Qarawiyyīn

Qarawiyyīn, mosque and Islamic university in Fès, Morocco. Founded in 859 ce by philanthropist Fāṭimah al-Fihrī, Qarawiyyīn is one of the world’s oldest universities that is still in operation. Although it no longer enjoys its former prestige among global institutions, it contributed to the education of many influential scholars, including Ibn Rushd (Averroës), Pope Sylvester II, Moses Maimonides, Leo Africanus, and Ibn Khaldūn.

Qarawiyyīn was initially established as a mosque for Islamic worship, which remains the center of the university. The Qarawiyyīn Mosque, which was enlarged to its present form in the 12th century, is the largest in North Africa and can accommodate about 22,000 worshipers. Only Muslims are admitted into the mosque, but the interior can be glimpsed through the building’s 14 doors. The mosque’s roof is supported by 270 pillars forming 16 naves each of 21 horseshoe arches; because of the vast area (about 7 acres [3 hectares]) covered, the roof appears very low. The mosque’s large lamp is said to weigh 1,763 pounds (800 kg) and to have 509 lights.

The schools (madrasahs) clustered around the mosque originated as centers for Islamic studies (ʿulūm). Their primary focus was the transmitted religious sciences (al-ʿulūm al-naqliyyah), including Islamic law, theology, and the study of Arabic language, but the curriculum also encompassed the rational sciences (al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqliyyah), including astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. The university has been renowned as a center of Islamic culture since the European Middle Ages, when Muslims ruled Andalusian Spain as well as the Maghreb region across the Strait of Gibraltar. It had profound impact on the exchange of ideas between the Islamic world and Europe and fostered the transmission of knowledge that led to transformative breakthroughs in science and philosophy.

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Qarawiyyīn made Fès a refuge for Andalusian scholars when Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain beginning in the 13th century. By the 14th century there were said to be 8,000 students at the university. It gradually declined and by the 20th century retained only traces of its former greatness. But after Moroccan independence (1956), much was done to modernize the university: a new faculty of law was established, women were admitted for the first time, and the tuition system was reorganized. In 1963 the three main religious sciences—Islamic law, theology, and Arabic studies—were divided into separate faculties, the latter two being relocated at Tétouan and Marrakech.