This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
After a heavy-handed edit by Eraserhead which basically was done without prior discussion, I have done my best to accept his changes wherever I can, in order to arrive at a stable version. After all, the recent changes of the past month or so have greatly improved the article, so this is a positive thing. Still, some issues have now crept in the article which quickly need to be addressed.
These sources state that AK was transformed in 1963 to a university, not a "state" university
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Firstly still making undiffable edits and refusing to use edit summaries is becoming a behavioural issue that will need to be escalated if it doesn't stop. Gun, I really don't understand why you find it so hard to follow the basic standards of behaviour required to edit in a collaborative environment.
Secondly, "announcing" changes on someone's talk page doesn't really count as discussing them collaboratively, rather it means you discussed it with me.
Furthermore I told you to go to the NPOV noticeboard to raise the State University vs University issue if you wanted to discuss the issue, which you a) failed to do, b) you removed the disputed tag from the article without a result (as I suggested waiting until later), c) you made yet another diff which contained a large number of other unknown, unknowable and undiscussed changes to the article. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 15:53, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
This is futile. The question isn't going to be decided by citing Rough Guide, nor apologist literature. There is a certain debate as to whether Christian medieval universities were partly inspired by Islamic madrasas. The proper article to discuss this is, unsurprisingly, medieval university. This 9th-century madrasa was just that, a madrasa, and it's futile to cloud the issue by claiming it (as it were, in particular) deserves to be called a "university".
Madrasas in the 9th century did have certain aspects we today associate with universities rather than with (current-day) madrasas. The reason for this is the decline of Ilm al-Kalam (the pursuit of rational discourse) in the Muslim world after the 10th century. Yes, in the 9th century, there was promise of a development of "academia" in the Muslim world, but it didn't really go anywhere, which is why today we associate rational discourse with the term "university" rather than with the term "madrasa". Of course, the very urbild of academia is Platonic Academy, so if 9th-century "madrasas" can be dubbed "university", so can the Academy. In that case, the question of "world's oldest" would recede by at least a millennium. But these are semantic games. (Latin) Universitas is the word for Christian centers of learning, (Arabic) Madrasa for Muslim centers of learning. We don't see people wiki-bombarding the Bologna University article claiming that it would be semantically possible to call it a "madrasa" too. -- dab (𒁳) 08:29, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
This encyclopedia article might be instructive and worth a read. Jami'at and kollayat are not the same as a Madrassa. Madrassas did not exist at the time Al-Karaouine was established. Eurocentric scholarship has historically been a prominent feature of western academia, especially on the topic of Islamic contributions to civilization. The arguments against listing this as a university are categorically Eurocentric and in some part racist. Gastroking ( talk) 04:06, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
To establish some foundation for understanding of the terms University and Madrasa, Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a university as ... : an institution of higher learning providing facilities for teaching and research and authorized to grant academic degrees; specifically : one made up of an undergraduate division which confers bachelor's degrees and a graduate division which comprises a graduate school and professional schools each of which may confer master's degrees and doctorates. Oxford Dictionary defines a university as ... an educational institution designed for instruction, examination, or both, of students in many branches of advanced learning, conferring degrees in various faculties, and often embodying colleges and similar institutions: while the Cambridge Dictionary defines a Madrasa as ... a school where people go to learn about the religion of Islam while the Macmillan Dictionary defines a Madrasa as a college where students are taught about Islam. I can see that the article mentions nothing apart from religeos studies but I did find a secondary source here and here that show that this University does offer Bachelor Degrees and a source here that says it offers Master's Degrees, undergraduate degrees and even Doctoral Degrees. I assume that all of these courses include the requisite examinations. I also found a reference here [1] which says that the Guiness Book calls this University as the oldest university which I verified here. If the Guiness Book choses to call it a University then technically its a University. Getting down to the debate about European and Middle East versions of University. Lets understand that even Arabic numerals were introduced in europe from the Arab world, although arabic and european numbers look different. So a difference in understanding of what a University is supposed and not supposed to do is as natural as a difference in perceptions about marital practices or about LGBT. Yes, the Wikilinks do point to islamic articles but that's to highlight the differences of opinion. Nowhere in the dictionary deffinitions is it mentioned that only European institutions can be referred to as universities. The courses offered by a University reflect more the expectations of the soceity about scholarship and awareness and are never meant to get hammered down by the archaic deffinitions of scholars - Wikishagnik ( talk) 06:46, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Apparently according to our article on Issac Newton even in the 17th century the fellows at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had to be ordained priests.
To my mind that makes them religious schools as well, and I really don't see how they weren't religious schools at that time. I am also rather puzzled as to why this obviously important point in the debate wasn't bought up before.
I think this means we probably need to make further changes to the lead and other text - I don't believe stating that the view that al-Karaouine isn't a University as the majority view is appropriate given there are European Universities that were religious schools as well as late as the time of Isaac Newton, if not significantly later. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 21:27, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
Gun, if you aren't going to leave this article alone you need to reply to this. You can't just ignore relevant points you don't want to discuss if you are actually engaging properly. This is certainly directly relevant to the overall dispute even if it isn't directly relevant to this article. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 17:08, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
I removed the second part of the lead photo caption - "note the similarity of the architecture to the Alhambra (الحمراء)" - as I couldn't see any source or justification for it. They are both examples of Muslim architecture, but I can't see a major connection, and none seems to be mentioned in the article. Also the Alhambra consists of dozens of buildings built over seven centuries - which bit is it meant to resemble? TSP ( talk) 11:23, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
Apparently, the library at this university is the oldest existing library in the world, and it recently underwent major renovation. There should probably be at least a section in this article about the library, if not an independent article on it. Here are a couple articles detailing the work and the collection:
That said, our article on Saint Catherine's Monastery indicates that it contains the world's oldest continually operating library. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) problem solving 20:19, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Under the 'madrasa' section, the page reads;
"In some sources, the medieval madrasa is described as a "university"[11][12][13][14][15][page needed] in one Rough Guide book even as vying with Al-Azhar (c. 970) in Cairo "for the title of world's oldest university".[16]"
Ref 15, which is already suspicious since it has no page number, is simply being misrepresented. The ref is Niall Ferguson's book Civilization: The West and the Rest, and only mentions the madrasa one time throughout the length of the book on pg. 68 (which can be checked out on Google Books). This is it;
"Under clerical influence, the study of ancient philosophy was curtailed, books burned and so-called freethinkers persecuted; increasingly, the madrasas became focused exclusively on theology at a time when European universities were broadening the scope of their scholarship."
Not only does Ferguson not call a madrasa a university, but he clearly distinguishes between the madrasa and university as different institutions. In other words, the reference is being misrepresented and should therefore be deleted.
Ref 14 goes to te Illustrated Dictionary of the Muslim World, published by Marshall Cavendish, a big publisher and all -- but clearly no an academic publisher of any sort, and so unreliable as a source. Something else that needs to be removed is the reference to the Rough Guides (both of them), an obviously unreliable and non-academic source. Finally, the trickiest one, ref 13 -- Encountering the World of Islam published by InterVarsity. InterVarsity publishes general books (InterVarsity Press) and academic books (IVP Academic). This one is not one of IVP's academically published monographs, as far as I'm concerned, and so would also qualify as unreliable -- in fact, it appears to me to be a Christian missionary book teaching others how to convert Muslims. This appears to be confirmed by the fact that the author, Keith Swartly, has no relevant academic credentials (or none at all that I can find). So this should also be removed. Ref's 11 and 12 are fine -- they're both academic and quantify what they're being cited for. 64.229.115.87 ( talk) 00:22, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
The Guiness Book of Records is a reliable source because it fact-checks everything it publishes. I can say I ate the most bananas in one hour but unless the researchers have witnessed this (ie. recorded it somehow), it doesn't go in the book. The book says that Al Quaraouiyine is the oldest university, it doesn't say Bologna. -- YILMAZ AHMAD ( talk) 15:35, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
In the history sections the article frequently refers to an "associated madrasa" and says that the madrasa was "added" to the mosque. I'm wondering if this could be confusing to some extent because it may sound like the madrasa was separate from the mosque, whereas this wasn't the case and the sources should be referring to teaching taking place in the mosque itself (the halaqat, etc, as already mentioned).Plus, the word "madrasa" more typically refers to a separate space or building devoted to teaching anyways, so the term lends itself to that interpretation. (Separate "madrasa" buildings didn't appear in Morocco until the Marinid era; see brief explanation in
this section of the Bou Inania page for example.) And lastly, there are many actual madrasas that surround the Qarawiyyin Mosque (e.g.
Al-Attarine Madrasa,
Mesbahiyya Madrasa, etc), which is not what we're talking about here but which might cause some readers to think the text is talking about those ones instead.
Hopefully I'm making sense here, so I'm wondering if editors would agree to maybe adjust the wording to something like the mosque's "teaching function" or the "addition of teaching to the mosque's function" etc. This is useful mainly for discussion of the mosque's early history I think; the use of "madrasa" still seems reasonable and appropriate for existing section titles or the discussion of the mosque's "university" status, etc, where it's clear enough that the text is referring to the Qarawiyyin itself and its general history as a place of learning.
Eccekevin has added some useful details to these sections recently, so I also want to notify them of this suggestion if they disagree. Cheers,
Robert Prazeres (
talk) 15:42, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
A degree in medicine known from Al-Qarawiyyin University in 1207 [1]
-- Nehaoua ( talk) 22:02, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
This isn't unrelated to previous discussions but I'm starting a new thread because this is to describe the direct editing I just did in this section, partly in follow-up to discussions that were just had above.
First paragraph: This paragraph is now mainly about summarizing the sources that claim the Qarawiyyin as oldest university, or imply it as such by calling the historical Qarawiyyin a university (see wording on main page). I've expanded this part a bit by adding more sources but also by trying to describe the claims as neutrally as possible by just quoting what they say or the terms they use, and then avoiding connecting these to other conclusions that are more arguable.
Second paragraph: A few changes: 1) Added a sentence further clarifying that although other historic higher education models are acknowledged to exist, they are not considered the origin of modern Western-style universities. 2) Removed the sentence about madrasas being colleges of Islamic law primarily because the sources cited there are all about madrasas generally rather than about the Qarawiyyin, and the Qarawiyyin, even in its era of narrower curriculums, taught much more than Islamic law (cf. Le Tourneau's description of that curriculum on pages 454-455 in his 1949 book cited on this page). Instead I've left the fact that scholars refer to it as a "madrasa" in a more general sense, rather than further imply the narrower sense of the post-11th-century madrasa that may not be appropriate here (as per my first comments in previous thread; see also the 3 sources cited at the end of the second paragraph on the
madrasa page). 3) Made some minor reorganizations after this to make the paragraph flow better.
Third paragraph: I moved to this paragraph a couple of sentences from the first paragraph about Pallavicini and Encyclopedia Britannica's views on pre-modern universities outside Europe. This was to keep the first paragraph more neutral and focused on the specific claims about the Qarawiyyin. At the same time, this third paragraph now reads as a small summary of the counterpoints to the claims in the second paragraph (though with counterpoints to the counterpoints also included as they were before). Note: That being said, I think this third paragraph could arguably be left out altogether, because it's for the most part not specifically relating to the Qarawiyyin and many of the points are already discussed in more detail at
Madrasa#Madrasa and university (to which there is now a link at the top of the section). I don't think it's doing any harm here and it reads fine, but if ever we want to shorten the section I think we could do without it.
Fourth paragraph: This has been revised for slightly different reasons. In earlier edits today I revised the textual references to al-Jazna'i's Zahrat al-As to be more accurate to what's actually said and not said there (as far as I can see from looking through the source myself). This was in the history section but the fourth paragraph here was copy-edited from there so I just made similar adjustments. (See also the actual edit summaries for these.)
Other than that, the other changes I've made should be just stylistic to try to make the revised information consistent both with itself and the rest of the article. Needless to say, feel free to discuss.
Cheers,
Robert Prazeres (
talk) 04:23, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Why does the link for state university link to /info/en/?search=State_university_system_in_the_United_States
I think the current wording is confusing: "also visited the al-Qarawiyyin, including [...]Gerbert d'Aurillac who later became Pope Sylvester II. (Although the story of Gerbert's visit to Fes is viewed as a legend by some modern scholars.)
If anything, this legend is very recent and only appears in the late 19th century with a Russian orientalist, Jousé Ponteleimon Krestovitich, as mentionned in this article: La ville de Fès et Sylvestre II
This is discussed more in details here: here, but in my opinion the reference to a legend shouldn't be put on the same level that historical information
I agree with RPrazeres. The story is clearly a legend (his biography is very well documented and never is there a mention of visits to Africa) and it seems we have found the culprit in the 19th century, but if we simply remove it, then it’s going to keep being added since this notion is found in many modern sources. I say mention the legend, it’s origin, mention his possible visits to Cordoba and Muslim Spain, and leave it debunked on this page. Eccekevin ( talk) 21:40, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
Hi all; I originally wrote much of the architecture sections as they are but was never fully satisfied with how they were labelled and organized; for example, having two "architecture" sections is probably unusual, not to mention technically two "history" sections as well (one for the institutional/intellectual history and one for the history of the mosque structure). I'm having a go at hopefully consolidating the two architecture sections into one larger but more intuitively organized "Architecture" section, but I'm posting this message to invite others to have a second look afterwards verify that it's indeed an improvement; if it's not, feel free to comment or even revert it and say it was better before.
As a side-note: I've also noticed a copy-edit tag on the page, but no specific issue is mentioned. If there are other suggestions about improving the page, I'm happy to assist with that as well if helpful.
R Prazeres (
talk) 19:26, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
After a heavy-handed edit by Eraserhead which basically was done without prior discussion, I have done my best to accept his changes wherever I can, in order to arrive at a stable version. After all, the recent changes of the past month or so have greatly improved the article, so this is a positive thing. Still, some issues have now crept in the article which quickly need to be addressed.
These sources state that AK was transformed in 1963 to a university, not a "state" university
|
---|
|
Firstly still making undiffable edits and refusing to use edit summaries is becoming a behavioural issue that will need to be escalated if it doesn't stop. Gun, I really don't understand why you find it so hard to follow the basic standards of behaviour required to edit in a collaborative environment.
Secondly, "announcing" changes on someone's talk page doesn't really count as discussing them collaboratively, rather it means you discussed it with me.
Furthermore I told you to go to the NPOV noticeboard to raise the State University vs University issue if you wanted to discuss the issue, which you a) failed to do, b) you removed the disputed tag from the article without a result (as I suggested waiting until later), c) you made yet another diff which contained a large number of other unknown, unknowable and undiscussed changes to the article. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 15:53, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
This is futile. The question isn't going to be decided by citing Rough Guide, nor apologist literature. There is a certain debate as to whether Christian medieval universities were partly inspired by Islamic madrasas. The proper article to discuss this is, unsurprisingly, medieval university. This 9th-century madrasa was just that, a madrasa, and it's futile to cloud the issue by claiming it (as it were, in particular) deserves to be called a "university".
Madrasas in the 9th century did have certain aspects we today associate with universities rather than with (current-day) madrasas. The reason for this is the decline of Ilm al-Kalam (the pursuit of rational discourse) in the Muslim world after the 10th century. Yes, in the 9th century, there was promise of a development of "academia" in the Muslim world, but it didn't really go anywhere, which is why today we associate rational discourse with the term "university" rather than with the term "madrasa". Of course, the very urbild of academia is Platonic Academy, so if 9th-century "madrasas" can be dubbed "university", so can the Academy. In that case, the question of "world's oldest" would recede by at least a millennium. But these are semantic games. (Latin) Universitas is the word for Christian centers of learning, (Arabic) Madrasa for Muslim centers of learning. We don't see people wiki-bombarding the Bologna University article claiming that it would be semantically possible to call it a "madrasa" too. -- dab (𒁳) 08:29, 28 September 2014 (UTC)
This encyclopedia article might be instructive and worth a read. Jami'at and kollayat are not the same as a Madrassa. Madrassas did not exist at the time Al-Karaouine was established. Eurocentric scholarship has historically been a prominent feature of western academia, especially on the topic of Islamic contributions to civilization. The arguments against listing this as a university are categorically Eurocentric and in some part racist. Gastroking ( talk) 04:06, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
To establish some foundation for understanding of the terms University and Madrasa, Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a university as ... : an institution of higher learning providing facilities for teaching and research and authorized to grant academic degrees; specifically : one made up of an undergraduate division which confers bachelor's degrees and a graduate division which comprises a graduate school and professional schools each of which may confer master's degrees and doctorates. Oxford Dictionary defines a university as ... an educational institution designed for instruction, examination, or both, of students in many branches of advanced learning, conferring degrees in various faculties, and often embodying colleges and similar institutions: while the Cambridge Dictionary defines a Madrasa as ... a school where people go to learn about the religion of Islam while the Macmillan Dictionary defines a Madrasa as a college where students are taught about Islam. I can see that the article mentions nothing apart from religeos studies but I did find a secondary source here and here that show that this University does offer Bachelor Degrees and a source here that says it offers Master's Degrees, undergraduate degrees and even Doctoral Degrees. I assume that all of these courses include the requisite examinations. I also found a reference here [1] which says that the Guiness Book calls this University as the oldest university which I verified here. If the Guiness Book choses to call it a University then technically its a University. Getting down to the debate about European and Middle East versions of University. Lets understand that even Arabic numerals were introduced in europe from the Arab world, although arabic and european numbers look different. So a difference in understanding of what a University is supposed and not supposed to do is as natural as a difference in perceptions about marital practices or about LGBT. Yes, the Wikilinks do point to islamic articles but that's to highlight the differences of opinion. Nowhere in the dictionary deffinitions is it mentioned that only European institutions can be referred to as universities. The courses offered by a University reflect more the expectations of the soceity about scholarship and awareness and are never meant to get hammered down by the archaic deffinitions of scholars - Wikishagnik ( talk) 06:46, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Apparently according to our article on Issac Newton even in the 17th century the fellows at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had to be ordained priests.
To my mind that makes them religious schools as well, and I really don't see how they weren't religious schools at that time. I am also rather puzzled as to why this obviously important point in the debate wasn't bought up before.
I think this means we probably need to make further changes to the lead and other text - I don't believe stating that the view that al-Karaouine isn't a University as the majority view is appropriate given there are European Universities that were religious schools as well as late as the time of Isaac Newton, if not significantly later. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 21:27, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
Gun, if you aren't going to leave this article alone you need to reply to this. You can't just ignore relevant points you don't want to discuss if you are actually engaging properly. This is certainly directly relevant to the overall dispute even if it isn't directly relevant to this article. -- Eraserhead1 < talk> 17:08, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
I removed the second part of the lead photo caption - "note the similarity of the architecture to the Alhambra (الحمراء)" - as I couldn't see any source or justification for it. They are both examples of Muslim architecture, but I can't see a major connection, and none seems to be mentioned in the article. Also the Alhambra consists of dozens of buildings built over seven centuries - which bit is it meant to resemble? TSP ( talk) 11:23, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
Apparently, the library at this university is the oldest existing library in the world, and it recently underwent major renovation. There should probably be at least a section in this article about the library, if not an independent article on it. Here are a couple articles detailing the work and the collection:
That said, our article on Saint Catherine's Monastery indicates that it contains the world's oldest continually operating library. ~ ONUnicorn( Talk| Contribs) problem solving 20:19, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
Under the 'madrasa' section, the page reads;
"In some sources, the medieval madrasa is described as a "university"[11][12][13][14][15][page needed] in one Rough Guide book even as vying with Al-Azhar (c. 970) in Cairo "for the title of world's oldest university".[16]"
Ref 15, which is already suspicious since it has no page number, is simply being misrepresented. The ref is Niall Ferguson's book Civilization: The West and the Rest, and only mentions the madrasa one time throughout the length of the book on pg. 68 (which can be checked out on Google Books). This is it;
"Under clerical influence, the study of ancient philosophy was curtailed, books burned and so-called freethinkers persecuted; increasingly, the madrasas became focused exclusively on theology at a time when European universities were broadening the scope of their scholarship."
Not only does Ferguson not call a madrasa a university, but he clearly distinguishes between the madrasa and university as different institutions. In other words, the reference is being misrepresented and should therefore be deleted.
Ref 14 goes to te Illustrated Dictionary of the Muslim World, published by Marshall Cavendish, a big publisher and all -- but clearly no an academic publisher of any sort, and so unreliable as a source. Something else that needs to be removed is the reference to the Rough Guides (both of them), an obviously unreliable and non-academic source. Finally, the trickiest one, ref 13 -- Encountering the World of Islam published by InterVarsity. InterVarsity publishes general books (InterVarsity Press) and academic books (IVP Academic). This one is not one of IVP's academically published monographs, as far as I'm concerned, and so would also qualify as unreliable -- in fact, it appears to me to be a Christian missionary book teaching others how to convert Muslims. This appears to be confirmed by the fact that the author, Keith Swartly, has no relevant academic credentials (or none at all that I can find). So this should also be removed. Ref's 11 and 12 are fine -- they're both academic and quantify what they're being cited for. 64.229.115.87 ( talk) 00:22, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
The Guiness Book of Records is a reliable source because it fact-checks everything it publishes. I can say I ate the most bananas in one hour but unless the researchers have witnessed this (ie. recorded it somehow), it doesn't go in the book. The book says that Al Quaraouiyine is the oldest university, it doesn't say Bologna. -- YILMAZ AHMAD ( talk) 15:35, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
In the history sections the article frequently refers to an "associated madrasa" and says that the madrasa was "added" to the mosque. I'm wondering if this could be confusing to some extent because it may sound like the madrasa was separate from the mosque, whereas this wasn't the case and the sources should be referring to teaching taking place in the mosque itself (the halaqat, etc, as already mentioned).Plus, the word "madrasa" more typically refers to a separate space or building devoted to teaching anyways, so the term lends itself to that interpretation. (Separate "madrasa" buildings didn't appear in Morocco until the Marinid era; see brief explanation in
this section of the Bou Inania page for example.) And lastly, there are many actual madrasas that surround the Qarawiyyin Mosque (e.g.
Al-Attarine Madrasa,
Mesbahiyya Madrasa, etc), which is not what we're talking about here but which might cause some readers to think the text is talking about those ones instead.
Hopefully I'm making sense here, so I'm wondering if editors would agree to maybe adjust the wording to something like the mosque's "teaching function" or the "addition of teaching to the mosque's function" etc. This is useful mainly for discussion of the mosque's early history I think; the use of "madrasa" still seems reasonable and appropriate for existing section titles or the discussion of the mosque's "university" status, etc, where it's clear enough that the text is referring to the Qarawiyyin itself and its general history as a place of learning.
Eccekevin has added some useful details to these sections recently, so I also want to notify them of this suggestion if they disagree. Cheers,
Robert Prazeres (
talk) 15:42, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
A degree in medicine known from Al-Qarawiyyin University in 1207 [1]
-- Nehaoua ( talk) 22:02, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
This isn't unrelated to previous discussions but I'm starting a new thread because this is to describe the direct editing I just did in this section, partly in follow-up to discussions that were just had above.
First paragraph: This paragraph is now mainly about summarizing the sources that claim the Qarawiyyin as oldest university, or imply it as such by calling the historical Qarawiyyin a university (see wording on main page). I've expanded this part a bit by adding more sources but also by trying to describe the claims as neutrally as possible by just quoting what they say or the terms they use, and then avoiding connecting these to other conclusions that are more arguable.
Second paragraph: A few changes: 1) Added a sentence further clarifying that although other historic higher education models are acknowledged to exist, they are not considered the origin of modern Western-style universities. 2) Removed the sentence about madrasas being colleges of Islamic law primarily because the sources cited there are all about madrasas generally rather than about the Qarawiyyin, and the Qarawiyyin, even in its era of narrower curriculums, taught much more than Islamic law (cf. Le Tourneau's description of that curriculum on pages 454-455 in his 1949 book cited on this page). Instead I've left the fact that scholars refer to it as a "madrasa" in a more general sense, rather than further imply the narrower sense of the post-11th-century madrasa that may not be appropriate here (as per my first comments in previous thread; see also the 3 sources cited at the end of the second paragraph on the
madrasa page). 3) Made some minor reorganizations after this to make the paragraph flow better.
Third paragraph: I moved to this paragraph a couple of sentences from the first paragraph about Pallavicini and Encyclopedia Britannica's views on pre-modern universities outside Europe. This was to keep the first paragraph more neutral and focused on the specific claims about the Qarawiyyin. At the same time, this third paragraph now reads as a small summary of the counterpoints to the claims in the second paragraph (though with counterpoints to the counterpoints also included as they were before). Note: That being said, I think this third paragraph could arguably be left out altogether, because it's for the most part not specifically relating to the Qarawiyyin and many of the points are already discussed in more detail at
Madrasa#Madrasa and university (to which there is now a link at the top of the section). I don't think it's doing any harm here and it reads fine, but if ever we want to shorten the section I think we could do without it.
Fourth paragraph: This has been revised for slightly different reasons. In earlier edits today I revised the textual references to al-Jazna'i's Zahrat al-As to be more accurate to what's actually said and not said there (as far as I can see from looking through the source myself). This was in the history section but the fourth paragraph here was copy-edited from there so I just made similar adjustments. (See also the actual edit summaries for these.)
Other than that, the other changes I've made should be just stylistic to try to make the revised information consistent both with itself and the rest of the article. Needless to say, feel free to discuss.
Cheers,
Robert Prazeres (
talk) 04:23, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Why does the link for state university link to /info/en/?search=State_university_system_in_the_United_States
I think the current wording is confusing: "also visited the al-Qarawiyyin, including [...]Gerbert d'Aurillac who later became Pope Sylvester II. (Although the story of Gerbert's visit to Fes is viewed as a legend by some modern scholars.)
If anything, this legend is very recent and only appears in the late 19th century with a Russian orientalist, Jousé Ponteleimon Krestovitich, as mentionned in this article: La ville de Fès et Sylvestre II
This is discussed more in details here: here, but in my opinion the reference to a legend shouldn't be put on the same level that historical information
I agree with RPrazeres. The story is clearly a legend (his biography is very well documented and never is there a mention of visits to Africa) and it seems we have found the culprit in the 19th century, but if we simply remove it, then it’s going to keep being added since this notion is found in many modern sources. I say mention the legend, it’s origin, mention his possible visits to Cordoba and Muslim Spain, and leave it debunked on this page. Eccekevin ( talk) 21:40, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
Hi all; I originally wrote much of the architecture sections as they are but was never fully satisfied with how they were labelled and organized; for example, having two "architecture" sections is probably unusual, not to mention technically two "history" sections as well (one for the institutional/intellectual history and one for the history of the mosque structure). I'm having a go at hopefully consolidating the two architecture sections into one larger but more intuitively organized "Architecture" section, but I'm posting this message to invite others to have a second look afterwards verify that it's indeed an improvement; if it's not, feel free to comment or even revert it and say it was better before.
As a side-note: I've also noticed a copy-edit tag on the page, but no specific issue is mentioned. If there are other suggestions about improving the page, I'm happy to assist with that as well if helpful.
R Prazeres (
talk) 19:26, 8 July 2021 (UTC)