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madhhab See sharia.

Madina See medina.

madrasa

A place of edUcation for Muslim religious lead-

ers and scholars. Islamic education began in the

prophet mUhammad’s time, but centers of learn-

ing did not begin until after the first and second

centuries of islam. The most prominent of the

earliest madrasas is egypt’s al-azhar, which was

opened under the Fatimids in 970 c.e. The open-

ing in baghdad of the Nizamiyya College in 1066

marked the beginning of the madrasa system.

Many Nizamiyyas were opened afterward; the

point of these madrasas and systems of madrasas

in other regions was to create uniform opinion

regarding Islamic law and theology.

Compared to Jewish Yeshiva schools and Chris-

tian scriptural schools, madrasas concentrated on

rote memorization of the qUran, knowledge of

correct ritual practice, and the deduction of legal

points from the scriptures (fiqh), and, in fact, they

eventually produced bodies of law. philosophy,

astronomy, and mathematics were also taught

in medieval Iranian madrasas, but opposition

grew in arab lands during this time against the

study of philosophy, and, after the 14th century,

Arab madrasas instead emphasized grammar and

rhetoric as well as religious law. Fischer argues

that after the 11th century, madrasas in the Arab

world displayed little innovation, and intellectual

freedom, instead focusing on repetition and com-

mentary. Typically, a lecturer would dictate long

quotations to his students, and then he would

comment on meaning, content, and style.

At times friction between religion and govern-

ment arose as scholarly opinions emanating from

madrasas began to bear legal weight, because this

legal aspect competed with other forms of aUthor-

ity such as the court or the state. In 16th-century

iran, the madrasa system maintained a much

greater degree of independence from the state

than in the Ottoman Empire, although Iranian

rulers built madrasas and granted them endow-

ments. Yet they were also privately supported, and

were not absorbed into the state. The ottoman

dynasty, on the other hand, found it beneficial to

control the madrasa system.

Modernizing forces in Europe in the 18th and

19th centuries brought about a new struggle, in

which Europeans tried to free education from

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