katātīb in the Service of Rulership: Between al-Jāhiẓ and ibn Ḥazm al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868)

The writings of al-Jāḥiẓ on primary education, particularly with regard to schoolmasters, are the earliest to reach us on the subject. Nor are we told, by the sources, of any earlier (lost) ones. His most relevant work, a treatise entitled K. al-muʿallimīn, was preceded by earlier satirical writings on schoolmasters’ lack of proficiency.Footnote ³⁴ In addition to Ibn Saḥnūn's more detailed handbook on the subject, discussed shortly, the writings of al-Jāḥiẓ on teaching children were followed by K. al-ʿIlm wa-l-taʿlīm by Abū Zayd al-Balkhī (d. 322/934), a Muʿtazilī scholar and schoolmaster from Balkh who was dubbed ‘the second Jāḥiẓ’.Footnote ³⁵ This, however, was preceded by three works, all bearing the title K. al-ʿĀlim wa-l-mutaʿallim, one by the early Ṣūfī figure Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Tirmidhī, alias Abū Bakr al-Warrāq (d. 280/893), from Balkh;Footnote ³⁶ another by ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad Abū ʿAlī al-Balkhī (d. 294/907), also from Balkh; and the third by Muḥammad b. Masʿūd al-ʿAyyāshī (d. ca. 320/932), a Shīʿī scholar from Samarqand. While the first of the latter three works does not address the subject of elementary education, the other two are missing. Many subsequent books were given the same title, al-ʿĀlim wa-l-mutaʿallim, but none of them tackles the topic of early education.Footnote ³⁷ Together with comparable later books and book chapters, these works represent a unique Islamic literature per se, i.e. ādāb al-ʿālim wa-l-mutaʿallim. This early ‘pedagogical’ genre, which hones in on post-kuttāb education, has not been adequately discussed by relevant Western scholarship.Footnote ³⁸

In view of the sublime intellectual impact of al-Jāḥiẓ in general, and his well-known liaison with the ʿAbbāsid court, his thoughts on childhood pedagogy should be looked upon as a real and substantive indicator of a state-led strategy, and not simply a reflection of a certain theoretical sentiment (infra). Al-Jāḥiẓ was one of the most salient intellectual figures in his time and since. His manifold talents gained him fame and prestige, and he contributed regularly to the cultural activities at the Mirbad, a fêted marketplace and cultural hub in Baṣra that was instrumental in the modelling of Arabic culture in medieval times. He was also a regular participant in the intellectual discussions and polemics held at the lounges of the aristocrats in his time, where socio-political affairs were considered.Footnote ³⁹ This privileged situation, as he states, brought upon him the enmities of envious provincials and ideological opponents, some of whom went so far as to destroy his books soon after publication.Footnote ⁴⁰

Al-Jāḥiẓ was born in ca. 160/776 in the caliphate of the third ʿAbbāsid caliph, al-Mahdī (r. 158-69/775– 85), and he died in the caliphate of al-Muhtadī (r. 255-6/869-70); he was thus a coeval of twelve ʿAbbāsid caliphs. He was a chief Muʿtazilī theologian, who digested the works of many ancient Greek philosophers (most notably Aristotle), and he was an avant-garde theorist, a major litterateur and bibliophile and a pioneering humanist. In his time, the Muʿtazila group gained the backing of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate, particularly in the reigns of the caliphs al-Maʾmūn, al-Muʿtaṣim, and al-Wāthiq (198-232/813-47). Later, however, in the caliphate of al-Mutawakkil (r. 232-47/847-61), they lost such backing to their Sunnī rivals, represented mainly by the Ḥanbalītes.Footnote ⁴¹

Said to be of Abyssinian descent,Footnote ⁴² al-Jāḥiẓ declared he was an Arab citizen: “I am a man from Kināna, who is a relative of the caliphate. I have been given, by them, the right of pre-emption, and they after all are my kith and kin”.Footnote ⁴³ He was a keen and a proud associate of the exclusive socio-political minority elite in his time. He is even said to have gained the greater part of his income from inscribing his literary works to people of wealth and power.Footnote ⁴⁴ Nonetheless, al-Jāḥiẓ is not known to have held any official or fixed post throughout his life of nearly a century. While in Baghdad, however, he held teaching and clerical responsibilities, but on an intermittent and temporary basis. For instance, he was assigned duties at the chancellery bureau (dīwān al-rasāʾil) under al-Maʾmūn but lasted for only three days.Footnote ⁴⁵ As such, al-Jāḥiẓ was more of an éminence grise.

From the beginning, knowledge was the spine of the ʿAbbāsid civilisation, which was carefully carved out to lead the existing medieval world. The caliph al-Manṣūr established Baghdad in 762-4 and kept open its gates to every talent and skill, irrespective of race or religion. The thorough translation movement sponsored by the ʿAbbāsids brought to their court and kingdom multi-coloured experiences and paved the way for a dominant aura of knowledge, epitomised by the Grand Library of Baghdad, known as Bayt al-Ḥikma, ‘House of Wisdom’. A certain type of knowledge, i.e. administration, was critically needed for the management of this vast Pan-Islamica. In this regard, the katātīb were looked upon as an important breeding ground for future scribes, clerks and officials in the state registers (dawāwīn) and other governmental establishments. The Barmakīds, a non-Arab Asian family from the city of Balkh,Footnote ⁴⁶ already set an example for how far knowledge would help to reach. The many privileges secured for an educated individual in those times, when the overwhelming majority of people was illiterate, can be inferred from the recurrent advice given to graduates by specialists against prospective temptations of various types: social, academic and financial. (infra).Footnote ⁴⁷

Against this background, parents were understandably eager to get their children equipped with education as the decisive passport to success. This was added to the great divine blessings and rewards (thawāb) promised for parents should their children manage to learn the Qurʾān by heart.Footnote ⁴⁸ Such convictions and the communal drift they created were partly echoed in how joyfully a kuttāb graduate was celebrated by his kin and the public. As the youngster grew up, this public recognition made itself felt in different ways and the motivation for it became more autogenic. From the early ʿAbbāsid period, kuttāb graduates were publicly acclaimed in celebrations having different names (e.g., iṣrāfa, iqlāba, takhrīja),Footnote ⁴⁹ with various particular customs and details in different Islamic regions.Footnote ⁵⁰ In Baghdad, for example, the privileged boys paraded the streets in triumph on camels, while almonds were tossed to them.Footnote ⁵¹ One should not forget that there was no compulsion, in the literal sense, in this early educational context; teachers were not compelled to teach, apart from the obligation to make a living, nor were students compelled to receive education, apart from their parents’ aspiration and persistence. This explains why the galvanising role of al-Jāḥiẓ was required.

Al-Jāḥiẓ stated that “according to the rulers’ command”, the children of their subjects should be taught such crafts as husbandry, carpentry, construction, goldsmithery, stitching, beadwork, dyeing and the different types of weaving. He expressly opined that the worthiness of a certain science to be taught is decided based on its prospective expediency for the ruler and his management of the state, including considerations of public need and economic development. Based on this pragmatic approach, in-depth study of grammar was considered redundant for mainstream education, as it distracted from probing the issues most crucial for the people and the regions, as he maintained. Similarly, al-Jāḥiẓ considered the learning of adab and belles-lettres to be unnecessary luxuries,Footnote ⁵² although he himself was one of the most outstanding litterateurs in early Islam. On the other hand, al-Jāḥiẓ recommended that pupils should study ḥisāb al-ʿaqd (finger reckoning) rather than ḥisāb al-hind (Indian calculus),Footnote ⁵³ geometry and heavy study of area calculation. He insisted that in terms of arithmetic, pupils learn “what is required by the ruler's secretariat and the scribes of the state registers”. He advised that perfecting arithmetic is more inevitable and rewarding than perfecting editing and calligraphy; he noted that it is tolerable to produce inelegant but rightly spelled handwriting, whereas the same ethos is not applicable for arithmetic and other quantitative forms of knowledge.Footnote ⁵⁴

Al-Jāḥiẓ also downplayed the importance of children being taught the books of Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/772), the venerated founder of what became one of the four canonical schools of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam. He also shrugged off cambistry, despite acknowledging its value for learners’ familiarity with different currencies, but despite his generally utilitarian vision he did not encourage children to learn profitable careers for trade.Footnote ⁵⁵ This was noted by Günther, but he did not analyse why al-Jāḥiẓ thought in that way, apart from commenting that this harsh critique on merchants and moneychangers seems to “not to have been initially part of this educational treatise”.Footnote ⁵⁶ Indeed, the passages on the two professions are integral to the treatise, as indicated by the substantive context and the fact that they appear in all of the versions that we have of it. Al-Jāḥiẓ was trying here to turn juvenile learners away from trade which―thanks to a remarkably vigorous trading network on both regional and global levels―was presumably favoured by the new generations over working in the state administrative system.Footnote ⁵⁷ This may explain why he elucidated, in a palpably exaggerated and ineffective way, to prove why the commercial success of the Qurayshī merchants, taken as an example by many at the time, would not be met by anyone else due to their unreachable superiority. After indicating the hazards of trade, al-Jāḥiẓ warns parents: “Would it be pleasant for you to have your son ending up in the guise of Ṣāliḥ al-Zarāzrīshī, the manners of Ibn Bādām or the mind of Ibn Sāmirī?”Footnote ⁵⁸ We are left in the dark as to who those people really were, but al-Jāḥiẓ's unmistakably derogatory tone insinuates that they were well-known gauche money-grubbers in their day, whose very name could deter parents and young learners from embarking down the path of trading.

It should be noted here that al-Jāḥiẓ flourished, as a writer and a theorist, in what is occasionally referred to as ‘the second ʿAbbāsid period’, which was marked by the gradual impotence of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate. Since the days of al-Wāthiq (r. 227-32/842-7) the caliphate had progressively ceded its sovereignty to Turkic vassals, some of whom began to establish quasi-independent kingdoms in different parts of the vast ʿAbbāsid empire.Footnote ⁵⁹ During the centuries preceding the Sack of Baghdad (656/1258) by the Mongols, there were some attempts to strengthen the central authority of the Caliphate, but in general, it remained a ceremonial relic in practical governance outside of Mesopotamia. One of the channels for the dissemination of the ʿAbbāsid vision was the education system, which shored up public support and the loyalty of the nobility, particularly given the rising political power of the Turks. This treatise of al-Jāḥiẓ on schoolmasters had, in essence, a clear pro-caliphal propagandistic message. As an advocate of the ʿAbbāsids, he also wrote a panegyric to propitiate the irascible Turkic generals and exalt among them those most loyal to the Caliphate. The treatise was entitled ‘K. Faḍāʾil al-atrāk: Risāla ilā al-Fatḥ b. Khāqān fī manāqib al-turk wa-ʿāmmat jund al-khilāfa’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Al-Fatḥ b. Khaqān, referred to here, was a loyal vizier of the caliph al-Mutawakkil, who was later assassinated together with his lord by Turkic conspirators in 247/861.

Also in the same treatise, K. al-muʿallimīn, al-Jāḥiẓ attempted to propagate, in a rather heavy-handed way, the service of the then stumbling and unpopular ʿAbbāsid authority, which, above all, had become notorious for getting rid of enemies and suspects in vicious ways. Many notable officials, including viziers and chief scribes, were reportedly assassinated on various pretexts. Well-known examples include Abū Salama al-Khallāl (d. 132/750), Abū Muslim al-Khurāsānī (d. 137/754), Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. ca. 142/759), Abū Ayyūb al-Muryānī (d. 154/771), Jaʿfar b. Yaḥyā b. Barmak (d. 187/803), and al-Faḍl b. Sahl (d. 202/818). Al-Jāḥiẓ, however, insists that there is definitely no higher rank than joining the ruler's entourage:Footnote ⁶¹ “Those who claim that the ruler's associates are exposed to harm [more than others] should know that each traveller [for instance] is exposed to harm as well”. Attempting to discredit the public abhorrence of the perils of serving at the ruler's macabre court, al-Jāḥiẓ went further to give examples for other relatively ‘more imperilled’ people, such as sailors and seafarers, island residents, desert roamers, carrion eaters, and wine addicts, et alii. Footnote ⁶² He then stated:

Interestingly, al-Jāḥiẓ reconsidered many of these views at a later stage in his life, as expressed in an epistle entitled Madḥ al-tijāra wa-dhamm ʿamal al-sulṭan (Praising Trade and Dispraising the Ruler's Service).Footnote ⁶⁴ Towards the end of his life, al-Jāḥiẓ, a lifelong stalwart of political authority, realised that adulating authority was not necessarily worthwhile, and that his claim of a Qurayshī descent, and intellectual panegyrics on the ruling elite, had not sufficed to elevate him to their ranks. As reported by al-Jāḥiẓ himself, he was once recommended for the caliph al-Mutawakkil to educate some of his sons, but when the caliph saw him, he rebuffed the idea on account of al-Jāḥiẓ's ugliness (istabshaʿ manẓarī); he ordered him a sum of money, and dismissed him.Footnote ⁶⁵ It might be such nagging humiliations that ultimately convinced al-Jāḥiẓ to later express pride in his black race. He authored ‘K. Fakhr al-sūdān ʿalā al-bīḍān (The Superiority of the Black Race to the White One)’. Some of the socio-political views he expressed in this latter work are believed to have foreboded (and perhaps inspired) the fierce and long-term Zanj Rebellion which broke out only six months after his death.

Patronage and Surveillance

In the first three centuries of the Islamic calendar, the waqf system was not robust enough to maintain any systematic type of public education. This may explain why the contemporaries in this early period usually spoke of katātīb and ḥalaqāt (or ḥilaq), ‘teaching circles’―rather than such higher-education institutions as madrasas or khanqās, for instance. It also explains why those who wrote on the katātīb in the same period usually stressed the importance of continuing education (i.e. after the kuttāb stage). They also tended to address, usually at length, such issues as the legality of taking wages in return for teaching the Qurʾān in these katātīb,Footnote ⁷⁹ securing the funds needed for such logistics as hiring a learning-place (kirāʾ al-ḥānūt/al-maktab), supplying inks, writing tablets and even fodder for the teacher's mule.Footnote ⁸⁰ This means that the educational process was mainly individually subsidised. This is not to say, however, that big-scale elementary educational projects did not exist in the first three centuries; in fact, they did, but they were neither corporate nor systematic, and usually failed to take root for more than a generation. We are told by al-Jahshayārī, for example, that Yaḥyā b. Khālid al-Barmakī (d. 190/806), the notable vizier in the caliphate of Hārūn al-Rashīd, established katātīb for orphans.Footnote ⁸¹

Later, the waqf system became an important engine of socio-economic development.Footnote ⁸² It secured the funds for medieval Islamic educational schemes, including the kuttāb, and the education system thus became a better-oiled didactical device.Footnote ⁸³ We know from Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/1217), for instance, that in Damascus, particularly in the premises of its grand mosque, boys received a fixed stipend (jirāya maʿlūma)Footnote ⁸⁴ for their learning of the Qurʾān. The fact that well-off parents (ahl al-jida) did not allow their children to take it implies that such a maintenance payment was meant for indigent and disadvantaged pupils. Also in Damascus, a big waqf endowment was assigned to a large orphanage (maḥḍara kabīra) with the aim of covering the expenses needed for teaching wages, maintenance and raiment. Ibn Jubayr counted both practices as illustrations of the munificence of Muslim civilisation.Footnote ⁸⁵ This was in the time of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, who, Ibn Jubayr also noted, made the same arrangements for orphans in Egypt.Footnote ⁸⁶ As in many other aspects, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn was seemingly inspired in this by his master Nūr al-Dīn Zengī, who formerly established a multitude of katātīb for orphans, and allotted to them learning allowances.Footnote ⁸⁷ We learn from a relevant account by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 779/1377) that this situation in Damascus described by Ibn Jubayr continued to exist, in a strikingly similar way, for more than one and a half centuries.Footnote ⁸⁸

One of those Muslim sovereigns who assigned handouts for katātīb pupils was the youthful Mamlūk sultan al-Asharaf Shaʿbān (r. 764-78 /1363-77), who dedicated a bountiful waqf to the maintenance of the two holy sanctuaries at Makka and Madina that included the teaching of local children. It is telling that the beneficiary pupilli were required, as expressly stated by the waqf deed itself, to supplicate God for the donor sultan,Footnote ⁸⁹ an originally religious gesture that later assumed socio-political significance. Endowments for kuttāb education were likewise dispensed by emirs, high state officials and well-to-do philanthropists. For example, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Bīsānī, a most cherished vizier of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn who is best known as al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil (d. 596/1200), is reported to have dedicated waqfs to help the orphans receive basic learning in the katātīb.Footnote ⁹⁰ There was also a curious type of waqf in Damascus related to child learning. Commonly known as ‘waqf al-quḍāma’, this endowment was dedicated to the provision of a kind of sweet called quḍāma (lit. ‘bites’). It was greatly loved by the children, who, on their way to the kuttāb, used to go to the waqf keeper and stuff their pockets with it, as a learning incentive.Footnote ⁹¹ In the Mamlūk and Ottoman eras, particularly in Cairo, the katātīb were incorporated in one ensemble with civic charity stations for drinking water supply, normally fountains or troughs, known as sabīls.Footnote ⁹² Together, they were called sabīl-kuttābs, insinuating that the right of receiving education is as fundamental as that of drinking water.

In the first three centuries, and in the absence of a regular governmental subsidy (supra), the katātīb were not directly administered by the state. It was not until the post of the muḥtasib, ‘chief censor’,Footnote ⁹³ gained a better-defined and a more ‘official’ authority in the early ʿAbbāsid times that the katātīb received any official supervision.Footnote ⁹⁴ Generally, the earliest educational activities in medieval Islam were “individual in nature and intellectual in expression”, as Günther puts it.Footnote ⁹⁵ Later, educating orphans in particular was thought of as one of the ‘public rights’ and was thus monitored by the muḥtasib who, beside the policing system, was responsible for fulfilling such public rights (istīfāʾ al-ḥuqūq al-ʿāmma). Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148), the judge of Seville, referred to such pedagogical duties, in case parents were absent, as a responsibility of the state: “Once the child becomes aware, his patron―whether a parent, custodian, fosterer, or the imām [here to represent the state] ―ought to indoctrinate in him faith, teach him writing and arithmetic […]”.Footnote ⁹⁶ This should discredit Landau's argument that the katātīb were privately funded throughout the Middle Ages, and that “the state hardly intervened until well into the 19th century”.Footnote ⁹⁷

Against this background, the teaching and breeding methods implemented in the katātīb were vetted periodically by the muḥtasib,Footnote ⁹⁸ who stipulated that the schoolmaster should treat pupils benignly, and teach them the short sūras of the Qurʾān and the main religious beliefs, followed by the basics of arithmetic and composition.Footnote ⁹⁹ This needed to be delivered in progressive stages so that the child could digest acquired knowledge.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Most of our information on public inspection of katātīb and other places of a public character, as well as different types of craftsmen and retailers, by the muḥtasibs in medieval Islam are taken from two main ‘insiders’: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Naṣr al-Shayzarī (d. ca. 590/1194) and Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Bassām al-Muḥtasib (late sixth-early seventh centuries). Al-Shayzarī was the qāḍī of Tiberias and a shaykh as well as a private physician of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ayyūbī. He wrote his book Nihāyat al-rutba fī ṭalab al-ḥisba in response to a request, as he stated, by the muḥtasib in his time. Ibn Bassām, on the other hand, was himself a muḥtasib under the Ayyūbids―hence his epithet. His book bears the same title as that of al-Shayzarī and was greatly inspired by it. According to both informants, a muḥtasib had to make sure that children in the kuttāb did not take pleasure in reciting or listening to inappropriate poems by two particular bards: [al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad] Ibn Ḥajjāj (d. 391/1001) and [Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Baghdādī] Ṣarīʿ al-Dilāʾ (d. 412/1021).Footnote ¹⁰¹ Both poets were known for their dissolute poems and, more alarmingly, for anti-ʿAbbāsid affiliations. While the latter was in contact with Buyid and Fatimid rivals, Ibn al-Ḥajjāj formerly, as well as interestingly, acted as the muḥtasib of Baghdad in the vizierate of the Buyid Naṣīr al-Dīn b. Baqiyya (d. 367/978). Al-Shayzarī added to the list of banned poems eulogies dedicated by the [Shīʿī] Rawāfiḍ bards to the Āl al-Bayt (particularly the ʿAlīds), who were the main political opponents of the ʿAbbāsids. These, according to him, should be replaced with verses composed to praise the ṣaḥābīs―“so that it [i.e. the veneration of the latter] should be established in the hearts of the boys”, as he explained.Footnote ¹⁰² It was also stipulated, just as we find in Talmudic instructions, that the teacher should be married.Footnote ¹⁰³ Also speaking of the necessary features of a schoolmaster (muʿallim al-kuttāb), the chief qāḍī in Damascus in the eighth/fourteenth century, Tājj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370), states:

In this connection, the heading Ibn al-Ḥājj al-ʿAbdarī (d. 737/1336) uses for his chapter on primary education is also indicative: ‘A Chapter on Educating Children and Causing Them to Abide by the Sharīʿa Law (qānūn al-sharīʿa) and Renounce What is Beyond It, and the Best Regimen for That All’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Below are a number of reports reflecting how crucial and rewarding the teaching of children was looked upon by early Muslim intellectual authorities. The same stance is recurrently expressed by modern affiliates of the ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa, most particularly:

The importance of the katātīb and their dynamic role in the pre-modern Muslim societies is further highlighted when we know that Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī (d. 298/911), a major Ismāʿīlī missionary who paved the way for the establishment of the Fāṭimid caliphate in Tunisia, chose to introduce himself to the people of the Maghrebi Kutāma tribe as a schoolmaster. He said to them: “I am a man from Iraq who once served the ruler there [he most probably meant the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Muʿtamid (r. 256-79/870-92)], but I later realised that his service was not a good deed (laysat min afʿāl al-birr). Therefore, I quit and set up to make a living from a lawful source of money (māl ḥalāl). I knew of no better trade, to that end, than teaching the Qurʾān to primary-age pupils (taʿlīm al-Qurʾān li-l-ṣibyān)”. It was in the guise of a schoolmaster that Abū ʿAbd Allāh entered Qayrawān. He worked diligently there and soon, thanks to his exceptional rhetorical powers, influenced the boys, their parents, and the whole community, including the noblemen of Kutāma. He managed to convert scores of them to Shīʿism and led them to conquer Ifrīqiya and depose the Aghlabids in 289-96/902–8.Footnote ¹¹⁴

katātīb and Medieval Muslim Intellectual Groups

Generally, the medieval Arabic writings of educational substance are quintessentially informed by a number of specific sources: (i) the Muslim scriptures, namely the Qurʾān and ḥadīth; (ii) archetypes of the ancient Greek paideia;Footnote ¹¹⁵ and (iii) and cultural practices of ancient Persia and pre-Islamic Arabia. In the meantime, the Islamic theory of education benefitted in the medieval times from channels of reciprocal cultural relations with the Jewish and Christian communities of the Near East. Two particulars need to be underscored here. First, unlike in antiquity where the pedagogical hypotheses were mainly of philosophical import, in medieval Islam these were profoundly grounded in religious precepts.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Second, each of the above foreign add-ons was subjected to phases of careful refinement and refashioning to fit the general Muslim intellectual framework. This revisory process also varied according to each of the medieval Islamic tendencies, which all stressed the momentousness of children teaching.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Points of unanimity between such tendencies focused majorly on aspects related to such pedagogical miens as progressive education, considering individual differences in the learners’ capabilities, equity between students, and avoidance of severe corporal punishment. In practice, however, schoolmasters did not follow a single pattern. For example, while some of them preferred to galvanize pupils’ potentials through incentives and inspiration, others tended to put them through the mill.

Occasionally, the alliances and antagonisms in the wider intellectual milieu found themselves expressed in the types of instruction given to schoolmasters and pupils (infra). We have already seen that al-Jāḥiẓ warned against teaching children the books of Abū Ḥanīfa. Likewise, in advising pupils against specialising in multiple disciplines, he bitterly mocked al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī's (d. ca. 175/791) endeavour in this regard. Al-Jāḥiẓ then comments: “He [i.e. al-Khalīl, in so doing] reached a level of ignorance so low that only with God's desertion one would reach it. May God neither deprive us of His guarding nor afflict us with His desertion”.Footnote ¹¹⁸ In other cases, particular books were recommended.Footnote ¹¹⁹ After naming a number of trusted ḥadīth collections, Ibn al-ʿArabī advises young students to be “careful about the books of the [so-called] pious and what belongs to admonition (waʿẓ), for they scrupled not to attribute to the Prophet fabricated ḥadīths―whether intentionally or unintentionally”.Footnote ¹²⁰

First: People of the Tradition (ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa)

The term ‘ahl al-sunna’ is believed to have come into sight in tandem with the rise of the Ashʿarī theological school, which was founded by Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/936) in the early fourth/tenth century. Ashʿarism's success is mainly down to two particular reasons: the large number as well as agility of al-Ashʿarī's disciples; and the caliph's al-Mutawakkil abandonment of the Muʿtazilī School.Footnote ¹²¹ Alongside Ashʿarism, the theological entity of Sunni Islam is represented by Māturīdism and the Athariyya School of theology. The latter, per se, is commonly referred to as Traditionalism. The doctrine of these theological schools is complemented, on the jurisprudential level, by pre-existing orthodox schools of fiqh, most notably the Ḥanafite, Mālikite, Shāfiʿite and Ḥanbalite. The ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa, usually (and literally) translated into English as ‘the People of Tradition and Community’, denotes those adhering to the Prophet's orthodoxy as embodied in the consensus of the ‘revered’ Muslim scholars.

Second: An early critical approach

The above traditionalist approach, which clearly depended on rote learning,Footnote ¹⁶⁹ prevailed in most of the Muslim regions and eras. It was criticised by only a very limited number of medieval Muslim scholars, most notably and openly Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (d. 543/1148).Footnote ¹⁷⁰ A majority of scholars, on the other hand, were either convinced or hesitant to criticise the conventional, Qurʾān-centred learning programme. Ibn al-ʿArabī was a greatly respected figure in medieval Islam. He was the chief Mālikī qādī in Al-Andalus. Originally from Seville (supra), in his youth he travelled to different parts of the Muslim world, including Syria, Iraq and Egypt, and took knowledge from the most eminent scholars of the time, including al-Ghazālī and al-Ṭurṭūshī (d. 520/1126). His father, in contrast, was a zealous student of Ibn Ḥazm.Footnote ¹⁷¹

In his Riḥla, as cited by Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406), Ibn al-ʿArabī insisted that Arabic language and poetry should be taught prior to any other type of knowledge, including the Qurʾān. This was reportedly the general method in Al-Andalus. According to him, it is necessary for a child to start with poetry and language, followed by arithmetic, before moving on to learn the Qurʾān, which, he reckons, would be easier after this introduction (i.e. preliminary teaching). Ibn al-ʿArabī then laments: “How heedless the people of our lands are! [He could be here meaning all of the Muslim regions rather than just his homeland Al-Andalus]. They teach the child the Qurʾān at a very early age―he [thus] reads what he does not understand and devotes himself to an affair of less profitability for his early intellectual formation than others”. According to Ibn al-ʿArabī, this is to be followed by uṣūl al-dīn, uṣūl al-fiqh, dialectics, and then ḥadīth along with its subordinate branches of knowledge.Footnote ¹⁷²

In fairness to the traditionalist school, a proper knowledge of the Qurʾān according to them entails adequate familiarity with syntax and orthography. According to Ibn Saḥnūn and al-Qābisī, the teacher should not move pupils from one sūra to another unless they memorise the previous one along with its desinential inflexion and orthography, unless this latter condition is mitigated by parents.Footnote ¹⁷³ While orthography is to ensure the holy text is transcribed and pronounced correctly, syntax and parsing are to help understand the meanings (commands, interdictions, etc.). In Arabic, iʿrāb is particularly developed to help the readers and listeners distinguish the meanings, grasp the purport and identify the objectives of the speaker accordingly.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ Al-Qābisī reported that [ʿAbd Allāh] Ibn Wahb (d. 197/812) urged people to learn Arabic language so as to straighten their tongue and hone their enunciation, elocution and rhetorical appeal. Ibn Wahb states: “He who reads a verse from the Qurʾān and takes it at face value would assuredly go astray”.Footnote ¹⁷⁵

Beside his al-Riḥla and al-ʿAwāṣim min al-qawāṣim, Ibn al-ʿArabī's works on education included: Ādāb al-muʿallimīn, Marāqī al-zulaf (both of which are now missing), and Aḥkām al-Qurʾān. In the latter, he praises a method which he saw in a region that he called al-diyār al-mukarrama (most probably the Ḥijāz or the eastern Islamic lands in general),Footnote ¹⁷⁶ according to which the memorisation of the Qurʾān was delayed (until the pupils’ second decade of life),Footnote ¹⁷⁷ until the child had been taught such basic types of knowledge as writing, arithmetic and Arabic language. A majority of parents in these lands would even postpone their son's memorisation of the Qurʾān until he had learned such sciences as fiqh and ḥadīth. Ibn al-ʿArabī then comments:

Mālik b. Anas did not encourage requiring children to start learning the Qurʾān at a very early age. He is even reported to have raised an objection (ankara) when told about a child who had memorised all of the Holy Book at the age of seven, which means he started the mission two years earlier―at the very least.Footnote ¹⁸⁰ This stance of Mālik had to be rationalised by later Mālikī exponents. Ibn al-Minbar, for instance, ascribed it to one of two possibilities: either for fear that the child should pronounce the Qurʾānic text mistakenly, or that he would be deprived of the types of amusement (lahwu) that suit his age and are of key importance to the establishment of his personality. Muḥammad b. Rushd al-Jadd (d. 520/1126), the judge of Cordoba and grandfather of the renowned Averroes, on the other hand, explains that a memorisation of the whole Qurʾān at such an exceedingly early age could not normally be achieved without over-exerting the child.Footnote ¹⁸¹ Those who argued against teaching the Qurʾān to children at a very early age included such early Sunni authorities as Saʿīd b. Jubayr (d. 95/714) and Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī (d. 96/715).Footnote ¹⁸²

Ibn Khaldūn, on his part, praised the above teaching programme of Ibn al-ʿArabī, which he quoted and referred to as an examplary method. Before that, however, he gives us a panoramic account of the teaching programmes at the katātīb of the different Islamic regions. According to Ibn Khaldūn, basics of different types of knowledge were taught alongside the Qurʾān in the eastern Islamic lands, where handwriting/calligraphy was taught singlehandedly by specialised teachers. In the Maghreb,Footnote ¹⁸³ however, the kuttāb learning revolved around the Qurʾān exclusively―students were also trained on accurate transcribing of the varied authorised readings of the Qurʾānic text. In Ibn Khaldūn's own homeland, i.e. Ifrīqiya, the curriculum was more assorted. Although the highest emphasis was laid upon learning the Qurʾān by heart and studying its variant readings, attention was also given to ḥadīth, in addition to handwriting and basic introductions to the different sciences. In Al-Andalus, the curriculum included, beside the Qurʾān, poetry, Arabic grammar and handwriting. Composition was also added to the teaching programme, and special attention was paid to calligraphy.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ This means that, apart from some qualitative variances, the katātīb in all the regions assigned priority to memorisation of the Qurʾān. Directly after this panoptic survey, Ibn Khaldūn praised the method of Ibn al-ʿArabī but explained why it was difficult to apply it:

The traditional method, criticised here by Ibn al-ʿArabī and Ibn Khaldūn, is that described by Ibn Saḥnūn and al-Qābisī centuries ago. As an alternative to that memory-based learning, Ibn Khaldūn, in a clearly forward-thinking spirit, gave the principles of education an inevitable humanistic dimension.Footnote ¹⁸⁷ He developed that conventional religious-oriented learning into a more comprehensive one that would better go along with his own theory on human ʿumrān, which investigates the diverse aspects of human life, such as sovereignty, earnings, crafts and sciences. In his elementary educational programme, the pupil is moved from reading and writing to arithmetic because of an important educational consideration: that arithmetic trains the mind and makes learnable the yet-to-learn sciences. It is the science of necessary and accurate relations: “[it is] clear facts and organised proofs, and so it usually leads to forming a bright mind that is trained on correctness”.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ Through arithmetic, the child would learn what al-Ghazālī refers to in al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl as ‘al-jaliyyāt wa-l-badīhiyyāt’―“les évidences”, according to Descartes’ Le Discours de la méthode. There is also an ethical rationale for Ibn Khaldūn's giving arithmetic such precedence over other sciences and types of knowledge: that is, it helps the child take honesty as a life principle, especially if taught directly after reading and writing, followed by the memorisation of the Qurʾān (which would then be more beneficial). In Ibn Khaldūn's estimation, “He who commits himself to learning arithmetic first would get used to honesty, because it introduces him to the correctness of structures (ṣiḥḥat al-mabānī) and self-reflection. This would then become a method and he would get used to telling the truth […]”.Footnote ¹⁸⁹ This of course, while an interesting theory, is not an established fact for every learner or culture.

It is quite interesting that Ibn Khaldūn praised Ibn al-ʿArabī's stance and, unlike his predecessors and contemporaries in North Africa in particular, dared to criticise the traditional teaching method in the katātīb, in spite of his affiliation to the judiciary system there and his well-known fiqhī and Ṣūfī predilections. Both scholars believed that learning such basic subjects as literacy and arithmetic should come before any other, including the Qurʾān, which was naturally seen, far and wide, as the backbone of Islamic education and intellectual culture taken together. Such revolutionary thoughts, as opposed to a dominant conventional learning environment, was unsurprisingly seen as subversive, and thus was rebuked by the conservative religious authorities in the time of Ibn Khaldūn. The resentful voices were led by Ibn ʿArafa al-Warghammī (d. 803/1401), the chief imām of the Mālikītes in Tunisia at that time, who on different occasions vetoed Ibn Khaldūn's appointment as the chief judge there, although their chronic antipathy to each other, and the general hostility towards Ibn Khaldūn among conservatives, was likely owing to his reputation as a turncoat and opportunist rather than due to the import of his theories on educational reform. The Ḥafṣīd sultan, Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad al-Mustanṣir (r. 772-96/1370-94), was stirred against him by conservatives, so he decided to leave for Egypt. The victory of Ibn ʿArafa may symbolise the state rejection of the ‘Khaldūnian School’ and the intellectual turn that it would have promised.Footnote ¹⁹⁰

Third: Medieval Muslim philosophers

This exploration of Ibn Khaldūn's views on primary education needs to be related to how such an early stage of intellectual formation was looked upon by the medieval Muslim philosophers in general. It should be noted though that the above discussion has already exposed a part of the outlook of the medieval Muslim philosophical culture on the topic. This is because, in addition to Ibn Khaldūn, some of the above classical names, such as al-Jāḥiẓ, Ibn Ḥazm, and al-Ghazālī, were partially philosophers, thanks to their intellectual make-up as polymaths. Their relevant views are discussed further in the following sections. Generally speaking, Muslim philosophers’ contribution to educational theory, particularly that relating to higher learning, was rich and varied, integrating Islamic core values and other rudiments from the ancient Arabian and Mesopotamian heritage, as well as substantial inputs from Greco-Roman cultures.Footnote ¹⁹¹ Among those primarily defined as philosophers, few are known to have written on child learning. Furthermore, with the exception of Ibn Sīnā, their writings on the topic are markedly succinct―most likely due to an ultimate common concession that this early learning stage should be left to schoolmasters in the traditional katātīb.

The Teaching Programmes and the Dilemma of Epistemology

It is only in light of a number of particular aspects that an adequate understanding of the above teaching programmes and their substantive discrepancies can be approached. Beside the foremost need to establish and nurture an Arabo-Islamic socio-cultural identity, these aspects are: (i) the administrative needs of the state; (ii) the inveterate disagreements between the different intellectual tendencies in the Muslim communities; (iii) the types of academic and/or vocational career in the post-kuttāb stage;Footnote ²⁰⁸ and (iv) how the different types of knowledge were defined, valued and classified accordingly.Footnote ²⁰⁹ While the first two aspects have been dealt with earlier in this article, we will try, in what follows, to provide insights into the last two, which, in view of their organic relationship, need to be handled together in one subsection.

Generally, the copious medieval Muslim literature on knowledge (ʿilm) and the countless academic instructions given by pundits to teachers and students, particularly in the higher education stage, are indicative of a fervent scientific movement in the medieval Islamic world. However, there was a markedly notorious, even if understandable, disagreement between the different intellectual groups on how knowledge would be classified. According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (463/1071), a chief Mālikī jurisconsult in Al-Andalus (Lisbon), the branches of knowledge are categorised, in every nation, into three main tiers of prioritisation and status: high, middle and low. The first cluster consists exclusively of theology and religious sciences, which ought to be based on divine revelation, whereas the second includes indispensable ‘secular’ sciences, such as medicine and engineering. The third group comprises crafts and ‘utilitarian’ callings such as dressmaking and calligraphyFootnote ²¹⁰ as well as horse riding and swimming.Footnote ²¹¹ In a similar fashion, al-Ghazālī divides knowledge, from an exclusively Islamic legal perspective, into two types. The first type of knowledge, according to him, includes the sciences whose study is farḍ ʿayn (i.e. an individual obligation on every single Muslim per se), which are the Islamic religious sciences. The least satisfactory amount of that knowledge, as al-Ghazālī explains, is what would lead one to true faith and fulfillment of religious duties.Footnote ²¹² The second type comprises the sciences whose studying is farḍ kifāya (i.e. a communal obligation, where a minimum number of people must study them as an indispensable requirement for people's lives and the survival of society), such as medicine and arithmetic―beside in-depth Islamic knowledge.Footnote ²¹³ A more classical dialectic in medieval Islamic culture is that relating to the duality of rational knowledge (ʿulūm ʿaqliyya) versus traditional, literally transmitted, knowledge (ʿulūm naqliyya). Also known as ʿulūm al-awāʾil (infra), the former rely on observation and deduction, and include such sciences as mathematics, physics and astronomy. The latter, on the other hand, are mainly based on revelation and its traditional interpretations and include the likes of Qurʾān exegesis, ḥadīth studies, fiqh and kalām.Footnote ²¹⁴

Based on vocational considerations, however, al-Jāḥiẓ remarks that the sciences most suitable for kings are genealogy, chronicles and general fiqh, whereas those for merchants are arithmetic and writing; the science best fitting warriors is war literature that could be found in works on maghāzī and siyar.Footnote ²¹⁵ That being said, the most thorough discussion on the sciences in medieval Islam is perhaps that written by Ibn Khaldūn, who describes their scopes, terminologies, practicality and religious legality.Footnote ²¹⁶

After the kuttāb stage, Ibn Sīnā advises students’ mentors to decide the former's future vocation (ṣināʿa), and in turn the subjects as well as skills that this would require, based not on the social rank which students belong to or yearn for, but on such key elements as age, compatibility, passion, aptitude and inborn character.Footnote ²¹⁷ As such, Ibn Sīnā adopted an educational philosophy that helps create a most rounded alumnus, as it takes into account the multiple talents and sides of the student's persona. In a sense, this is reminiscent of what is referred to in the modern pedagogical trends as the head, heart and hands (HHH) learning theory.Footnote ²¹⁸ Literally taking ‘ṣināʿa’ to mean a manual craft, Mirbabaev argues: “in the second stage of schooling, which Ibn Sīnā called the period of specialisation, pupils should, in his view, begin to acquire manual skills […]. Ibn Sīnā's own preference was for the teaching of crafts […]”.Footnote ²¹⁹ Unlike ṣanʿa, however, ṣināʿa has a primary meaning of any field of knowledge (kullu ʿilmⁱⁿ aw fann) one would practice until attaining mastery, after which one could turn to a profession―crafts are included in this model, but are not singled out.Footnote ²²⁰ This is made clearer by the context of Ibn Sīnā's relevant passages, which, while referring to state secretary, accounting, engineering and medicine as illustrative examples, make no mention of manual crafts as technically defined. In any case, the reformist views of Ibn Sīna, like those of Ibn al-ʿArabī and Ibn Khaldūn (supra), are ably forward-looking and human-centred, even by modern-day standards. However, in medieval times they remained popular only in limited scholastic circles, and scarcely found their way to full application in actual practice.

The above taxonomies and their foundations, as well as the other common issues of disciplinarity, changed course according to place and time.Footnote ²²¹ Equally changeable were the community's need for each of the sciences, and their relative importance in relation to contextual needs. It is interesting to note that in K. al Shifāʾ, Ibn Sīna divided knowledge into practical and theoretical, but unlike in modern classifications, which are inevitably based on our perception of how today's world operates (particularly as embedded in post-modern Western cultural assumptions), he included in the former group such disciplines as ethics, economics and politics.Footnote ²²² In the latter group, he listed sciences such as mathematics, physics and metaphysics. In his Taʿlīm al-mutaʿallim, al-Zarnūjī gives priority to the so-called ‘ʿilm al-ḥāl’, which denotes the type(s) of knowledge one would need to handle one's own day-to-day conditions and circumstances. Al-Zarnūjī, just as many other traditional scholars, particularly Ṣūfīs down to the beginning of the fourteenth century AH, tended to use the term to mainly denote religious sciences (the Ṣūfīs used it to designate the conditions of the heart in particular). The term itself is, nonetheless, remarkably interesting and would be practical to comply with the progress that would have occurred to the people's cultural life in every time and place.Footnote ²²³

If the fullest appraisal of the sciences in medieval Islam is due to Ibn Khaldūn, that which Ibn Ḥazm presented in his Marātib al-ʿulūm is surely the most interesting. Written as a response to his students’ inquiries about the sciences most worthy of studying, the treatise is also the most relevant to our discussion―especially in that he gives such appraisal while detailing the learning programme he would recommend for children and young learners.Footnote ²²⁴ Ibn Ḥazm's discussion gives insights into how sciences were ranked in the fifth/eleventh century and the reasons behind such ranking.Footnote ²²⁵ According to him, there are seven divisions of knowledge in each nation, place and time. The first three, which differed from one nation to another, are those related to religion, history and language. The four remaining sciences, however, are universal: astronomy or astrology (ʿilm al-nujūm), mathematics, medicine and philosophy. He then rated the different sciences based on their worthiness of being learned.Footnote ²²⁶

Ibn Ḥazm started his treatise theorising that the continuity of a certain science is determined based on the continuity of the community's need for it. This is why, in his view, some ancient ‘sciences’ are still in use while others are not. Among the former group, Ibn Ḥazm gave priority to those on which other sciences are based and then the next most fundamental and so on.Footnote ²²⁷ According to him, the latter group includes magic and music,Footnote ²²⁸ calling those claiming knowledge of any of such pseudo-sciences in his time as either naïve or superstitious. It is worth noting that, according to common belief, the so-called ʿilm al-siḥr wa-l-talṣamāt ‘talismanic magic’,Footnote ²²⁹ referred to here by Ibn Ḥazm, was first introduced to the Andalusians by Maslama al-Majrīṭī (d. 398/1007), who interpreted and summarised the ancient books on the subject. Al-Majrīṭī was also criticised by Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī who, warning pupils against some popular ‘misleading’ informants, states: “They speak of so and so al-Ṭulayṭilī, so and so al-Majrīṭī, and Ibn Mughīth―may God neither spare his soul nor make him reach his goal”. Ibn al-ʿArabī insisted that if a boy took knowledge from such authors, he would surely fall behind.Footnote ²³⁰ That said, Maslama al-Majrīṭī, Latinised as Methilem, was indeed a leading astronomer and alchemist, who is also believed to have written on celestial magic.Footnote ²³¹ He was pioneering in using mercury (II) oxide that was elemental for the later experiments of Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier in the eighteenth century.

Equally devious, according to Ibn Ḥazm, were those practising alchemy (ʿilm al-kīmyāʾ―sometimes referred to as khīmyāʾ or ʿilm al-ṣanʿa)Footnote ²³² for they added to the above negative practices, i.e. of those learning magic, other more immoral ones, such as consuming other people's wealth unlawfully, and producing counterfeit coins.Footnote ²³³ Ibn Ḥazm gave alchemy a lower grade than magic and music because of an interesting consideration; the two other so-called ‘sciences’, while totally vanished in his own day as he confirmed (ʿadima wa-n-qaṭaʿa albatta), once existed for ages. Alchemy, on the other hand, “which they claim could transmute the chemical elements of [base] metals [into noble ones] is still a nonentity that never existed, and a myth that never occurred even for one hour―because it is [physically] impossible to convert a type into another”.Footnote ²³⁴ This practice, against which the young learners are warned by Ibn Ḥazm, was originally a classical antique one known as chrysopoeia, which according to common thoughts was only achievable through a mythical catalyst known as the philosophers’ stone (lapis philosophorum). This and other comparable praxes, where science was intermingled with folkloric practices, incited avarice among young learners. Like other scholars in medieval Islam, Ibn Ḥazm was particularly critical of such allurements. He commented in a satirical tone: “There is, indeed, no difference [in terms of impossibility] between transmuting copper into gold or gold into copper and converting a man into a donkey or a donkey into a man. The same is applicable to all other elements and species as it is entirely impossible [mumtaniʿ albatta]”.Footnote ²³⁵

Of course, Ibn Ḥazm was not the only critic of alchemy in and beyond the Muslim world, despite earlier momentous efforts led by Jābir b. Ḥayyān, Latinised as Geber (d. 199/815),Footnote ²³⁶ to impart to ancient esoteric alchemical practices a scientific character. However uninformed it may seem in today's academic ethos, this opinion of Ibn Ḥazm is not totally without foundation―his contention being that alchemy, at least to his knowledge, never existed. Nor was it verified by experiment-based evidence. It was for the same reasons that Ibn Ḥazm and othersFootnote ²³⁷ denounced astrology, which he deemed unqualified to be counted as an evidence-based science (ʿilm burhān).Footnote ²³⁸ He accordingly advised curious students against learning it. At this historical stage, the term ‘ʿilm al-nujūm’Footnote ²³⁹ was used to refer to astronomy and astrology interchangeably.Footnote ²⁴⁰ Later, as time went by, the distinction between the two became more visible. Abū al-Barakāt al-Ghazzī (d. 984/1576), for instance, refers to the latter as tanjīm, equivalent to divination or soothsaying. He argued that its learning, together with that of magic, philosophy (that is still thought of by some as inimical to the Islamic concepts),Footnote ²⁴¹ jugglery or sleight of hand (shaʿbadha), and natural sciences (ʿulūm al-ṭabāʾiʿyyīn),Footnote ²⁴² are religiously prohibited according to the majority of Muslim scholars (jumhūr).Footnote ²⁴³

According to the teaching programme recommended by Ibn Ḥazm, the pupils should start with learning literacy, i.e. reading and writing, which should also involve the memorisation of the Qurʾān. Then they would be moved to grammar and linguistics. As he explains, if a pupil does not manage to acquire that fundamental knowledge, he would struggle in the other (more complicated) sciences. Ibn Ḥazm also suggests that the study of linguistics should be interlaced with poetry, particularly the decent verses by such ṣaḥābīs as Ḥassān b. Thābit (d. ca. 54/674), whose sobriquet was ‘the Prophet's bard’, Kaʿb b. Mālik (d. 51/671) and ʿAbd Allāh b. Rawāḥa (d. 8/629), as well as the ʿAbbāsid poet Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAbd al-Quddūs. Pupils, however, should avoid other ‘inappropriate’ types of poem, on which he expounded.Footnote ²⁴⁴ Although Ibn Ḥazm cannot be thought of as a typical traditionist,Footnote ²⁴⁵ his advised elementary teaching programme is massively comparable to that suggested by affiliates of the traditional tendency. The differences are only incidental. As we saw above, while the call to avoid indecent poem is universal, those against whose poems students were warned differed from time to time. Although at some point in his literary career Ibn Ḥazm attained great proficiency in poetry, he advised the young knowledge-seekers not to pay much attention to it―as he later came to consider that it was not an appropriate or beneficial path to take.Footnote ²⁴⁶

For a more complete idea of Ibn Ḥazm, his suggested teaching programme, and the scholastic drift he represents here, we need to look at the subjects that he recommends for the next educational stage, which, while given in the same previous context of addressing early learning in general, clearly denote the learning phase following the kuttāb (even if directly). Ibn Ḥazm advises students to move on to study mathematics (ʿilm al-ʿadad),Footnote ²⁴⁷ including arithmetic (arithmāṭīqī) and area calculation, followed by deliberate study of ‘Euclid's book’,Footnote ²⁴⁸ which he praises as an outstanding masterpiece that made understandable many cosmological mysteries concerning areas, dimensions and centres, as well as the rotation of the earth and the orbits of celestial objects.Footnote ²⁴⁹ As seen by Ibn Ḥazm, himself regarded as one of the first scholars to speak of a spherical Earth,Footnote ²⁵⁰ the erudition in Euclid's book would definitely introduce students to many secrets of the universe and its infinity and that, in turn, would establish their belief in God. One of the books Ibn Ḥazm strongly recommends for students is Almagest (by Ptolemy), which, as he explains, is critical for the knowledge of eclipses, latitudes and longitudes, timings, changes in day and night lengths, lunar station and shining stars (darārī).Footnote ²⁵¹

Ibn Ḥazm also recommends a thorough study of area calculation and surveying, given their huge benefit for vital daily-life applications, such as water supply, lifting operations, construction engineering and machine manufacturing.Footnote ²⁵² He then advises a neophyte to learn logic in order to acquaint himself with such dialectical instruments as premises, presuppositions and conclusions, thus enabling differentiation between demonstration (burhān) and obfuscation (shaghab or tashghīb). According to Ibn Ḥazm, a student should also consider learning such crucial sciences as physics, meteorology, [chemical] element composition, mineralogy, zoology, botany and biology (or the ‘science of species’, as he calls it). A student is also advised to study anatomy “to realise the perfection of God's creation” and, particularly as a pastime, read books of history so as to learn religious and moral lessons.Footnote ²⁵³

There are two main points to consider here. First, multidisciplinarity was an established value in medieval Islamic educational culture. The result was a multitude of reputed polymaths. In addition to Ibn Ḥazm, al-Ghazālī advises students, in a clearly forward-thinking spirit, to have a decent share of every useful discipline (fann). According to him, this tafannun, ‘multidisciplinarity’, is essential for the making of a rounded scholar.Footnote ²⁵⁴ There were, however, objections to this approach. As already seen, al-Jāḥiẓ, for instance, advised students against specialising in more than one discipline, although he himself wrote on a variety of topics. It was in that context that he mocked al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (supra): “A man would be doing well in one or two disciplines and thus thinks he would not apply his erudition to anything without success”.Footnote ²⁵⁵ This may explain why Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī, after detailing his suggested multifarious learning programme, comments:

While a keen proponent of multidisciplinarity, Ibn al-ʿArabī advised that no two sciences should be taught simultaneously, unless the student is capable to do so in terms of both comprehension and diligence.Footnote ²⁵⁷ It is also reported that the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān gave similar advice to the muʾaddib, ‘tutor’, of his sons: “Do not move them from one science to another, before they would assimilate the former; the congestion of words in the ear surely impedes comprehension”.Footnote ²⁵⁸

Second, Ibn Ḥazm's appraisal of the sciences and, in turn, suggested learning programme, in spite of a clear diversification, are deeply grounded in a religious context. He dedicates quite a big space in his treatise at issue to make the case that religious sciences, particularly Islamic religious sciences (ʿilm al-sharīʿa), are the most valuable and indispensable among all sciences.Footnote ²⁵⁹ This opinion of Ibn Ḥazm represents the prevailing current of thought in medieval Islam.Footnote ²⁶⁰ Trying to convince the young learners of the same stance, he recurrently labelled as “irrational” the dedication of considerable effort to a sort of knowledge that is only beneficial in this short life―hence ʿulūm al-dunyā, ‘the sciences of this life’ (also ʿulūm al-awāʾil, ‘the sciences of the ancients’).Footnote ²⁶¹ The dichotomy between ʿulūm al-dunyā and ʿulūm al-dīn (secular vs. religious, or sacred vs. profane),Footnote ²⁶² while a common divisor in many of the world's cultures, has had a marked impact in the Islamic intellectual venture. In Islam, particularly in the formative period, the dues of Caesar were technically inseparable from those of God; every activity, no matter how significant, assumed a religious character.

Therefore, some of the sciences that are normally included in the ʿulūm al-dunyā constellation could be moved to that of ʿulūm al-dīn and vice versa, based on certain parameters. For example, mathematics, which is typically classified as one of the former, could be thought of as belonging to the latter because of its inevitable uses in such religious duties as mawārīth, ‘the allocation of wills, inheritances’, the division of legal entitlements, and other types of muʿāmalāt, ‘transactions’. As such, many medieval Muslim legalists looked at arithmetic as an inevitable handmaiden of fiqh al-muʿāmalāt, ‘laws pertaining to human dealing and intercourses’, one of two main divisions of Islamic law,Footnote ²⁶³ rating its learning as a collective obligation (farḍ kifāya). In that religion-centred lexicon, nonetheless, thorough study of mathematics for beyond-religious purposes, including the polishing of minds, is deemed supererogatory according to al-Ghazālī, and wasteful according to Ibn Rajab.Footnote ²⁶⁴ In the same vein, practicing medicine, engineering and physics could all be regarded religious undertakings if done in the intention (niyya) of helping the nation and buttressing the religion. On the other hand, some of the religious sciences can be deemed secular, as they help facilitate the people's lives and transactions. It is in this understanding that al-Ghazālī, for example, interestingly included Islamic fiqh in the cluster of the ʿulūm al-dunyā.Footnote ²⁶⁵

The Qurʾān calls upon believers to look at the ‘book of nature’ so as to realize the greatness of the One and only God, and to use its sources for the benefit of the people. As such, Muslim scholars in the ‘golden era’ studied nature in the context of the Qurʾān, as a blueprint for the relationship between mankind and the universe. Prompted to deepen their perception of the divine, scholars set out to examine the different natural phenomena. The result was a rich and multifaceted scientific venture in a multitude of fields, including medicine, chemistry, physics, mathematics, geography and astronomy. The latter three, in particular, were indispensable for maintaining Islamic rituals and observances.Footnote ²⁶⁶ In 1927, George Sarton stated: “From the second half of the eighth to the end of the eleventh century, Arabic was the scientific and the progressive language of mankind […]”.Footnote ²⁶⁷ Throughout that period, learning constituted the foundation of a religio-humanistic enterprise where priority was given to cultural advancement and scholastic endeavour.

That being said, the wisest route for students to take, in Ibn Ḥazm's judgment, was to dedicate their efforts to studying the sciences in a way that would lead to salvation (khalāṣ).Footnote ²⁶⁸ In this regard, he gave students a prescription of how to religionise those sciences which are not inherently religious by definition. As he maintains, sciences such as ʿilm al-ʿadad (reckoning), ʿilm al-hayʾa Footnote ²⁶⁹ (the science of the figure of the heavens), which is a subdivision of astronomy, and logic, however helpful in realising the essence of things, would be rewarding only if leading to a better knowledge of the Maker. Otherwise, a learner of such sciences would be worthy of being called “inquisitive and ill-advised”.Footnote ²⁷⁰ Some went so far as not to recommend the study of natural sciences in the belief that this could harm the people's faith.Footnote ²⁷¹ Of course, such stances seem censorial and obstructive. However, they should also be considered in view of, among other things, the equivocal practices of those involved in such ‘protosciences’; some prefer to refer to them as natural philosophy rather than science.Footnote ²⁷² For instance, alchemy, as mentioned above, combined early attempts of applying scientific experimental method with mystical hermetic approaches. Furthermore, the main inquiries of many alchemists in Antiquity and the Middle Ages included, beside chrysopoeia, the pursuit of a so-called ‘elixir of immortality’, ‘philosophers’ stone’, ‘red sulphur’, a cure-all or ‘panacea’, and an assumed universal solvent known as ‘alkahest’ (perhaps derived from the Arabic Alkali).

There are of course parallels, sometimes more dramatic ones, in a multitude of nations and cultures. In the West, a systematic teaching of natural sciences started only with the Renaissance. In earlier times, laboratory experiments, which are the basis for discovering the secrets and laws of natural and applied sciences, were eclipsed by the mystery, agnosticism and superstition attached to them by some, such as early chemistry's association with alchemy and even witchcraft. As a result, such early experiments were occasionally attacked by the common people. Roger Bacon (d. ca. 691/1292), for instance, was accused of practicing sorcery and seeking ‘forbidden knowledge’.Footnote ²⁷³ His experiments reportedly ultimately led to being placed under house arrest.Footnote ²⁷⁴ It was not until the efforts of, among others, Francis Bacon (d. 1626) and René Descartes (d. 1650) and the appearance of the experimental method in the West, as fuelled by reformist calls to look into the secrets of the universe, that a real progressive departure was made. There were indeed earlier attempts in this direction by al-Ḥasan b. al-Haytham, best known in the West as Alhazen.Footnote ²⁷⁵ Nowadays, the importance of such subjects as natural sciences and mathematics is too glaring as to need no justification.