Al-Azhar
A Cairo mosque becomes a teaching institution still running after a thousand years.
- When
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Founded by the Fatimids in 970 CE, Al-Azhar develops into a centre of religious and legal instruction and is among the oldest continuously operating institutions of higher learning anywhere. It teaches by ijaza — a licence granted personally by a scholar certifying that a student may transmit a text — a model of certification quite different from the corporate degree that European universities would develop a century later.