasahs being Christian universities (unsurprisingly so, because this would be like arguing that mosques are churches). For a start, please quote from the Guiness Book of Records verbatim and explain why we should treat it here as a reliable and relevant source. Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 12:55, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
Is outlasting the opposition the goal here? Is there a reason why you continue to push this POV in against the sources? I am, once again, reverting your changes. A large number of sources say that this place was founded as a university. The sources continue to trump your personal views on this topic. nableezy - 20:49, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
The is unreal. An entire section that has nearly nothing to do with this article is repeatedly added without anything resembling a consensus. A balanced sentence that says that X considers it the first university and Y does not is removed. A source that says that this was founded as a university in 859 is distorted by now using it say no it was only a "madrasa" (a word that you people do not seem to understand). The claim the university was founded in 1947 is completely, unapologetically, bullshit. Athenean, please explain why you are inserting bullshit into an encyclopedia article. nableezy - 15:51, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
This is the historically and conceptually correct and accepted scholarly standard view: The madrasa was the institution of higher learning of the medieval Muslim world. The university was the institution of higher learning of the medieval Christian world. Both were the highest institutions of education in their respective cultural and religious realms, but they were distinct in terms of origin, conception, organization and subjects; the madrasa was not the university just as the university was not the madrasa. It was only in recent times, in the course of modernization, that the Muslim world, as everywhere else, adopted the university from the Western world as its highest centre of learning (with the madrasa relegated to purely theological and religious-judicial matters). But the fact that today many madrasas have become universities does not justify calling them university at the time of their founding or, indeed, the longest time of their existence.
Let us cite some leading international scholars of the history of the university on the uniqueness of the medieval Christian university:
Walter Ruegg in his editorial outline on the history of the university again. Note this is from the multi-volume publication of the European University Association with contributions by most international experts. In other words, all these experts agree to this interpretation because it is the editorial line of the book they have contributed to:
The university is a European institution; indeed, it is the European institution par excellence. There are various reasons for this assertion. As a community of teachers and taught, accorded certain rights, such as administrative autonomy and the determination and realization of curricula (courses of study) and of the objectives of research as well as the award of publicly recognized degrees, it is a creation of medieval Europe, which was the Europe of papal Christianity...
No other European institution has spread over the entire world in the way in which the traditional form of the European university has done. The degrees awarded by European universities – the bachelor's degree, the licentiate, the master's degree, and the doctorate – have been adopted in the most diverse societies throughout the world. The four medieval faculties of artes – variously called philosophy, letters, arts, arts and sciences, and humanities –, law, medicine, and theology have survived and have been supplemented by numerous disciplines, particularly the social sciences and technological studies, but they remain none the less at the heart of universities throughout the world.
Even the name of the universitas, which in the Middle Ages was applied to corporate bodies of the most diverse sorts and was accordingly applied to the corporate organization of teachers and students, has in the course of centuries been given a more particular focus: the university, as a universitas litterarum, has since the eighteenth century been the intellectual institution which cultivates and transmits the entire corpus of methodically studied intellectual disciplines. (Rüegg, Walter: "Foreword. The University as a European Institution", in: Ridder-Symoens, Hilde de (ed.): A History of the University in Europe. Vol. I: Universities in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-36105-2, pp. XIX–XX)
And now Jacques Verger, one of the contributors and internationally leading experts, in his introduction:
No one today would dispute the fact that universities, in the sense in which the term is now generally understood, were a creation of the Middle Ages, appearing for the first time between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is no doubt true that other civilizations, prior to, or wholly alien to, the medieval West, such as the Roman Empire, Byzantium, Islam, or China, were familiar with forms of higher education which a number of historians, for the sake of convenience, have sometimes describes as universities.Yet a closer look makes it plain that the institutional reality was altogether different and, no matter what has been said on the subject, there is no real link such as would justify us in associating them with medieval universities in the West. Until there is definite proof to the contrary, these latter must be regarded as the sole source of the model which gradually spread through the whole of Europe and then to the whole world. We are therefore concerned with what is indisputably an original institution, which can only be defined in terms of a historical analysis of its emrgence and its mode of operation in concrete circumstances. (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, ISBN 978-0-521-54113-8, pp. 35–76 (35))
George Makdisi, a third internationally renowned scholar concludes his study of the differences between the university and the madrasa with a stress on the uniqueness of the Christian university:
In studying an institution which is foreign and remote in point of time, as is the case of the medieval madrasa, one runs the double risk of attributing to it characteristics borrowed from one's own institutions and one's own times. Thus gratuitous transfers may be made from one culture to the other, and the time factor may be ignored or dismissed as being without significance. One cannot therefore be too careful in attempting a comparative study of these two institutions: the madrasa and the university. But in spite of the pitfalls inherent in such a study, albeit sketchy, the results which may be obtained are well worth the risks involved. In any case, one cannot avoid making comparisons when certain unwarranted statements have already been made and seem to be currently accepted without question. The most unwarranted of these statements is the one which makes of the "madrasa" a "university". (Makdisi, George: "Madrasa and University in the Middle Ages", Studia Islamica, No. 32 (1970), pp. 255–264 (255f.))
Thus the university, as a form of social organization, was peculiar to medieval Europe. Later, it was exported to all parts of the world, including the Muslim East; and it has remained with us down to the present day. But back in the Middle Ages, outside of Europe, there was nothing anything quite like it anywhere. (Makdisi, George: "Madrasa and University in the Middle Ages", Studia Islamica, No. 32 (1970), pp. 255–264 (264))
And finally, a fourth view from a monograph on the history of the university:
In many respects, if there is any institution that Europe can most justifiably claim as one of its inventions, it is the university. As proof thereof and without wishing here to recount the whole history of the birth of universities, it will suffice to describe briefly how the invention of universities took the form of a polycentric process of specifically European origin. (Sanz, Nuria; Bergan, Sjur (eds.): The Heritage of European Universities, Council of Europe, 2002, ISBN 978-92-871-4960-2, p. 119)
All of these are top notch sources by leading international scholars working on the history of the university. Nableezy's 'sources', by contrast, are largely a googled potpourri of misinterpreted, miscited and miscontrued phrases by random non-expert authors taken out of context (or, rather, without the necessary context). The bottom line is: Al-Karaouine cannot have been the first university, because it was no university at all; it was founded and run as a madrasa. Universities only existed in the West for a long time in history. Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 12:00, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
I am not sure you are taking away what should be taken from these sources. (That the title of the collection is called History of the University in Europe, suggests a more limited qualifer than you are allowing.) For instance, you seem to completely ignore the subsequent paragraph in Ruegg:
It seems more plausible to derive the organizational pattern of the Medieval university from the Islamic schools of learning (the importance of the latter for scholarly activity in philosophy, natural science and medicine is evident in chapters 10 and 11.) British Islamic scholars give an affirmative answer to the question: "Did the Arabs invent the university". They maintain that Islamic institutions of learning were the source of the idea of organizing foreign students into nations and that they were also the source of the ideas of universal validity of the qualification for teaching conferred by the venia docendia, of the academic robe, and the title of the baccalarius. Of course, the invocation of such affinities often confuses propter hoc with the post hoc; it does not does not demonstrate whether and how the later forms emerged from the earlier ones. The term baccalarius could not be an Islamic importation from the twelfth century because it was already in use in the ninth century as the Latin designation of a preparatory or auxiliary status in a variety of social careers. The American Islamicist Makdisi, who is to be taken more seriously, has discovered eighteen substantial affinities between the Islamic and occidental patterns of the organization of learning and their transimissiomn through institutional arrangements more or less like universities. He has concluded however that "the university is a twelfth century product of the Christian West of the twelfth century, not only in its organization, but also in the privileges and protection it received from the Pope and King." But the situation is different with regard to the colleges, which he does derive from the Islamic model. (Ruegg, p.8)
which should have alerted you to the fact that it is not as cut-and-dried as you seem to want to make it.
Similarly, it seems to me puzzling that you could read Verger, and then come up with the whopper that "Not every medieval university was a studium generale, only the largest and most prestigious were." (as you did here). That entire article was about Studia generale! Forgive me if I doubt you actually read it beyond that one paragraph.
So I am curious as to where you are obtaining your ideas. There doesn't seem to me to be anything more in the statements you have cited than to try to say that Studia generale did not derive from Islamic models - and even then, not particularly strong statements, just about some minor organizational features - the central board, the chancellor, the papal charter - that are obviously not derived. But it doesn't mean that Islamic models cannot be characterized as universities. After all, on the basis of the features they do share - organization of colleges, degrees, robes, higher curricula, universal catchment, and most importantly of all, the jus ubique docendi, which many scholars (including myself) consider the distinctive feature of Studia generale (relative to other studia).
Now, I am not going to come out and say that necessarily makes them universities (although if we apply that criteria, then they certainly are). But at the very least, it implies flexibility, a flexibility which I and many others are willing to grant and have proposed workable compromises before. But you seem to be quite more absolutist, without being clear to me on what basis you are grounding your views which such adamant confidence. Certainly does not seem to be based on Ruegg nor Verger - at least not a careful reading of them. So I am still wondering what sources you have used? Walrasiad ( talk) 13:39, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
@GunPowderMa: You can read it, but do you understand it? Studium generale is highly related - it is the definition of the Medieval university in Europe. One and the same thing. That you evinced confusion on that point raised a red flag, suggesting that perhaps you are not as familiar with the history of universities as you seem to claim, and raising doubt that you actually read the articles you are citing.
The matter is quite subtle and ambiguous, but your claims show little restraint or caution. Ruegg, like any other scholar, has an opinion - an opinion far more careful than the claims you ascribe to him. He has merely suggested that the Studium generale in Europe was not an imported institution, although with codicils allowing that certain parts may have been. There are other scholars with other opinions, which he recognizes and you ignore. It implies nothing about how al-Qaraouine or Islamic institutions ought to be characterized, which you seem to trying to run away with. Not to say your opinion is necessarily incorrect - a case can be made - but it is not a "settled" issue, not made by the cited sources, and definitely not as absolute as you are trying to present it.
It seems to me your understanding of this matter rests primarily on opinions you have formed in advance, not actually derived from sources, but plucking loose phrases out of context from articles you haven't read. Walrasiad ( talk) 16:28, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
Note that it does not, as GPM has claimed, say that the university was transformed into a modern institution, pulled from the depths of Arab ignorance into modernity thanks to the wise European tradition of higher learning only in 1947. nableezy - 16:25, 26 July 2012 (UTC)Higher education has always been an integral part of Morocco, going back to the ninth century when the Karaouine Mosque was established. The mosque school, known today as Al Qayrawaniyan University, became part of the state university system in 1947.
The Muslim community maintained, favoured, and organized the institutions for higher education that became the new centres for the diffusion of Islamic knowledge. These centres were places where teachers and students of that time would meet and also where all intellectuals would gather and take part in extremely important scientific debates. It is not a coincidence that around the 9th centurey the first university in the world, the Qarawiyyin University in Fez, was established in the Muslim world followed by az-Zaytuna in Tunis and Al-Azhar in Cairo. The university model, that in the West was widespread starting only from the 12th century, had an extraordinary fortune and was spread throughout the Muslim world at least until the colonial period.
Islamic scientists and scholars developed the first universities as centers for scholarship in North Africa and Egypt; the universities of Al-Azhar in Cairo, founded in AD 988, and of Al-Karaouine in Fez (Morocco), founded in 859, are the world's oldest ongoing universities
Also, for the claim that a "madrasa" cannot be a "university" you have the following citation: Encyclopedia of Islam has an entry on "madrasa" but notably lacks one for a Muslim "university". Is that supposed to be a joke? A Wikipedia editor finds it "notable" that an encyclopedia has an entry on one term but not the other? How is that a source? nableezy - 16:54, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
And there still is not a single source for the claim that the university was established in 1947. Whereas there are several sources that say that it was established in 859. nableezy - 17:18, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
And now your pal has completely removed the fact that what he is putting into an encyclopedia article is an unashamed distortion of what Shillington wrote. Marvelous. nableezy - 17:38, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
[[Da Capo Press] seems reliable, as another editor already pointed out, so you should take it to the WP:RS board if you disagree. Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 17:55, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Did the following modifications:
A user asserts that dictionaries don't define the medieval university as European institutions only. This is simply not true, in fact this is the standard definition given in dictionaries and encyclopedias, accurately reflecting the main view of scholarship.
The university came into being in the 12th century. On a general level, it was certainly a manifestation of the great transformations that characterised European society during the centuries following the year 1000. The debate begins when we seek to fix its origin more precisely: was the university an evolution of the 11th- and 12th-c. cathedral schools or, on the contrary, of lay municipal schools (of grammar, notariate, law)? Did it have antecedents in the higher legal schools of late Roman Antiquity? Does it show analogies with the teaching institutions of the Islamic world? In reality, the university was an original creation of the central centuries of the Middle Ages, both from the point of view of its organisation and from the cultural point of view, notwithstanding what it owed, in the latter aspect, to the cathedral schools (especially for philosophy and theology). ( Vauchez, André; Dobson, Richard Barrie; Lapidge, Michael (eds.): Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Vol. 1, Routledge, 2000, ISBN 978-1-57958-282-1, p. 1484 (entry "university"))
The modern university evolved from the medieval schools known as studia generalia; they were generally recognized places of study open to students from all parts of Europe. The earliest studia arose out of efforts to educate clerks and monks beyond the level of the cathedral and monastic schools...The earliest Western institution that can be called a university was a famous medical school that arose at Salerno, Italy, in the 9th century and drew students from all over Europe. It remained merely a medical school, however. The first true university was founded at Bologna late in the 11th century. It became a widely respected school of canon and civil law. The first university to arise in northern Europe was the University of Paris, founded between 1150 and 1170. ( Encyclopædia Britannica: "University", 2012, retrieved 26 July 2012)
Although the name university is sometimes given to the celebrated schools of Athens and Alexandria, it is generally held that the universities first arose in the Middle Ages. ( Pace, Edward: "Universities", The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 15, Robert Appleton Company, New York, 1912, retrieved 27 July 2012)
The first universities appeared around 1200. They traced their own origins to ancient roots. Paris, for instance, in the 13th cent. portrayed itself as founded by Charlemagne and hence as the final station of a translatio studii founded in Athens and transmitted via Rome...In reality, the mediaeval universities as institutions enjoyed no form of continuity with the public academies of Late Antiquity...The early universities as institutions were not clearly legally defined, and had no consistent, comprehensive bureaucratic structure. They emerged from collective confraternities at a place of study. Teachers and students would join together in corporate groups (universitas magistrorum et scholarium, as at Paris before 1200, and at Oxford and Montpellier before 1220) or, indeed, students alone (universitas scholarium, as at Bologna before 1200). Sometimes universities resulted from secessions from these first foundations (as at Cambridge from the University of Oxford before 1220, at Padua from the University of Bologna in 1222). Retrospectively at least, however, the foundation and its legal privileges (protection, autonomy, financial basis, universal licence to teach – licentia ubique docendi) had to be confirmed by a universal power, either by the pope or, more rarely, the emperor. Only then did an institution attain the true status of a studium generale. ( Brill's New Pauly: "University", Brill, 2012)
It is a good idea to give some definitions of the madrasas. This helps to understand that it was (still is) an institution distinct from the university and which is to be treated and analysed on its own terms by historians.
Madrasa, in modern usage, the name of an institution of learning where the Islamic sciences are taught, i.e. a college for higher studies, as opposed to an elementary school of traditional type ( kuttab); in mediaeval usage, essentially a college of law in which the other Islamic sciences, including literary and philosophical ones, were ancillary subjects only. (Pedersen, J.; Rahman, Munibur; Hillenbrand, R.: "Madrasa", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, Brill, 2010)
A madrasa is a college of Islamic law. The madrasa was an educational institution in which Islamic law ( fiqh) was taught according to one or more Sunni rites: Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanafi, or Hanbali. It was supported by an endowment or charitable trust ( waqf) that provided for at least one chair for one professor of law, income for other faculty or staff, scholarships for students, and funds for the maintenance of the building. Madrasas contained lodgings for the professor and some of his students. Subjects other than law were frequently taught in madrasas, and even Sufi seances were held in them, but there could be no madrasa without law as technically the major subject. ( Meri, Josef W. (ed.): Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, A–K, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-96691-7, p. 457 (entry "madrasa"))
Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 18:13, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
This article is not university. This article is about the University of al-Karaouine. Pushing into the lead of this article material that has absoluetely nothing to do with this article, such as the 13+kB you just pushed into the lead, violates several core policies, among them WP:NPOV (repeatedly stating as fact, in Wikipedia's voice, a contested POV), and WP:OR (doing such things as saying that although X is the "standard view", all these other people say the wrong thing). Kindly take your pride in Europe to a place where it is relevant. nableezy - 14:28, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
There is middle ground - but the pub takes the prize tonight ;). -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 19:56, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
{{
unreliable source}}
tag to a line that contains no source at all, replacing the {{
cn}}
tag that actually applies. He also removed a {{
failed verification}}
tag for a source that does not contain what is claimed, and inserted a contested POV as though it were unchallenged fact. Thank you, WMC. That was fantastic. And done just because you like it more.
nableezy -
23:19, 1 August 2012 (UTC)Athenean, where exactly is the source calling Yahya Pallavicini a Muslim activist? Where exactly is the source for your favored position being the "standard view"? BLP violations go well beyond what I have observed to be the generally low quality of your edits, kindly remove it. And if you want to remove a citation request, add a citation. It really is not that difficult of a concept. nableezy - 18:59, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
And asking that people provide sources for their assertions is not "wikilaweyering" (and I thought you were telling others to be civil, funny how that works out). nableezy - 19:07, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Back to the point. Is there or is there not a reliable source describing Yahya Pallavicini as an "activist". Is there a reason why his view should suffer from such well-poisoning? Should any European cited have their view prepended by "according to the white European ..."? You cannot add such material about a living person without a reliable source. If you do not remove it I will. An editor has, in good faith, challenged your addition as a BLP violation. Do you plan on removing it, or will this have to go another route?
Regarding the assertion that there is a standard view on the topic, no, you cannot say that given the number and the content of historians of the university provided above, it is pretty clear that this represents a consensus among the scholarly literature. That is a classic case of original research by WP:SYNTH. A reliable source that directly supports the material you placed in the article is required, and requesting that citation is not wikilawyering. Either provide the citation, or remove the phrase. nableezy - 19:41, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
As far as the BLP violation, you can take it to BLP/N if you want to, thats up to you. I am however removing it as a straight-forward BLP violation without any source, and will remind others of WP:BLP#Restoring deleted content. nableezy - 20:13, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
I feel claims if canvassing are unfair - I was also asked to take part by GPM and I had disagreed with GPM before.
I think the standard view point is the only one I'm not sure on. I think on balance that unless it can be explicitly sourced it should be removed. The point is strongly implied from the other text. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 10:41, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
As promised I have provided a compromise proposal which can be viewed here. In the meantime I have reverted back to a previous uncontroversial edit by me.
Thoughts? -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 17:42, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
Here we go. Based on Eraserhead1's changes
from above to which I mostly agree I would like to like make further proposals in order to achieve finally a stable version.
1. I agree to the removal of Fergusson, James: Taliban: The Unknown Enemy, Da Capo Press, 2011,
ISBN
978-0-306-82033-5 as an not completely reliable source per the discussion on the RS noticeboard. I remove "Being the oldest madrasa in the world..." as a statement now unsourced (sources to this effect can be included any time later, of course).
2. I agree to shortening the opening wording to "the view expounded by historians of the university, encyclopedias and dictionaries of the Middle Ages", leaving out "standard view". The large difference in quality to sources backing up the university claim which was also acknowledged by most users on the neutrality board discussion is still obvious enough from the following enumeration.
3. I maintain that the sourced statement "The first universities were rather all located in Western Europe" is integral to the status discussion, because it demonstrates that the first universities emerged there and not in Morocco, the Maghreb or the Islamic world where Al-Karaouine is located. However, I agree to remove the mentioning of the universities of Bologna and Paris as an attempt to compromise.
4. I add another source (Belhachmi 2003) which shows that the university was really only founded in the 20th century. I change the title of this sub section accordingly.
5. Request a page number for Civilization: The West and the Rest. Tagged too EB which does not claim Al-Karaouine to be the oldest university.
6. With several sources calling medieval Al-Karaouine explicitly a madrasa at the time of its founding and two dating its transformation into a university as late as the 20th century, not to mention all the other fine sources which make clear that there were no universities in medieval Islam at all, I consider the section name "Madrasa" clearly better founded per WP:RS than the unnecessarily evasive "early history".
7. There is no question that WP:lead requires us to move the entire discussion from the lead into the main text where it belongs. This has also the advantage of greatly reducing the debate in size by avoiding doubled contents. In the lead ideally, only a single sentence summing up the discussion should remain. I merge the introduction into the status section and leave the lead void of any such summary for the moment. Please let us discuss the wording of the summary here first, proposals are welcome.
8. I propose to group together footnotes wherever possible in order to tighten the footnote apparatus. This, however, should be best only done after agreement on a stable version.
9. Finally, I propose to remove the two article templates as unnecessary once we have agreed on a stable version and I hope we can achieve this in the spirit of cooperation pretty soon. Regards Gun Powder Ma ( talk) 20:58, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
nableezy - 05:14, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
I've added a POV title tag as given it was only clearly a University in the 20th century the current title seems to be pushing a POV. I think this can probably wait until the other issues are fixed so we don't get confused, but in the meantime I have added a tag to the article. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 19:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
OK, I concede the point about there being POV issues in general with the title containing "University of" and I've adjusted the tag on the article accordingly.
With regards to there being too much content on the general debate, do you think this version has too much such content in the lead? -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 17:26, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
Lets start at the top. I presume there is a justification for re-adding the 10,000 transliterations, and to changing the founding date back from just a date? And what about removing a source I added for the size of the mosque? Why exactly was that worthy of reversion. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 22:53, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
Gun, please can you stop reverting my HTML changes, yes I accept that you might not fully understand them, but they make no content changes at all, and they make editing the article easier. Having quotes in references is great, but using normal line breaks just makes it extremely difficult to work out where you are. <p></p> tags do exactly the same thing in terms of rendering on the page, they merely make it easier to work out where you are. Adding extra line breaks after references makes no difference to the page display but it also makes it easier to see edit the article as the text after the end of the reference starts on a new line. I don't understand why you want to make the page harder to edit for future editors. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 17:25, 15 August 2012 (UTC)