Amjad M. Hussain: A Social History of Education in the Muslim World. From the Prophetic Era to Ottoman Times. London: Ta-Ha Publishers. 2013. pp. 258.

Reviewed by László Galántai

The aim of the book is to map and evaluate the evolution of Islamic education as a social phenomenon from the time of the Prophet Muhammad to the end of the Ottoman Empire. This monograph is not just a chronological history of the Islamic education, it’s a history of a social phenomenon. It’s a history of the education’s functions and social role in the history of Islam. The book gives a chronological survey of Islamic education focusing on social analysis of the different epochs. Five epochs are analysed in five chapters: the beginnings from Muhammad, the Umayyad period, the Golden Age in the time of the Abbasids, the Mamluk period and the Ottomans. The aim is to identify and demonstrate evolutionary changes in Islamic education throught the history of Islam. These evolutionary changes deserve our attention. It means a non-Western education history what is overviewed focusing on adaptive relation between education and society in different epochs of the Muslim world. The aim of the book is to show how various educational institutions changed over time and envolved other institutions with different curricula and administrations.

There is a need to comprehend the similarities and the differences between Muslim and non-Muslim conceptualizing of the education. The appropiate way of education in the Western civilization is based on Plato so it’s not derived from divine revelation, it’s based on philisophy, on the love of (human) wisdom. The Muslim education was based in divine revelation in seventh century. This difference deserve attention. The idea of Western education was based on human intellect. The conception and perception of the Muslim education was based on divine revelation.

The meaning of education is expressed by three Arabic terms in the Islamic sense. Two terms come from the Quran, the third is derived from the hadīth literature. The first term ’tarbiyah’ means ’fostering growth’. It indicates that Islamic education is nurturing a person. The second term ’ta’l īm’, it refers to the imparting of knowledge. The third term ’ta’d īb’ refers to good manners and ethics. This term comes from the hadīth literature, so from the collected stories about Prophet Muhammad. These three terms describe that the Islamic education is fostering, knowledge transfer and ethics. Probably the Western idea of education is fairly similar but its base is different indeed.

That Islamic education whose history is overviewed in this book is described as a tool of the society to help a multi-dimensional person become an ethical, moral and spiritual being. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that education in Islam was not based on one system. In periods of Islamic history it is possible to find a high number of elementary schools that thaught pupils how to read, write and calculate. These were all separate from each other and were mostly independent of state authorities. During the era of early Islam pupils could only learn from the teachers, the state authorities did not give out qualifications. Education system without state control – really an alien idea in the contemporary world but not in the premodern times. State control of education needs rich networks of administration. Officialdom had much more gaps in the premodern times. It was a long way from teachers who worked at a ranted place or at their own home to the institutionalized education. The Islam education perambulated this way as well.

In the beginnings, in the time of Muhammad we find two methods for education: halaqah and rihlah. The first method ’halaqah’ means learning in study circles at the mosques. The pupils who were teached with this method learnt Islam, the Quran, Sunnah and sharīah. It included religious literacy culture. The name ’halaqah’ comes from the spatial ordering: the students sat down in a semi-circle around the teacher. Seating order had symbolic meaning, the most advanced student sat the closest to the teacher. The method was current in all type of Islamic educational institutions. „Some academics such as Seeman have argued that the Prophet’s main teaching techniques were influenced largely by pre-Islamic society. (Hussain 2013:13).” It’s also a question but the book should analyse also the connection between the Arabic halaqah and the Hebrew halacha. The halacha refers in Hebrew to education as well, its root is ’lálechet’, which means ’going’, so halacha means ’the way what must be walked’. The halacha is the order of the life in the Jewish tradition, and this closeness between halaqah and halacha should be analysed possibly. Naturally there are many connections between Arabic and Hebrew terms. But such a central concept needs more attention especially in comparative chapters. The second method ’rihlah’ was introduced by Muhammad in Madīnah and it means ’travelling for knowledge’. Returning home to original community and teaching them are important parts of this method. Two phenomenon met in the rihlah. The travelling in search of knowledge was an essential of education from ancient times. After Muhammad this travelling linked to the one authentic source of the knowledge. Thus rihlah is joined to Madīnah. These two methods are the sources of institutional Islamic education from the prophetic era, these are starting-points of this monograph.

The chapters are constructed similarly. Every chapter begins with the historical context attentively. Orientation is helped with alphabetical index and brief biographies of the mentioned scholars. Comparative view is represented in the whole book as well, the Islamic education is contextualized parallel to Byzantine, Christian and Jewish education from the beginnings. Hussain’s monograph is an introductory handbook in the history of education in the Muslim world. It’s a chronological social history of people’s education in the Islamic civilization, it’s ideal for getting to know this discourse.

The last chapter discuss the future of the Islamic education. Near to the quarter of the population in the world are Muslims, they live in all over the world. The Muslim societies and their education are bond together so knowing this history and thinking about the future are not secondary. The middle of the eighteenth century meaned a caesura in the traditional Islamic world as well. The two types of Islamic thinkng are well-known today as modernist/progressive and fundamentalist/traditionalist. Not secondary that both groups have been influenced by the secular humanism of the eighteenth century. The modernists have directly tried to secularise all fields within Islamic knowledge through science, art and law, on the other hand the fundamentalists have tried to revive Islam in opposition to modernism. This reviving is also a product of secular modernism and it’s pseudo-traditional. Thus the fundamentalism is not a deficit of enlightenment but it is a product of the modernity. Knowing the real traditions of the Islamic education is an important way to pacificate this fundamentalism.