Ijazah

An ijazah (Arabic: الإِجازَة ‎‎) is the grant of permission or authority usually represented by a certificate used primarily by Sunni Muslims to indicate that one has been authorized by a higher authority to transmit a certain subject or text of Islamic knowledge. This usually implies that the student has learned this knowledge through face-to-face interactions "at the feet" of the teacher. The ijazah was limited to the study of Islamic law (sharia) and in the transmission of knowledge (gnosis) in the Islamic spiritual tradition Sufism. Philosophy, natural sciences and Islamic theology (kalam) were excluded.[1]

Description

An ijazah certifying competency in calligraphy, 1206 AH/1791 AD.

In a paper titled Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation,[2] Harvard professor William A. Graham explains the ijazah system as follows:

The basic system of "the journey in search of knowledge" that developed early in Hadith scholarship, involved travelling to specific authorities (shaykhs), especially the oldest and most renowned of the day, to hear from their own mouths their hadiths and to obtain their authorization or "permission" (ijazah) to transmit those in their names. This ijazah system of personal rather than institutional certification has served not only for Hadith, but also for transmission of texts of any kind, from history, law, or philology to literature, mysticism, or theology. The isnad of a long manuscript as well as that of a short hadith ideally should reflect the oral, face-to-face, teacher-to-student transmission of the text by the teacher's ijazah, which validates the written text. In a formal, written ijazah, the teacher granting the certificate typically includes an isnad containing his or her scholarly lineage of teachers back to the Prophet through Companions, a later venerable shaykh, or the author of a specific book.

Hypothesis on origins of doctorate

The generally accepted view, as expounded by Lexikon des Mittelalters and A History of the University in Europe, is that the origin of the doctorate lies in European high medieval teaching with its roots going back to late antiquity and the early days of Christian teaching of the Bible.[3][4] This view is indirectly supported by the entry on the "Madrasa" in the Encyclopedia of Islam which draws no parallels between Islamic and Christian medieval learning and does not refer to any transmission process either way.[5]

This view is further echoed by George Makdisi in a 1970 investigation into the differences between the Christian university and the Islamic madrasah, where he is of the opinion that the Christian doctorate of the medieval university was the one element in the university that was the most different from the Islamic ijazah certification.[6]

According to a 1989 hypothesis by George Makdisi, the origins of the Christian medieval doctorate ("licentia docendi") dates back to the ijāzah al-tadrīs wa al-iftā' ("license to teach and issue legal opinions") in the medieval Islamic legal education system.[7] Makdisi proposed that the ijazat attadris was the origin of the European doctorate, and went further in suggesting an influence upon the magisterium of the Christian Church.[8] According to the 1989 paper, the ijazat was equivalent to the Doctor of Laws qualification and was developed during the 9th century after the formation of the Madh'hab legal schools. To obtain a doctorate, a student "had to study in a guild school of law, usually four years for the basic undergraduate course" and at least ten years for a post-graduate course. The "doctorate was obtained after an oral examination to determine the originality of the candidate's theses," and to test the student's "ability to defend them against all objections, in disputations set up for the purpose" which were scholarly exercises practiced throughout the student's "career as a graduate student of law." After students completed their post-graduate education, they were awarded doctorates giving them the status of faqih (meaning "master of law"), mufti (meaning "professor of legal opinions") and mudarris (meaning "teacher"), which were later translated into Latin as magister, professor and doctor respectively.[7] However, Norman Daniel criticizes Makdisi for relying exclusively on superficial similarities between the two education systems, while failing to cite any historical evidence for an actual transmission.[9]

The commonly held view is that all these titles were proper developments of the medieval university in Europe and completely unrelated to the Islamic mosque schools.[10]

It should be noted that madrasas only issued the ijazat attadris in one field, the Islamic religious law of Sharia, and in no other field of learning.[11] Other academic subjects, including the natural sciences, philosophy and literary studies, were only treated "ancillary" to the study of the Sharia.[12] The Islamic law degree in Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious madrasa, was traditionally granted without final examinations, but on the basis of the students' attentive attendance to courses.[13] However, the postgraduate doctorate in law was only obtained after "an oral examination."[14] In a 1999 paper, Makdisi points out that, in much the same way granting the ijazah degree was in the hands of professors, the same was true for the early period of the University of Bologna, where degrees were originally granted by professors.[15] He also points out that, much like the ijazat attadris was confined to law, the first degrees at Bologna were also originally confined to law, before later extending to other subjects.[16] In a discussion of Makdisi's thesis, Toby Huff disagreed and argued that there was never any equivalent to the Bachelor's degree or the doctorate in the Islamic madrasahs.[17]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Toby Huff, Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West, 2nd ed., Cambridge 2003, ISBN 0-521-52994-8, p. 77
  2. ↑ Graham, William A. (Winter 1993), "Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, MIT Press, 23 (3): 495–522, doi:10.2307/206100, JSTOR 206100
  3. ↑ Verger, J. (1999), "Doctor, doctoratus", Lexikon des Mittelalters, 3, Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, cols 1155–1156
  4. ↑ Rüegg, Walter: "Foreword. The University as a European Institution", in: A History of the University in Europe. Vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-36105-2, pp. XIX: "No other European institution has spread over the entire world in the way in which the traditional form of the European university has done. The degrees awarded by European universities – the bachelor's degree, the licentiate, the master's degree, and the doctorate – have been adopted in the most diverse societies throughout the world."
  5. ↑ Pedersen, J.; Rahman, Munibur; Hillenbrand, R. "Madrasa." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman , Th. Bianquis , C. E. Bosworth , E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2010, retrieved 21 March 2010)
  6. ↑ George Makdisi: "Madrasa and University in the Middle Ages", Studia Islamica, No. 32 (1970), pp. 255–264 (260): "Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the two systems is embodied in their systems of certification; namely, in medieval Europe, the licentia docendi, or license to teach; in medieval Islam, the ijaza, or authorization. In Europe, the license to teach was a license to teach a certain field of knowledge. It was conferred by the licensed masters acting as a corporation, with the consent of a Church authority, in Paris, by the Chancellor of the Cathedral Chapter... Certification in the Muslim East remained a personal matter between the master and the student. The master conferred it on an individual for a particular work, or works. Qualification, in the strict sense of the word, was supposed to be a criterion, but it was at the full discretion of the master, since, if he chose, he could give an ijaza to children hardly able to read, or even to unborn children. This was surely an abuse of the system...but no official system was involved. The ijaza was a personal matter, the sole prerogative of the person bestowing it; no one could force him to give one."
  7. 1 2 Makdisi, George (April–June 1989), "Scholasticism and Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 109 (2): 175–182 [175–77], doi:10.2307/604423, JSTOR 604423
  8. ↑ Makdisi, George (April–June 1989), "Scholasticism and Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 109 (2): 175–182 [175–77], doi:10.2307/604423, JSTOR 604423, I hope to show how the Islamic doctorate had its influence on Western scholarship, as well as on the Christian religion, creating there a problem still with us today. [...] As you know, the term doctorate comes from the Latin docere, meaning to teach; and the term for this academic degree in medieval Latin was licentia docendi, "the license to teach." This term is the word for word translation of the original Arabic term, ijazat attadris. In the classical period of Islam's system of education, these two words were only part of the term; the full term included wa I-ifttd, meaning, in addition to the license to teach, a "license to issue legal opinions." [...] The doctorate came into existence after the ninth century Inquisition in Islam. It had not existed before, in Islam or anywhere else. [...] But the influence of the Islamic doctorate extended well beyond the scholarly culture of the university system. Through that very system it modified the millennial magisterium of the Christian Church. [...] Just as Greek non-theistic thought was an intrusive element in Islam, the individualistic Islamic doctorate, originally created to provide machinery for the Traditionalist determination of Islamic orthodoxy, proved to be an intrusive element in hierarchical Christianity. In classical Islam the doctorate consisted of two main constituent elements: (I) competence, i.e., knowledge and skill as a scholar of the law; and (2) authority, i.e., the exclusive and autonomous right, the jurisdictional authority, to issue opinions having the value of orthodoxy, an authority known in the Christian Church as the magisterium. [...] For both systems of education, in classical Islam and the Christian West, the doctorate was the end-product of the school exercise, with this difference, however, that whereas in the Western system the doctorate at first merely meant competence, in Islam it meant also the jurisdictional magisterium.
  9. ↑ Norman Daniel: Review of "The Rise of Colleges. Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West by George Makdisi", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 104, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1984), pp. 586–588 (587)
  10. ↑ Cf. Lexikon des Mittelalters, J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, entries on: Baccalarius, Doctor, Grade, universitäre, Licentia, Magister universitatis, Professor, Rector
  11. ↑ Makdisi, George (April–June 1989), "Scholasticism and Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 109 (2): 175–182 [176], doi:10.2307/604423, JSTOR 604423, There was no other doctorate in any other field, no license to teach a field, except that of the religious law. To obtain a doctorate, one had to study in a guild school of law.
  12. ↑ Pedersen, J.; Rahman, Munibur; Hillenbrand, R. "Madrasa." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman , Th. Bianquis , C.E. Bosworth , E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2010, retrieved 20 March 2010: "Madrasa,...in mediaeval usage, essentially a college of law in which the other Islamic sciences, including literary and philosophical ones, were ancillary subjects only."
  13. ↑ Jomier, J. "al- Azhar (al-Ḏj̲āmiʿ al-Azhar)." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman , Th. Bianquis , C.E. Bosworth , E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2010: "There was no examination at the end of the course of study. Many of the students were well advanced in years. Those who left al-Azhar obtained an idjāza or licence to teach; this was a certificate given by the teacher under whom the student had followed courses, testifying to the student's diligence and proficiency."
  14. ↑ Makdisi, George (April–June 1989), "Scholasticism and Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 109, No. 2, 109 (2): 175–182 (176), doi:10.2307/604423, JSTOR 604423
  15. ↑ George Makdisi (1999), "Religion and Culture in Classical Islam and the Christian West", in Richard G. Hovannisian & Georges Sabagh, Religion and culture in medieval Islam, Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–23 [10], ISBN 0-521-62350-2
  16. ↑ George Makdisi (1999), "Religion and Culture in Classical Islam and the Christian West", in Richard G. Hovannisian & Georges Sabagh, Religion and culture in medieval Islam, Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–23 [10–1], ISBN 0-521-62350-2
  17. ↑ Toby Huff, Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West, 2nd ed., Cambridge 2003, ISBN 0-521-52994-8, p. 155: "It remains the case that no equivalent of the bachelor's degree, the licentia docendi, or higher degrees ever emerged in the medieval or early modern Islamic madrasas."
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