Be masters in that you teach and continue to learn: Medieval muslim thinkers on educational theory

Comparative Education Review

Volumn 50, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 367-388

  Günther, Sebastian ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33748535570     PISSN: 00104086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/503881     Document Type: Review

References (105)

1. The prophetic tradition, i.e., the authoritative religious literature in Islam, owes much of its vital educational potential to the "model character" of the events and messages included in reports believed to preserve what the Prophet Muhammad said, did, or condoned. For concepts of learning in the Qur'an, see P. E. Walker, "Knowledge and Learning," in The Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, ed. Jane D. McAuliffe, 5 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2001-5), 3:1-5;
2. and Sebastian Günther, "Teaching," The Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an ibid., 5:200-205.
3. Cited by al-Ghazali in his The Revival of the Sciences of Religion (Ihya' 'ulum al-din);
4. cf. The Book of Knowledge, Being a Translation with Notes of the Kitab al-'ilm of al-Ghazzali's (sic) Ihya' 'ulum al-din, trans. Nabih Amin Paris (Lahore: S. M. Ashraf, 1962), 14.
5. See Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1970).
6. Malikites, also called Malikis, are the adherents of one of the four law schools (singular: madhhab) in Sunni Islam, named after their principal imam, the legal expert Malik ibn Anas (ca. 715-96) from the city of Medina. This school stresses what was practiced by the local community of Medina. It prefers a strict reliance on the prophetic tradition (hadith) to traditional opinions and deduction by "analogy" (qiyas). The remaining three law schools are the Hanafi (named after, and developed from, the teachings of Abu Hanifa, ca. 700-767), Shafi'i (derived from the teachings of its founder Abu 'Abdallah al-Shafi'i, 767-820), and Hanbali (named after, and based on, the teachings of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, 780-855).
7. Muhammad ibn Sahnun, Adab al-mu'attimin, ed. Muhammad al-'Arusi al-Matwi.
8. reprinted in 'Abd al-Rahman 'Uthman Hijazi, Al-Madhhab al-tarbawi 'inda Ibn Sahnun (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risala, 1986), 111-28;
9. the French translation is by Gérard Lecomte, "Le livre des règles de conduite des maîtres d'école par Ibn Sahnun," Revue des études Islamiques 21 (1953): 77-105.
10. Sebastian Günther, "Advice for Teachers: The 9th Century Muslim Scholars Ibn Sahnun and al-Jahiz on Pedagogy and Didactics," in Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal: Insights into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, ed. Sebastian Günther (Leiden: Brill, 2005): 95-110.
11. Ibn Sahnun, Adab al-mu'allimin, 113-14;
12. see also Günther, "Advice," 101.
13. It is of note that, although throughout the Middle Ages most educational texts by Muslim scholars deal exclusively with the instruction of boys and male students, there is clear evidence, especially in historical and biographical sources, that girls and women were at no time completely excluded from elementary or higher learning, nor were girls always confined to moral education provided within their families.
14. Mu'tazila is the name of one of the earliest and most important schools of speculative theology (kalam). It had the support of the ruling 'Abbasid dynasty (750-1258) during the caliphates of al-Ma'mun, al-Mu'tasim, and al-Wathiq (813-47) but lost this support during the caliphate of al-Mutawakkil (847-61). It continued, however, to be theologically creative, though gradually losing its dominance to the Ash'arite school of theology. The Mu'tazila is noted for placing reasoning and dialectics at the center of its doctrine. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Mu'tazilism was "rediscovered," especially in Egypt. See Daniel Gimaret, "Mu'tazila," in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1954-), 7:783-93.
15. Arnr ihn Bahr al-Basri al-Jahiz, Kitab al-Mu'allimin, in Kitaban li-l-Jahiz: Kitab al-Mu'allimin wa-Kitab fi l-radd 'ala al-mushabbiha [Two essays by al-Jahiz: "On Schoolmasters" and "Refutation of Anthropomorphists"], annotated, with an introductory study, and ed. Ibrahim Geries (Ibrahim Jiryis), 1st ed. (Tel Aviv: Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Tel Aviv University [also 'Akka: Matba'at al-Suruji], 1980), 57-87.
16. Arnr ihn Bahr al-Basri al-Jahiz, Kitaban Li-l-Jahiz: Kitab Al-Mu'allimin Wa-Kitab Fi L-radd 'Ala Al-mushabbiha [Two Essays by Al-Jahiz: "On Schoolmasters" and "Refutation of Anthropomorphists"] Ibid., 62-63.
17. See also Günther, "Advice," 122.
18. Al-Jahiz, Kitab al-Mu'allimin, 86-87.
19. See also Sebastian Günther, "Aljahiz and the Poetics of Teaching," in Al-Jahiz: A Humanist for Our Time, ed. Tarif Khalidi (Beirut: Orient-Institute, 2006, forthcoming).
20. and "Praise to the Book! Al-Jahiz and Ibn Qutayba on the Excellence of the Written Word in Medieval Islam," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam (Franz Rosenthal Memorial Volume) 31 (2006), forthcoming.
21. Al-Farabi believed that "human reason is superior to religious faith, and hence assigned only a secondary place to the different revealed religions which provide, in his view, an approach to truth for non-philosophers through symbols." In his view, "philosophical truth is universally valid whereas these symbols vary from nation to nation," being the work of philosopher-prophets, of whom Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, was one. See R. Walzer, "Al-Farabi," in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2:778-81.
22. This view is particularly evident in al-Farabi's Enumeration of the Sciences;
23. see Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Farabi, Ihsa'al-'ulum, ed. 'Uthman Amin, 3rd ed. (Cairo: Maktabatal-Anglual-Misriyya, 1968);
24. a German translation (based on a twelfth-century Latin translation of the Ihsa') was published by E. Wiedemann, "Über al-Farabis Aufzählung der Wissenschaften (De Scientiis)," in Aufsätze zur arabischen Wissenschaftsgeschichte: Mit einem Vorwort und Indices herausgegeben von Wolfdietrich Fischer, by Eilhard Wiedemann, 2 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1970), 1:323-50.
25. A summary is given by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam, with a preface by Giorgio de Santillana (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 60-62.
26. Charles Michael Stanton, Higher Learning in Islam: The Classical Period, A.D. 700-1300 (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990), 84.
27. Charles Michael Stanton, Higher Learning in Islam: The Classical Period, A.D. 700-1300 Ibid., 84.
28. See also David C. Reisman, "Al-Farabi and the Philosophical Curriculum," in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 52-71.
29. Sebastian Günther, "Education: Islamic Education," in New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (Detroit: Scribner's, 2005), 2:640-45;
30. and the insightful article by Asma Afsaruddin, "Muslim Views on Education: Parameters, Purviews, and Possibilities," Journal of Catholic Legal Studies 44, no. 1 (2005): 143-78.
31. Al-Burhan is the Arabic equivalent of Analytica Posteriora or Apodeictica, as Aristotle's work Posterior Analytics was known in the medieval Arabic sources. Of Aristotle's works, it was one of the most frequently commented on or paraphrased by medieval Muslim scholars. Al-Farabi's al-Burhan is one of the earliest of such paraphrases. Compare M. Fakhry, in Al-Mantiq 'inda al-Farabi: Kitab al-Burhan wa-Kitab Shara'it al-yaqin ma'a ta'aliq Ibn Bajja 'ala l-Burhan, ed. Majid Fakhry (Beirut: Dar al-Mashriq, 1987), 1 (introduction).
32. See also Michael E. Marmura, "The Fortuna of the Posterior Analytics in the Arabic Middle East," in Probing in Islamic Philosophy: Studies in the Philosophies of Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali and Other Major Muslim Thinkers (Binghamton, NY: Global Academic Publishing, 2005), 355-73.
33. Abu Nasr Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Farabi, Kitab al-Burhan, in Fakhry, Al-Mantiq 'inda al-Farabi, 17-96, esp. 77-78.
34. See also Fuad Said Haddad, Alfarabi's Theory of Communication (Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1989), 123-24, 126-27.
35. Al-Farabi, Kitab al-Burhan, 82;
36. see also Haddad, Alfarabi's Theory of Communication, 125.
37. Al-Farabi, Kitab al-Burhan, 79-80;
38. see also Haddad, Alfarabi's Theory of Communication, 126.
39. Abu Nasr al-Farabi, Kitab al-Alfaz al-musta'mala fi l-mantiq: The Utterances Employed in Logic, Arabic text, ed., with introduction and notes, Muhsin Mahdi (Beirut: Dar al-Mashriq [Imprimerie Catholique], 1968), 86, par. 40.
40. Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle [ Tahsil al-sa'ada], translated and with an introduction by Muhsin Mahdi (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), 44.
41. Al-Farabi, Kitab al-Alfaz, 86-93;
42. see also Haddad, Alfarabi's Theory of Communication, 134-37.
43. This hierarchy of intellectual development is discussed in Ibn Sina's The Book of Salvation [From Error], Kitab al-Najat: Min al-gharaq fi bahr al-dalalat, ed. Muhammad Taqi Danishpazhuh (Tehran: Danishgah-i Tihran, 1364 [1985-86 CE]), esp. 333-43.
44. See also F. Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology: An English Translation of Kitab al-Najat, Book II, Chapter VI, with Historico-Philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), esp. 33-38, and Rahman's comments, 87-95.
45. The latter study was reprinted in Fuat Sezgin et al., eds., Islamic Philosophy, vol. 34, Abu 'Ali ibn Sina (d. 428/1037), Text and Studies Collected and Reprinted (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, 1999), 39-175.
46. See also Stanton, Higher Learning in Islam, 86-87, although no sources are given there. For the relation of these terms to Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias.
47. see also O. N. H. Leaman, "Malaka," in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 6:220.
48. A.-M. Goichon, "Ibn Sina," in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3:941-47, esp. 942.
49. According to Ibn Sina, the four periods are (1) youth, i.e., the period of growth (up to 30 years of age); (2) the prime of life, i.e., the period of study and comprehension (up to 35 or 40 years of age); (3) elderly life, i.e., the period of decline and senescence, when one's best vigor has passed, the intellectual power begins to decline, and one is becoming old (up to about 60 years); and (4) decrepit age, or senility (to the end of life). More specifically, the first period of life, youth, comprises five subdivisions: (1) infancy, i.e., the period before the limbs are fit for walking; (2) babyhood, i.e., the period of formation of the teeth; (3) childhood, i.e., when the body shows strength of movement and the teeth are fully out; (4) juvenile, i.e., the period up to the development of hair on the [boy's] face and pubes; and (5) adolescence, i.e., the period up to the limit of growth of the body (to the beginning of adult life). Compare al-Shaykh al-Ra'is Abu 'Ali Ibn Sina, Al-Qanun fi l-tibb, new ed., ed. Idwar al-Qashsh (Beirut: Mu'assasat 'Izz al-Din li-l-Tiba'a wa-l-Nashr, 1987), 1:25.
50. See also O. Cameron Gruner, A Treatise on "The Canon of Medicine" of Avicenna, Incorporating a Translation of the First Book (London: Luzac, 1930), 68-69.
51. Ibn Sina, Al-Qanun, 1:208-9;
52. the passage is a slightly altered version of Gruner's translation; cf. Gruner, A Treatise on "The Canon of Medicine" of Avicenna, 379.
53. 'Abd al-Amir Shams al-Din, Al-Madhhab al-taibawi 'inda Ibn Sina: Min khilal falsafatihi al-'amaliyya, 1st ed. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-'Alami, 1988), 127-28, 130;
54. based on Ibn Sina's al-Qanun.
55. Compare the chapter "On Man's Regimen of the Child" of the Kitab al-Siyasa [The book of regimen] attributed to Ibn Sina.
56. The work is published in Al-Turath al-tarbawi al-islami fi khams makhtutat, ed. Hisham Nashshaba (Beirut: Dar al-'Ilm li-l-Malayin, 1988), 25-45, esp. 40-42.
57. Ibn Sina, Kitab al-Siyasa, 40.
58. See also Shams al-Din, Al-Madhhab al-tarbawi 'inda Ibn Sina, 131-32.
59. Shams al-Din, Al-Madhhab al-tarbawi 'inda Ibn Sina, 130-31.
60. Ibn Sina, Kitab al-Siyasa, 40-41.
61. See also Shams al-Din, Al-Madhhab al-tarbawi 'inda Ibn Sina, 134-35.
62. Ibn Sina, Kitab al-Siyasa, 41.
63. Ibn Sina, Kitab al-Siyasa, 41. Ibid.
64. Günther, "Education," 643.
65. Stanton, Higher Learning in Islam, 87.
66. See also M. E. Marmura, "Al-Ghazali," in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 137-54.
67. Important for the study of educational theory in Islam are, furthermore, (a) al-Ghazali's earlier and almost rationalistic work The Balance of Action (Mizan al-'amal), ed. Sulayman Dunya (Cairo: Dar al-Ma'arif, 1964);
68. the French translation is by Hikmat Hachem, Critère de l'action (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve, 1945);
69. (b) O Disciple (Ayyuha l-walad), written in reply to a former student, and advocating, among other things, the idea that knowledge proves its value by the fruits it produces in life (cf. the English translation by George Henry Scherer [Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1951], xx of the introduction);
70. and (c) The Students' Guide (Minhaj al-mut'allimin).
71. published in Al-Turath al-tarbawi al-islami, ed. Hisham Nashshaba (Beirut: Dar al-'Ilm li-l-Malayin, 1988), 55-92, a treatise attributed to al-Ghazali.
72. W. Montgomery Watt, "Al-Ghazali," in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2:1038-41, esp. 1040.
73. Leon Zolondek, Book XX of al-Ghazali's Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din (Leiden: Brill, 1963), 3-4.
74. See also Julian Obermann, Der philosophische und religiöse Subjektivismus Ghazalis: Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Religion (Vienna: Braumüller, 1921), 313-14.
75. Al-Ghazali, Ihya' 'ulum al-din, 15 vols. (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1356-1357/1937-1938), 8:130.
76. These passages are slightly revised quotations of Zolondek's translation, 4; see also Arent J. Wensinck, La pensée de Ghazzali (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940), 44.
77. Al-Ghazali, Ihya' 'ulum al-din, 8:110.
78. Zolondek, trans., 5. See also Wensinck, La pensée de Ghazzali 45.
79. Al-Ghazali, Ihya' 'ulum al-din, Fans, trans., 121, 130.
80. Al-Ghazali, Ihya' 'ulum al-din, Ibid., 129, 130.
81. Al-Ghazali, Ihya' 'ulum al-din, Ibid., 129.
82. It should be noted that in The Revival al-Ghazali revisits educational issues that he already discussed in The Balance of Action (see n. 37), an earlier work that he wrote before he became a mystic. Yet, apart from details, the concepts of learning are nearly identical in both of these works.
83. Compare al-Ghazali, Ihya 'ulum al-din, Faris, trans., 129.
84. Compare al-Ghazali, Ihya 'ulum al-din, Ibid., 130.
85. Compare al-Ghazali, Ihya 'ulum al-din, Ibid., 132.
86. Compare al-Ghazali, Ihya 'ulum al-din, Ibid., 138.
87. Compare al-Ghazali, Ihya 'ulum al-din, Ibid., 145.
88. Compare al-Ghazali, Ihya 'ulum al-din, Ibid., 146.
89. Compare al-Ghazali, Ihya 'ulum al-din, Ibid., 151.
90. Two major works on education by Muslim scholars from later medieval times are available in English translation: Burhan al-Din al-Zarnuji (first half of the thirteenth century), a Hanafi scholar from Iran, provides in his Instruction of the Student: The Method of Learning detailed, pious advice on the study of theology. He emphasizes - as many scholars of his and later times do - the integrity and purity of the transmission of knowledge of that which has already been definitely established;
91. see the translation by G. E. von Grunebaum and Theodora M. Abel (New York: King's Crown Press, 1947). Furthermore, there is The Memoir of the Listener and the Speaker in the Training of Teacher and Student by Ibn Jama'a (d. 1333), a Shafi'i chief judge in Egypt and Syria;
92. this work was translated by Noor Muhammad Ghifari in the series One Hundred Great Books of Islamic Civilisation, vol. 10, Education and Pursuit of Knowledge (Islamabad: Pakistan Hijra Council, 1991).
93. Albert Reble, Geschichte der Pädagogik, 21st ed. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2004; 1st ed., 1951), 14-15.
94. Winfried Böhm, Geschichte der Pädagogik: Von Platon bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Beck, 2004), 41-42;
95. H.-E. Tennorth, ed., Klassiker der Pädagogik, vol. 1, Von Erasmus bis Helene Lange (Munich: Beck, 2003), 88.
96. Tennorth, Von Erasmus bis Helene Lange, 21-27.
97. Böhm, Geschichte der Pädagogik, 45;
98. Tennorth, Von Erasmus bis Helene Lange, 28-31.
99. Böhm, Geschichte der Pädagogik, 51;
100. Tennorth, Von Erasmus bis Helene Lange, 32-33.
101. Böhm, Geschichte der Pädagogik, 53-54;
102. Tennorth, Von Erasmus bis Helene Lange, 45-59.
103. Hermann Weimer, Geschichte der Pädagogik, 19.
104. völlig neu bearb. Auflage von Juliane Jacobi, Sammlung Göschen 2080 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1992), 81-86.
105. Jim Garrison, Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1997), introduction, xx.