Excellent manners

“In general, Moslem society was one of excellent manners; from Cyrus to Li Hung Chang, the East has surpassed the West in courtesy. It was an ennobling aspect of this Baghdad life that all the permitted arts and sciences found there a discriminating patronage that schools and colleges were numerous and the air resounded with poetry.”[51]

Education for all

“Education began as soon as the child could speak; it was at once taught to say, "I testify that there is no God but Allâh, and I testify that Mohammed is His prophet." At the age of six some slave children, some girls and nearly all boys except the rich (who had private tutors) entered an elementary school, usually in a mosque and sometimes near a public fountain in the open air. Tuition was normally free or so low as to be within general reach; the teacher received from the parent some two cents per pupil per week; the remaining cost was borne by philanthropists.”[52]

Notice

Durant notices something very important concerning education which he records saying: “Elementary education aimed to form character, secondary education to transmit knowledge.”[53]

Freedom of Tuition

“Squatting against a mosque pillar or wall, scholars offered instruction in Qur'anic interpretation, Hadîth, theology and law. At an unknown date many of these informal secondary schools were brought under governmental regulation and subsidy as madrasas or colleges. To the basic theological curriculum they added grammar, philology, rhetoric, literature, logic, mathematics and astronomy. Grammar was emphasized, for Arabic was considered the most nearly perfect of all languages, and its correct use was the chief mark of a gentleman. Tuition in these colleges was free and in some cases government or philanthropy paid both the salaries of the professors and the expenses of the students.”[54]

Human development

“The final accolade was the acquirement of adab, the manners and tastes, verbal wit and grace and lightly carried knowledge of a gentleman.”[55]

Cities of knowledge

“When a visitor entered a Moslem city, he took it for granted that he could hear a scholarly lecture at the principal mosque at almost any hour of the day. In many cases the wandering scholar received, not only free instruction at the madrasa, but, for a time, free lodging and food.”[56]

Cities of books

About copying and spreading books, literature and poetry, Durant says: “Al-Ya‘qûbi[57] tells us that, in his time (891 A.D.), Baghdad had over a hundred booksellers. Their shops were also centers of copying, calligraphy and literary gatherings. Many students made a living by copying manuscripts and selling the copies to book dealers. In the tenth century we hear of autograph hunters and book collectors who paid great sums for rare manuscripts.”[58]

Cities of libraries

“Most mosques had libraries and some cities had public libraries of considerable content and generous accessibility. At about 950 A.D., Mosul had a library, established by private philanthropy, where students were supplied with paper as well as books. Ten large catalogues were required to list the volumes in the public library at Rayy. Basra's library gave stipends to scholars working in it. The geographer, Yaqût[59], spent three years in the libraries of Merv and Khwarizm, gathering data for his geographical dictionary. When Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols, it had thirty-six public libraries. Private libraries were countless; it was a fashion among the rich to have an ample collection of books. A physician refused the invitation of the sultan of Bukhara to come and live at his court, on the ground that he would need 400 camels to transport his library. Al-Wâqidi[60], dying, left 600 boxes of books, each box so heavy that two men were needed to carry it; "princes like Sâhib ibn ‘Abbâd in the tenth century might own as many books as could then be found in all the libraries of Europe combined." Nowhere else in those eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries of our era was there so great a passion for books, unless it was in the China of Ming Huang. Islam reached then the summit of its cultural life.”[61]

Cities of scholars

“In a thousand mosques from Cordoba to Samarkand scholars were as numerous as pillars and made the cloisters tremble with their eloquence; the roads of the realm were disturbed by innumerable geographers, historians and theologians seeking knowledge and wisdom; the courts of a hundred princes resounded with poetry and philosophical debate and no man dared be a millionaire without supporting literature or art.”[62]

They were legion

“Theologians and grammarians could be had by the hundred; rhetoricians, philologists, lexicographers, anthologists, historians and biographers were legions.”[63]

Delights of literature

“The scholars of Islam in this period strengthened the foundations of a distinguished literature by their labors in grammar which gave the Arabic tongue logic and standards; by their dictionaries, which gathered the word wealth of that language into precision and order; by their anthologies, encyclopedias and epitomes, which preserved much that was otherwise lost; and by their work in textual, literary and historical criticism. We gratefully omit their names and salute their achievement.”[64]

Wealth of literature

“Muhammad an-Nadîm produced in 987 A.D. an Index of the Sciences (Fihrist al-‘Ulûm), a bibliography of all books in Arabic; … we may estimate the wealth of Moslem literature in his time by noting that not one in a thousand of the volumes that he named is known to exist today.”[65]

References:

[51] Ibid. vol. 4, 307.

[52] Ibid. vol. 4, 307-308.

[53] Ibid. vol. 4, 308.

[54] Ibid. vol. 4, 308.

[55] Ibid. vol. 4, 309.

[56] Ibid. vol. 4, 309.

[57] Ahmad ibn Is-hâq ibn Ja‘far al-Ya‘qûbi (d 292 A.H. / 904 A.D.) was one of the oldest Islamic historians and his book is Târîkh al-Ya‘qûbi (History of al-Ya‘qûbi).

[58] Ibid. vol. 4, 309.

[59] Yaqut al-Hamawi (d 626 A.H.) is the author of Mu‘jam al-Buldan; Mu‘jam al-Udaba’; and others.

[60] The well-known historian and biographer (d 207 A.H.).

[61] Ibid. vol. 4, 309-310.

[62] Ibid. vol. 4, 310.

[63] Ibid. vol. 4, 398.

[64] Ibid. vol. 4, 310.

[65] Ibid. vol. 4, 311.

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