Education in Islamic Education - Pre-islamic Arabia, The Koran, The Prophetic Tradition, Oral Instruction And Books, Educators And Institutions Of Primary And Higher Education
concept
A lifelong pursuit of learning is a characteristic ideal of Islamic piety. It underlies the concept of "Islamic" education. While the primary focus of this concept is the nurturing of religious belief in the individual, its scope broadened to incorporate various secular disciplines, literary and scientific, as it aimed at developing within the community fully integrated personalities, grounded in the virtues of Islam. This approach relates to the theory and practice of both primary and higher education. It is evident not only in the Koran and the literature of Prophetic Tradition (hadith), but also in countless proverbs, aphorisms, and wisdom sayings; and in poetry and prose texts of the Middle Eastern literatures including, in particular, the
numerous medieval Arabic works devoted to pedagogical and didactic issues.
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Sura (chapter) 96, traditionally considered as the very first revelation to the prophet Muhammad, starts with the divine command to "Read" (or: "Recite"/"Proclaim" words of the holy scripture). It stresses that God "taught Man that which he knew not" and that God did so "by [the use of] the pen"—suggesting that God taught…
Students traveled far and wide in "the quest for knowledge" (Ar., talab al-'ilm) and to study under the supervision of a well-known scholar. "Sessions" (sing., majlis) and "circles" (sing., halqa) were held by Muslim scholars for the purpose of teaching. These scholarly sessions took place at public places such as mosques but also, privately, at the…
In the early period of the Umayyad dynasty (ruled 661–750), the elementary school (kuttab, maktab) for pupils starting at the age of six to seven is already found to be firmly established. The education of young princes had reached a high standard of excellence and the educator was a figure of some standing at the royal court. Under Abbasid rule (750–1258), learning and studying in t…
The humanist concerns of classical Islamic education are epitomized by the Arabic term adab. Initially, the concept of adab related to the "rules of conduct" and the "customs" as inherited from one's ancestors, revered as models. From about the eighth century on, it stood for the "ethical and practical rules of proper conduct" deemed praiseworthy in…
Educational thought as such found its literary expression in Arabic texts devoted to teaching and learning: that is, in works focusing on rules of conduct for teachers and students. Based on issues raised in the Koran and the literature of the Prophetic Tradition, these works explain and analyze—in an erudite and often literary manner—teaching methods, the ways in which learning take…
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were marked by reform movements and secularizing nationalists. With the presence of European colonial powers in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, an era of intensive contact and a flow of ideas between the Muslim world and the West began, with far-reaching impact on the Islamic societies. Educational reforms were implemented to raise the standard and widen …
On account of the struggle between secular and Islamic ideologies throughout much of the twentieth century, global socioeconomic, political, cultural, and environmental challenges, and a new politicization of Islam in large parts of the Muslim World since the 1970s, (populist) discourses over the meaning of "modernity" have had a serious impact on the concept of Islamic education. Th…
al-Azmeh, Aziz. Arabic Thought and Islamic Societies. London and Dover, N.H.: Croom Helm, 1986. Berkey, Jonathan. The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. Bothwoth, C. E., H. A. R. Gibb, J. H. Kramers, E. Levi-Proevencal, and J. Schacht, eds. Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1954&#x…
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