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20 - Islamic knowledge and education in the modern age

from PART IV - CULTURES, ARTS AND LEARNING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

By
Robert Hefner
Edited by
Robert W. Hefner
Robert W. Hefner
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Summary

The transmission of religious knowledge (ʿilm) has always been at the heart of Islamic tradition. The Qurʾān and Ḥadīth abound with general references to the importance of learning, as well as the specific injunction that believers study and follow the ethical path God has provided. Since earliest times, the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student has also had a vital social function, creating scholarly networks which, in the absence of a clerical hierarchy or an established church, came to exercise authority in the religious community. Muslim notables also regarded religious education as critical to the formation of the shared ethical sensibilities that underlay the public good. In these and other ways, religious learning lay at the heart of Muslim societies, and its promotion was incumbent on all who aspired to social or political prominence.

Because of the centrality of religious knowledge in Muslim societies, constructing institutions for its transmission has also been considered socially imperative. During the Muslim world’s Middle Ages (1000–1500 CE), the madrasa emerged as the dominant institution for the transmission of intermediate and advanced religious knowledge. A residential college for the study of the religious sciences, the madrasa played a key role in the great recentring of religious knowledge and authority that took place in the Middle Ages, bringing popular religious culture into closer alignment with scholarly knowledge.

Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 495 - 520
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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