Education

You know,

the Arabs of the Hijaz,

where the Messenger was born

didn't really have very much written down.

They weren't literary.

The Arabic language that they spoke was highly developed,

subtle, and expressive,

and it had ancient roots,

could be forceful, poetic and beautiful.

But it wasn't written down much.

So if they wanted a record of their family trees and histories,

or to remember great battles or events,

they would do it with poetry.

Ibn Khaldun said

"The Arabs appreciated poetry very highly.

It was distinguished in their speech through certain nobility,

because it alone possessed harmony.

They made poetry the archive of their history, their wisdom, their nobility,

and the touchstone of their natural gift for expressing themselves correctly,

choosing the best methods of expression".

So as well as history, poetry recitation was their greatest art-form,

which at times could get quite competitive,

and the very best pieces would get written down

and hung on the wall of the Ka'bah on seven parchments.

But when the Messenger was born.

the use of writing was still quite new to the Hijaz

Literacy,

the ability to read and write,

was quite a rare and magical thing.

Ibn Khaldun says the script came from the Southern Kingdom,

Yemen,

to Hirah

and from there to Ta'if and the Quraysh.

Muslim historians tell us that knowledge of reading and writing

came to the Quraysh through Harb Ibn Umayyah,

the father of Abu Sufyan,

who was the father of Mu'awiyyah.

In Makkah this skill was reserved mainly for the elite,

who must have seen it as something to be protected,

a business advantage, not a skill to be shared.

When the Messenger returned to Makkah

and the city was finally rid of its idols and opened up to Islam,

it is believed that of all those thousands

there were just 17 people who were literate,

including Mu'awiyyah,

son of Abu Sufyan.

And this was not an unusual situation.

It was recorded that before the arrival of the Messenger

in Madinah there were just 13 people who could read and write.

The Messenger encouraged everyone to learn to read and write.

After the battle of Badr, those captives who were literate

were told they could buy their freedom

by teaching 10 muslims to read and write.

Now the writing skills that were taught may have been a bit basic.

Arab writing at the beginning of Islam was,

as Ibn Khaldun gently puts it,

"not of the best quality

or of the greatest accuracy and excellence

It was not even of medium quality".

And who would argue with Ibn Khaldun?

Anyway, a quick glimpse at some examples of writing from that time

is enough to make his point.

But each of these 10 muslims taught another 10 muslims,

and each of them ten more,

and so on.

See how fast the numbers grow?

This is how Islam spread across the world so fast.

It was a network of knowledge and understanding

that spread through education.

But there's more to education than reading and writing.

They are really useful things to be able to do,

but they are skills that have no content.

It's the language that they carry and it's meaning

that are their precious cargo.

It's what reading and writing can be used to teach,

and the speed and efficiency and availability of communication that literacy brings

that make such a huge difference to education.

So what is it that the muslims used these skills to teach?

Well, they looked to the Message

to see what guidance they could find,

and from the Message they drew three aspects of education

that needed to be passed on in the Deen.

These are known as Tarbiyah, Ta'alim, and Ta'dib,

and these are what give the muslim Deen its distinctive understanding

of what we need to teach and to learn.

Tarbiyah is from an Arabic word meaning to nurture or help to grow,

to develop students' own identities and personalities

in the direction that their natural talents and inclinations lead them,

like watering a plant and watching it grow,

it doesn't make the plant into a different plant,

it just helps it to grow into the kind of plant it's meant to be,

just as parents watch their babies as they grow.

Ta'alim comes from a word that you know well,

'Ilm, meaning knowledge.

And 'Ilm includes all kinds of knowledge.

When we speak in Surah Fatihah

of Rabb-ul-'Alameen,

the 'Liege of all the Worlds',

those worlds are 'Ilm,

they are worlds of knowledge.

This is the Liege of mathematics

and geology and cosmology,

as well as medicine and psychology,

knowledge of the self,

poetry, language and grammar.

'Ilm is knowledge of all the worlds.

And the importance of the handing on of knowledge

can be seen in the very first verses of the Message to be revealed,

which speak of passing on knowledge by the Pen,

and teaching humankind what they don't know.

Of course the pens we hold in our hands

are only very slightly like the pen of God

as it writes the story of our lives in the book of Creation.

But it was the pens of those early muslims

sharing their knowledge

and recording it in writing,

that helped to pass on their thoughts and understandings

to us.

And finally,

the third aspect of teaching necessary for the Deen is Ta'dib,

and that refers to the teaching of another subject that you know of already,

'Adab,

good behaviour, good manners.

And good manners require the teaching of self-restraint,

and the self-discipline needed

for people to live in the best way together.

So, growing and learning about yourself,

learning about the Deen and about creation,

and learning the best way to live as part of the community,

these are the requirements for a muslim education.

But where and how would that knowledge be passed on?

If you wanted knowledge who would teach you?

In the early years of the Message,

people wanting knowledge of the Deen

would travel to see and hear the Messenger himself,

but he also sent companions to different places

to guide new muslims there,

and as the world of Islam grew larger,

many companions travelled far and wide

to spread the message,

and people of the local region would travel to learn with them.

In this way different centres of knowledge came to be established

in different cities and towns across the muslim empire,

and different places would specialize in different fields of knowledge,

and so the tradition of travelling being part of the search for knowledge continued,

and scholars would travel from one place to another,

studying as well as teaching what they knew,

and this travelling to learn

was known as Rihlah.

And where was this studying done?

In the mosques, of course.

Small groups might study in someone's home,

but the mosques were where you would find the larger study groups,

sitting in circles known as Halaqas,

following the example of how the Messenger taught in the mosque at Madinah.

Women were free to join study circles as equals,

and were also known to teach them,

and men were known to study in circles led by women

as well as the other way round.

During the life of the Messenger

there were at least nine mosques in Madinah that had study circles.

The Messenger believed that all children around Madinah should have close and easy access to education,

and eventually those children grew, and could pass on their knowledge to others,

sitting with their own circles and teaching in the fairest manner, with the finest 'adab.

And so the knowledge of the Deen

was passed along in halaqas

in mosques in every city,

town and village,

in the muslim world.

The Messenger told the believers to search for knowledge

even as far as China,

and as they did so they passed on what they knew,

and in this way spread learning around the muslim world,

leading to the establishment of some of the greatest centres of knowledge in human history.

Perhaps some of the most pressing questions

for muslims to try to answer nowadays are

"What happened to this great flowering of knowledge in the muslim world?"

and "What brought it to an end?"

and "What can be done to place Islam at the centre of world learning once more?",

because surely only when the muslim world has the finest education in the world

can it be said to be fulfilling the guidance of the Message and the wishes of the Messenger.