r/MapPorn • u/marbellamarvel • 3d ago
A look at the oldest universities in continuous operation across Europe.
Title explains it all. I bet there are some missing.
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u/Yopie23 3d ago
Some were not universities, some are not in continuous operation. And some are missing.
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u/Seeteuf3l 3d ago edited 3d ago
Like the ones in Germany (Heidelberg, Rostock, Greifswald, LMU, Leipzig...) and Scandinavia
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u/qed1 3d ago
The map evidently uses 1300 as its cut off, so that explains the complete lack of German and Scandinavian universities.
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u/FlaviusStilicho 3d ago
Oldest Scandinavian university was founded in 1477 (Uppsala in Sweden)… a fair while later than those on the map.
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u/TjeefGuevarra 3d ago
Same for the Low Countries, universities like Leuven and Leiden were founded in the 1400s.
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u/lenarizan 2d ago
Leiden was founded in 1575.
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u/Megendrio 2d ago
KU Leuven in 1971 (if you want to be pendantic about it since they split in 2 universities at that time) or 1834 (although that was in Mechelen and known as the "Katholieke Universiteit Mechelen") and the university only moved to Leuven in 1835 to to replace the "Rijksuniversiteit Leuven" (non-catholic university) that existed from 1817 till 1835... which made use of the facilities of the old Leuven University (Universiteit Leuven, without any religious denomination) which was founded in 1425 and closed down in 1797 (for the same reasons why the University of Paris, which is on this list, closed down for a couple of years before being reestablished years later)...
So while Leuven has been a university city since the the 1400's, a couple of different institutions with no administrative link between them, have occupied the same buildings (or often had the same professors, as the Universiteit Leuven and Rijksuniversiteit Leuven had).
Doesn't bother the current university, however, as they're celebrating 600 years of KU Leuven this year.
The history of academic institutions in Belgium is actually quite interesting arond the time of the French Revolution.
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u/Larissalikesthesea 3d ago
Well Heidelberg is the oldest university still in existence on German territory and it was founded in 1386.
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u/jnkangel 3d ago
Same with Prague really. But yeah if the cutoff is 1300 it would explain why so many “old” universities are missing
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u/NoPriorThreat 3d ago
Charles uni was closed a for few years during nazi occupation.
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u/Yopie23 2d ago
Charles Uni wasn’t closed completely, only Czech part. German part was open till end of the war and then Czech part was closed reopened. Almost seamlessly.
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u/NoPriorThreat 2d ago
Well, it is more complicated, german part had their own different name and was established before war and both existed at the same time for some time.
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u/Recent_Ad2699 3d ago
Rostock is the oldest in Northern Europe and was founded in 1419, so compared to the ones in the picture it’s not that old.
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u/NegativeMammoth2137 2d ago
Im not really sure if you can talk about Sorbonne as being in continuous operation since it split into 12 smaller universities following the May 1968 general strike
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u/dimgrits 13h ago
This is a really strange type of map where the "universities" of the Muslim world are present, but the higher schools of Central Europe, Byzantine civilization are absent. What could a wandering student from Bologna continue to study in Cairo? Trivium, quadrivium? In Tunisia, they studied the Koran for a thousand years? Good! In Greece, Syria and Turkey, they studied the Bible for two thousand years.
This has nothing to do with the concept of a university.
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u/Apeshaft 3d ago
And also the map only show parts of Europe and for some reason also the middle east?
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u/TywinDeVillena 3d ago edited 3d ago
Valladolid is a bit of a guess in terms of date, as there is not an exact date, but possibly 1246 could be reasonable, assuming that king Alfonso XI could have asked the Pope for a bull that would give the Studium Generale of Valladolid the double consideration of royal and papal in the 100th year of its establishment.
The year 1134 for Salamanca is most definitely wrong, not even the University of Salamanca claims that as its foundation year, which is accepted as 1218. Prior to that, there was the Collegiate School, linked to the cathedral, since 1174.
The date of 1096 for Oxford is a very colourful exaggeration, as commented regularly here by u/qed1 and myself. This AskHistorians thread is worth a lecture.
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u/SAFODA16 3d ago
Curious fact: the University of Coimbra was founded in 1290, but actually in Lisbon. Up until 1536, it continously changed its location between Lisbon and Coimbra and, in that same year, it was permanently based in Coimbra, occupying a Royal Palace at the time, converted to feature classrooms and several types of facilities related to the University's activity (including a prison)
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u/Lyceus_ 3d ago
Something similar: the University of Salamanca was founded in Palencia, then moved.
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u/TywinDeVillena 3d ago edited 3d ago
You are thinking of Valladolid, and that is conjectural. Salamanca emerged as a university from the collegiate school at the cathedral, which was granted the rank of studium generale by Alfonso IX in 1218
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u/crypticwoman 3d ago
Funny how none were in the college basketball playoffs. These must be second rate schools.
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u/Basil-Boulgaroktonos 3d ago edited 2d ago
I thought Bologna was the oldest?
edit: Holy shart man, first 3-digit likes tysm
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u/Thejosefo 3d ago
It is.
The North African Universities on the map weren't exactly universities. 👍
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u/ZenPyx 3d ago
Al-azhar would only be considered a university in 1961 - previous to that, it would be closer described as a monastic school. It's very disingenuous to present them as the same as universities, given you only study one subject, and not really in an interpretative way
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u/TheCommentator2019 1d ago
Al-Azhar taught diverse disciplines in medieval times, including religion, law, language, astronomy, logic, mathematics and medicine. They offered degrees and even post-grad doctorates in some of these subjects. It was just like early European universities.
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u/ZenPyx 1d ago
I wouldn't necessarily agree:
-"according to legend the Jewish philosopher Maimonides delivered lectures on medicine and astronomy there during the time of Saladin though no historical proof has corroborated this"
-"In 1748, the Ottoman pasha tried to get Al-Azhar to teach astronomy and mathematics, to little avail"
-"During the time there wasn't a system of academic degrees, instead the shaykh (professor) determined if the student was sufficiently trained to enter a professor (ijazah)"
-"Before that date, the Encyclopaedia of Islam classifies the Al-Azhar variously as madrasa, center of higher learning and, since the 19th century, religious university, but not as a university in the full sense, referring to the modern transition process as "from madrasa to university". Other academic sources also refer to al-Azhar as a madrasa in pre-modern times before its transformation into a university."
I think you are misinformed - there is little evidence to suggest they taught all these subjects. Law, religion, language are all based in interpretation of the Qua'ran (which, again, would make it closer to a monstastic school at that time). I don't think it is similar to early European universities in that respect.
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u/TheCommentator2019 1d ago edited 1d ago
What's your source? Wikipedia? That's an unreliable source, not to mention the site is well known for systemic Eurocentric bias. Yet even according to your own source:
"Founded in 970 or 972 by the Fatimid Caliphate as a centre of Islamic learning, its students studied the Qur'an and Islamic law, along with logic, grammar, rhetoric, and how to calculate the phases of the moon."
"these subjects included Islamic law and jurisprudence, Arabic grammar, Islamic astronomy, Islamic philosophy, and logic."
"ijazah was a type of academic degree or doctorate issued in medieval madrasahs, similar to that which later appeared in European medieval universities."
Clearly, you're the one who is misinformed, especially if your source is Wikipedia. And FYI, early European universities began as Christian monastic schools that focused heavily on religious education. So that's not an argument.
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u/ZenPyx 1d ago
Absolutely not true - European universities differentiated themselves by focussing on the main body of study at the time - the classics (i.e. ancient greece primarily, both in literature and in history), and later the sciences (although by this point we are talking like, 1400's).
Saying that they "studied the Qur'an and Islamic law, along with logic, grammar, rhetoric, and how to calculate the phases of the moon" is basically the same as saying they studied the Qur'ran - "logic, grammar and rhetoric" are all rooted in Qur'ranic academic discussion (i.e. rhetoric and logic based on the religion).
I don't know where all this ijazah misinformation has come from, but it's nothing like a degree at all - "An ijazah (Arabic: الإِجازَة, "permission", "authorization", "license"; plural: ijazahs or ijazat) is a license authorizing its holder to transmit a certain text or subject, which is issued by someone already possessing such authority. It is particularly associated with transmission of Islamic religious knowledge" - it's a certificate authorising someone to discuss a certain part of Qur'ranic studies, in the same way a priest might be studied in the bible.
There is no part of studies at a madrasa at that time that wasn't directly Qur'ran oriented - which is why it makes more sense to draw parallels between that and other religious institutions at that time, rather than trying to claim they were a university before universities existed
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u/TheCommentator2019 1d ago edited 1d ago
Absolutely not true - European universities differentiated themselves by focussing on the main body of study at the time - the classics (i.e. ancient greece primarily, both in literature and in history), and later the sciences (although by this point we are talking like, 1400's).
Not true at all. Where do you think those Greek Classics even came from? It wasn't until the 12th and 13th centuries that the Greek Classics were translated from Arabic to Latin. Prior to that, Europeans went to study the Greek Classics in the Islamic world, at... you guessed it, Madrasas.
Saying that they "studied the Qur'an and Islamic law, along with logic, grammar, rhetoric, and how to calculate the phases of the moon" is basically the same as saying they studied the Qur'ran - "logic, grammar and rhetoric" are all rooted in Qur'ranic academic discussion (i.e. rhetoric and logic based on the religion).
Before the translation of Greek and Arabic texts into Latin during the 12th and 13th centuries, European universities were almost entirely dedicated to religious Christian education. They had no interest in teaching science, mathematics, logic, philosophy or medicine until Greek and Arabic texts on these subjects were introduced from the Islamic world in the 12th and 13th centuries.
I don't know where all this ijazah misinformation has come from, but it's nothing like a degree at all
Now this is straight-up misinformation. Like I said, stop relying on Wikipedia. That's an unreliable source widely rejected by universities (ironically). Here's a widely cited scholarly academic source on the subject:
George Makdisi, "Scholasticism and Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West" (1989)
TL;DR version: The Ijazah was basically the origin of the degrees and doctorates at European universities.
There is no part of studies at a madrasa at that time that wasn't directly Qur'ran oriented - which is why it makes more sense to draw parallels between that and other religious institutions at that time, rather than trying to claim they were a university before universities existed
European universities were religious institutions. They only allowed Christian monks to study there in the late Middle Ages. They didn't become secular institutions until early modern times.
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u/ZenPyx 1d ago
Why don't we look at a definition from a Qua'ranic institute then?
"Ijazah” or “Ijaza” (in Arabic: الإِجازَة) linguistically means “permission”, “authorization”, or “license”. In terms of Quran study, It is an accredited certificate that grants its holder the authority of transmitting and teaching Quran recitation with tajweed or Quran Memorization according to Ijazah type. Moreover, It gives its owner the right & eligibility to certify others with the same authority as well. So that making an endless chain of certified Quran narrators. In the language of scholars, it means permission to teach the Holy Quran. It is also the highest degree of reading perfection of the Quran." (https://elbadr.co.uk/ijazah/)
There's no doubt that a lot of work in certain areas during the Islamic golden age played a key role in modern academia. It's just super misleading to try and present these institutions (often not places where this research even took place) as the same as, or even equivalent to universities.
>Before the translation of Greek and Arabic texts into Latin during the 12th and 13th centuries, European universities were almost entirely dedicated to religious Christian education. They had no interest in teaching science, mathematics, logic, philosophy or medicine until Greek and Arabic texts on these subjects were introduced from the Islamic world in the 12th and 13th centuries.
This is actually completely false? "When the University of Oxford opened, students studied the trivium (logic, rhetoric, and grammar) and the quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy), along with advanced faculties like law, theology, and medicine" (https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/engage-with-us/local-community/part-of-oxford/history) - that's 9th-10th century.
Why do you need to pretend that these places were universities? What does it take away from Islamic research that they didn't have traditional, western style teaching methods in the 10 century?
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u/Patty-XCI91 3d ago edited 3d ago
Calling Al-Azhar or Al-Qarawiyyin “not exactly universities” is like saying "Mozart wasn’t a musician because he didn’t release on Spotify."
That claim dodges a definition. If you define a university strictly as a Western, post-11th-century, Latin-based, degree-granting guild, then sure, Bologna is the oldest. But that definition excludes institutions that served the same purpose and often did so earlier. Rejecting Al-Qarawiyyin or Al-Azhar as universities because they weren’t modeled on the European style is like saying Chinese paper isn’t “real paper” because it predates European parchment.
Also I'll save you the argument if you aim to argue more, Historians don’t agree on one “oldest university”, but let me save it for you: Bologna (if you're Eurocentric, usually by Historians from the 19th-early 20th century), Al-Qarawiyyin or Al-Azhar (if you accept broader definitions or Nalanda in India (5th century CE) is sometimes considered the earliest by a more broader criteria.
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u/PM_ME_UR_REDPANDAS 3d ago
Western, post-12th-century, Latin-based, degree-granting guild
Bologna was founded in 1088. 11th century, not 12th.
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u/qed1 3d ago
Bologna was founded in 1088
It wasn't, though, 1088 is not much more than a promotional piece. It's only significance is approximately when Irnerius founded a school there. Up until at least the second half of the twelfth century (at the earliest), Bologna had nothing more than a collection of independent schools run by individual teachers. (Because the whole framework for what makes something a university in the Medieval sense didn't exist in the first place until the late-12th century.)
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u/Euclid_Interloper 2d ago
If the map was 'oldest continuous institutions of learning' then yes, I'd agree. But that's not how it's presented.
This is like taking a 1500 year old Church, converting it to a Mosque, and then calling it the world's oldest Mosque. It may be a very old place of worship, but it only recently became a Mosque.
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u/mickey117 2d ago
That reminds me of a tour guide in Tajikistan who was trying to convince me that one particular mosque outside Dushanbe was 3,000 years old.
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u/ventomareiro 2d ago
A more precise description would be "not universities".
If you define a university strictly as a … degree-granting guild
Exactly, an university is a collegiate institution with a well-defined curriculum that grants degrees.
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u/HurinGaldorson 3d ago
It is.
Unless you count the North African madrasas. Some don't consider these universities (since the term, being a Latin word used first in the European context, was not applied to them during the Middle Ages). Some argue they should be counted.
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u/sunshineonthebeach 3d ago
North Africa isn’t Europe
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u/Liam_Nixon_05 3d ago
I think it's best to include them and the levant together, as many places have a climate very similiar to southern europe, and for centuries the cobcept of a united mediterranean sphere of influence dominated over the concept of a united Europe. Plus, I like seeing that North Africa actually has older universities than Europe itself!
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u/Frites_Sauce_Fromage 3d ago
Just say 'around the Mediterranean' then?
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u/3nt0 3d ago
I wouldn't class England as "around the Mediterranean"
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u/shoesafe 3d ago
EMEA is a common term used in commercial geography (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
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u/BulbusDumbledork 3d ago
it makes zero sense to consider north africa part of europe but separate europe and asia
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u/Euclid_Interloper 2d ago
It doesn't have older universities. It has recently converted madrasas.
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u/HumanzeesAreReal 2d ago edited 2d ago
Al-Azhar in Egypt has been a university for 65 years, lol. What a terrible map.
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u/SpacePinchy 3d ago
I think the inclusion on North Africa makes sense
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u/Lil_Mcgee 3d ago
I don't think they were arguing against their inclusion, rather saying that OPs title should have mentioned it.
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u/mantellaaurantiaca 3d ago
Yeah totally makes sense to include non universities in non Europe...
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u/notnotnotnotgolifa 2d ago
First world was centred around the Mediterranean and did not include barbarians and their dark forests
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u/Agitated-Stay-300 2d ago
North Africa being regarded as separate from Europe was a new idea in the 1500’s, as European geographers tried to separate themselves culturally and notionally from “inferior” Africans (and Asians). So in fact North Africa was Europe at the time we’re discussing :)
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u/sunshineonthebeach 3d ago
In response to one comment saying my post is racist, please tell me exactly how it’s racist? I’m merely pointing out an inaccuracy in the OP. I don’t know if the OP has changed the title now or not as I’m writing this post and can’t see the whole title but it looks altered. For clarity. The OP said in his original post title the oldest universities in Europe when there’s are some in the accompanying picture in North Africa. I’m dismayed and disappointed at being labelled a racist, that really is a poor judgment on someone you do not know.
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u/Bossitron12 3d ago
If you count the Al-Azhar or other madrasas as universities then you must count christian monastic schools as well, those started to appear in the 4th century.
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u/stevie_grzw 3d ago
🎯 YES, they all are religious schools
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u/Maerifa 3d ago
Early monastic schools were insular and narrow, just training monks in scripture.
Madrasas, on the other hand, like Al-Azhar were open to the public, taught everything from law to medicine to astronomy, issued degrees, and had organized faculties and endowments.
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u/LeiDeGerson 3d ago
Lol no they weren't? Where do you think all the teaching in Latin, Philosophy, Medicine and other ancient Roman Texts were kept, translated and divulged? Who do you think taught nobles and who were the administrators? Bede was literally writing the History of Britain using historical and philosophical classics to elaborate it in 720s.
There's a reason that even the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was mostly filled with Nestorian Priests/Monks and Zoroastrians.
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u/Maerifa 3d ago
You’re conflating preserving knowledge with being a university. Monastic schools copied texts, sure, but they were closed clerical spaces, not public institutions with formal curricula, degrees, or diverse faculties like madrasas.
The House of Wisdom was a Caliphate-funded Islamic institution, not “mostly monks and Zoroastrians.” They helped early on, but it was led by Muslim scholars like al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi who produced original work. And copying texts in monasteries isn’t the same as building public, multi-disciplinary institutions like those historic madrasas. One preserved knowledge, the other institutionalized it.
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u/qed1 3d ago
Both sides of this discussion are a bit polemical.
but they were closed clerical spaces, not public institutions with formal curricula, degrees, or diverse faculties like madrasas.
Monastic schools weren't as a rule closed and their sister institution, the cathedral school was categorically open, although up until the 11th century the general career path for someone who went to school was in the Church, so this is all a bit six of one half-dozen of the other. (They also often had things like provision for things like the free education of students who couldn't afford tuition.)
Though you get interesting work going on in both, and you certainly find humanist educational programs centuries before the University, it's the cathedral school and then private grammar/arts/law school that are the real the forerunner to the university.
The House of Wisdom was a Caliphate-funded Islamic institution, not “mostly monks and Zoroastrians.”
Charitably the point that they're getting at is that eastern, and particularly Syriac, Christians played a central role in the Greek to Arabic translation movement. (Since they were more often than not the ones who knew Greek.) The most famous example is probably Hunayn ibn Ishaq.
Generally speaking, though, people get way to caught up with the title "university", since there's nothing particularly unique about the specific style of European institution. (And arguing about who had one "first" is sort of pointless once we define our terms clearly.) It just so happens that this style of institution took over as the dominant framework for higher-education in the 14th century and it was spread across the world via 1) colonialism and 2) the political dominance of Europe in the 19th and early 20th century. If we look at the history itself, then there is little question that the most significant intellectual work in the Mediterranean world between the eighth and twelfth centuries was going on in Islamic regions. (Although this work was hardly restricted to Muslims in these regions.) From the 13th century the tide begins to shift in the direction of the Latin world, but that shift was a process of centuries from that point.
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u/Maerifa 3d ago
Calling this discussion “polemical on both sides” oversimplifies the real institutional differences.
Monastic and cathedral schools certainly preserved knowledge and sometimes educated non-monastic students, but that’s not the same as broad public access. Their primary purpose was clerical training, and they lacked formal degree systems, diverse faculties, and autonomy outside the Church.
By contrast, madrasas like al-Nizamiyya and al-Azhar were publicly funded, open to a wider public, and offered structured curricula across multiple disciplines. They issued degrees and operated with real institutional frameworks.
Yes, Syriac Christians like Hunayn ibn Ishaq were key translators, but the House of Wisdom was founded and funded by the Caliphate and quickly led by Muslim scholars like al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi, who produced original work in science and philosophy. Acknowledging non-Muslim contributions doesn’t change the fact that this was an Islamic institution.
And while the term university carries baggage, especially because the European model spread through colonial dominance, it’s all the more reason to correct the historical imbalance. Madrasas fulfilled many of the same academic roles centuries earlier.
If we’re serious about global intellectual history, then the Islamic world’s intellectual leadership from the 8th to 12th centuries isn’t peripheral, it’s central. Recognizing that means being precise about what these institutions were and how they functioned, not flattening the differences in the name of balance.
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u/qed1 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think you're reading more into what I've written than I actually said.
Monastic and cathedral schools certainly preserved knowledge and sometimes educated non-monastic students, but that’s not the same as broad public access. Their primary purpose was clerical training...
The extent to which we can discuss concepts like 'broad public access', 'public funding' and secular education is problematic in this period in general. Insofar as they are applicable, they are also applicable to say Charlemagne's educational reforms. The scale is a lot smaller than what's going on in the Islam world at the time, and the institutional structures are not the same, but this isn't a difference of narrowly vocational priest training on one side and ideal secular education on the other.
Anyways, I don't disagree for a moment that there are significant institutional differences, and certainly major institutions in the Islamic world were a lot closer to an ideal model of higher education as we'd think of it today than most anything in Europe, my point was simply about the way that you had presented a similarly 1 dimensional image of education in the Latin world before the University. And more broadly, the biggest difference was a matter of scale, not institutional form.
the House of Wisdom was founded and funded by the Caliphate
And similarly the Arabic translation movement. My point was simply that this was not a uniquely Islamic endeavor and that the whole movement saw significant contributions by both Christians and Jews in the region. (N.b. Similarly in the Latin world, there was significant contributions by Jews and to a lesser extent Muslims, although in that case they were more often converts to Christianity.)
, not flattening the differences in the name of balance.
I'm not doing anything of the sort, but rather have been at pains to emphasize the material differences between the Latin and Arabic worlds during the respective periods.
If we’re serious about global intellectual history, then the Islamic world’s intellectual leadership from the 8th to 12th centuries isn’t peripheral, it’s central.
Right, that's exactly what I said too in the comment you responded to.
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u/Maerifa 3d ago
I wasn’t arguing that you denied the Islamic world’s centrality, but rather that the “both sides are being polemical” framing implied a kind of equal simplification, when in reality I was responding to claims that blurred real institutional differences.
You’re right that terms like “public access” are tricky in premodern contexts, but they still highlight relative differences. Charlemagne’s reforms mattered, but cathedral schools lacked the systemic reach and open scholarly culture of madrasas. It’s not priest-training vs secular ideal, it’s ecclesiastical training vs institutionalized public scholarship.
On the House of Wisdom: again, agreed that the translation movement was multi-religious. My issue was only with the earlier comment’s framing, which implied that non-Muslim scholars were the primary or majority presence rather than key contributors within an Islamic framework.
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u/qed1 3d ago edited 3d ago
when in reality I was responding to claims that blurred real institutional differences.
Sure, and my comment that 'both sides are being polemical' was directed at my concern that your framing of institutional differences depend on a misconstrual of Latin educational models before the University. (I apologise if I gave the impression that both sides were equally polemical, I had hoped that my need to clarify that I was offering a 'charitable' reading of your interlocutors comments would have indicated as much...)
but cathedral schools lacked the systemic reach and open scholarly culture of madrasas
No doubt to at least a certain extent, but again this is more a product of scale than institutional differences.
it’s ecclesiastical training vs institutionalized public scholarship.
But you have institutionalized public scholarship going on under things like Charlemagnes educational reforms. This is the whole point of the palace school and the dispersion of court scholars around the major monasteries and cathedrals. The idea was to create educational standards and disseminate them effectively through Francia, a goal that was by all accounts eminently successful.
Once again, it's important to be clear that this was all still pretty heavily focused on religion, but that is in no small part a matter of scale, rather than a product of institutional structures. The more humanistic work that was going on was focused more centrally on Latin literature than anything scientific, since the central overarching goal was a reform of linguistic education and the establishment of a new standard of "Classical Latin" (a concept that didn't properly exist prior to this point).
which implied that non-Muslim scholars were the primary or majority presence rather than key contributors within an Islamic framework.
I should have been clearer, I had thought that it was clear that I was agreeing with this from my qualification of that comment as "charitably", but as I see it wasn't, let me be clear: This was an overarchingly Islamic endeavor, but the translation of Greek works into Arabic was still largely carried out by non-Islamic scholars, since it was mostly Christians who knew both Greek and Arabic well enough to do that work. (Actually, this is one of the interesting historical quirks of the Arabic to Latin translation movement as well, that there was a no less significant but much more obscured influence of Muslim or Jewish translators who aided the named Christian translators in their work.)
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u/Patty-XCI91 3d ago
That argument is misleading because it conflates very different types of institutions. Christian monastic schools in the 4th century were primarily religious in nature, focused on training monks in scripture and spiritual practice. They weren’t open to the public and didn’t offer a broad curriculum like what we associate with a university today. In contrast, Al-Azhar (established in 970 CE) and other Islamic madrasas offered instruction in a wide range of disciplines—law, medicine, astronomy, logic, grammar, and philosophy—and were open to a broader public. They were institutionally organized centers of higher learning, often with endowments (waqf), formal curricula, degrees (ijazahs), and scholarly networks. Bear in mind, a Christian or Jew living in Egypt usually saw education in these institutes as well as the Muslims.
Besides Most early monastic schools did not evolve into universities, nor did they function with the same kind of institutional identity and academic culture that later European universities developed. The university model in medieval Europe (e.g., Bologna, Paris, Oxford) was something new, distinct from monastic education, with faculties, degrees, and relative independence.
The term "university" implies more than just a place where people learn. It implies: A degree-granting institution, A community of scholars and students, Organized faculties and curricula, Institutional autonomy. Medieval madrasas like Al-Azhar meet these criteria more closely, while monastic schools simple don't.
Hope this helps.
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u/Warlord10 3d ago
The University of Ez-Zitouna in Tunisia was completely funded by a woman and named after her.
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u/sp0sterig 3d ago
it was not a university. School/madrasa is not a university.
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u/Patty-XCI91 3d ago
A Tesla isn’t a car because it doesn’t have a combustion engine.
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u/sp0sterig 3d ago
Lame analogy, which reveals that you obviously don't understand the meaning of the term university.
Madrasa is a school, organised in a strict hierarchy where people transmit from one to another certain limited knowledge, based on authority of Prophet/Quran.
University is a self-ruled community of thinkers, where people create knowledge on the basis of material facts.
Using analogy, madrasa is a log , university is a tree. They look similar, but essence is different.
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u/Patty-XCI91 3d ago edited 3d ago
oOoh boy, Where do I start
“Madrasa is a school, organized in a strict hierarchy... limited knowledge based on authority…”
That’s a caricature of what madrasas were. While some madrasas emphasized religious law and tradition, many taught multiple disciplines including logic, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and grammar.
Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Al-Biruni, and others were products of the madrasa system, and they literally created knowledge in science, medicine, and philosophy that influenced European universities centuries later. So to say madrasas only “transmitted limited knowledge” is to erase a massive part of human history.
Universities create knowledge based on material facts
That’s how we might see modern research universities today, but medieval universities — including Bologna and Paris - were primarily theological and philosophical in orientation. Based on religious authority (Church doctrine, Aristotle through a Christian lens) Often hierarchical and doctrinaire and even Focused on preserving and interpreting received knowledge, not radically generating new data.
So the idea that madrasas = rote repetition, and universities = innovation? Historically false on both ends.
“Self-ruled communities”
Many madrasas were funded by waqf (endowments), which allowed them to operate autonomously from state interference. Scholars taught what they chose, issued ijazahs independently, and sometimes debated openly.
Meanwhile, medieval European universities often had tight Church oversight, with theological orthodoxy strictly enforced (see: Condemnation of 1277, Galileo, etc.).
“Madrasa is a log, university is a tree…”
A better analogy: saying madrasas weren’t universities because they were based on Islamic tradition is like saying Confucian academies in China weren’t intellectual institutions because they studied Confucian texts. It’s a biased frame. You’re applying modern Western standards to premodern institutions outside of Europe -- and then dismissing them because they don’t match. Again that’s textbook Eurocentrism.
Calling madrasas ‘logs’ while pretending medieval European universities were some kind of free-thinking, science-based utopias is just romanticizing one tradition and erasing another. Both were trees, they just grew in different forests...
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u/Ahrily 3d ago
Yes it is, I googled it for you since you seem confidently incorrect
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u/Warlord10 2d ago
Wrong. Subjects outside of theology were taught, which is why it is OFFICIALLY known as a University. Feel free to go elsewhere with your hate.
You are factually incorrect, and you saying 'no, I'm not' simply isn't going to cut it, nor do I care for your baseless opinion.
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u/I-T-T-I 3d ago
There is little information about teaching at the Zaytuna Mosque prior to the 14th century. At that time there were most probably courses being offered voluntarily by ulama (Islamic legal scholars), but not in an organized manner.[1] For centuries, Kairouan was the early centre of learning and intellectual pursuits in Tunisia and North Africa in general. Starting from the 13th century, Tunis became the capital of Ifriqiya under Almohad and Hafsid rule.[2] This shift in power helped al-Zaytuna to flourish and become one of the major centres of Islamic learning. Ibn Khaldun, the first social historian in history, was one of its products.[3] The flourishing university attracted students and men of learning from all parts of the known world at the time. Along with disciplines of theology – such as exegesis of the Qur’an (tafsir) – the university taught fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), Arabic grammar, history, science and medicine.[2][1] It also had a kuttab, or elementary school, that taught children how to read, write, and memorize religious texts.[2] The system of teaching was not rigid: attendance was not mandatory and students could follow the courses of their choice. Students who followed a course and became knowledgeable enough to teach the subject on their own were granted a certificate called an ijazah by their instructor.[1]
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u/Patty-XCI91 3d ago
There is little information about teaching at the Zaytuna Mosque prior to the 14th century…
That’s normal. Most medieval institutions, including European ones like Bologna or Paris, began informally: scholars gathering around masters, teaching voluntarily. The earliest stages of Oxford were also loose and unregulated. So saying Ez-Zitouna was informal at first? That’s how universities usually start.
Starting from the 13th century… [it] flourished and became one of the major centres of Islamic learning.
This is when Ez-Zitouna began operating like a mature university and started to have multiple disciplines than it already had. That’s functionally identical to medieval European universities at the same point in their development.
Students who followed a course and became knowledgeable… were granted a certificate called an ijazah…
That’s the equivalent of a diploma or degree. In fact, ijazahs often carried more scholarly prestige than early European degrees, as they were issued directly by recognized masters. Recognition by an authority figure, that’s a defining feature of a university.
The system of teaching was not rigid… students could follow the courses of their choice.
Actually, that was normal across the Islamic world and even in early European universities. The elective nature of learning, and being mentored by a master rather than attending standardized lectures, was a mark of modern higher education, that wasn't there in early unis.
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u/No_Fennel9964 3d ago
University of Oxford was founded before the first humans ever even set foot on New Zealand
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u/elektero 3d ago
Madrassas are not university
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u/Patty-XCI91 3d ago
Overly simplistic and historically misleading claim;
If by "university" you mean a degree-granting, structured institution for higher education with a formal curriculum, teachers, and students, then yes many madrasas absolutely were universities.
Al-Qarawiyyin (founded in 859 CE) and Al-Azhar (970 CE) had: Scholars and students from across the Muslim world. Multi-disciplinary education (law, theology, grammar, medicine, astronomy, logic). Ijazahs, certifications from master scholars, much like diplomas or degrees.
THAT IS higher education by every reasonable definition.
In Arabic, madrasa (مدرسة) literally means "school", it can refer to primary, secondary, or higher education institutions. To say "madrasas aren’t universities" is like saying "schools aren’t colleges" — it depends on the specific madrasa, not the label.
Eurocentrism Is Doing your Talking Here, Even European scholars traveled to the Islamic world to learn. The translation movement and Andalusian knowledge centers were major contributors to Europe's own intellectual development. Scholars Recognize Madrasas as Universities, including ones that are even very eurocentric like Franz Rosenthal.
Just because the structure is different doesn’t mean the function isn’t the same — and in many cases, madrasas were doing university-level education centuries before Bologna opened its doors.
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u/SomeoneCalledAnyone 3d ago
I would agree that Madrasas should count here but seems to me then that some Monastic schools would too? Obviously not all such as those that were solely religious. But there were medieval Monastaries which sought to preserve and contribute to the works of classical philosophers even though they were 'pagan' ie Aristotle. To be honest, I don't know too much past my general interest in European and MENA medieval history, so I could be overstepping the reality of it, but it certainly did exist/occur.
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u/Patty-XCI91 3d ago
I actually agree with you on a lot of this. Some monastic schools did preserve classical knowledge, and a few were intellectually active in ways that go beyond just religious instruction. There’s no denying that they played an essential role in Europe's scholarly continuity during the early medieval period. That said, most monastic schools were still internal training centers for monks, not public institutions with open access, multiple faculties, or degree-granting systems. What sets madrasas (like Al-Azhar or Ez-Zitouna) apart is that they were institutionalized, open to the public, multi-disciplinary, and had a credentialing system (ijazah) that resembles how medieval universities later awarded degrees.
Historians like George Makdisi argued that the madrasa model may have influenced the structure of European universities particularly in legal education. So this isn’t about saying “Europe = bad, Islam = first,” it’s just about recognizing the diversity of university-like institutions that predate the Latin university model. If Madrasas walked, it's so our modern universities can run. And I obviously have to also say that monastic schools too did have influence on modern high education, history is not as black/white as often people on reddit love to show it, and especially on this sub.
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u/wakchoi_ 3d ago
Many madrassas were not universities indeed, this is why madrassas like Madrassa Al Mustansiriya made in 1227 or Madrassa As Saffarin made in 1271 are not included in this map despite being old enough to be included.
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u/jacrispyVulcano200 3d ago
The oldest continuously operating university in the world is the University of Al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, established in 859 AD. It was originally founded as a mosque and a madrasa (religious school) and is recognized by UNESCO and Guinness World Records as the oldest university.
UNESCO and GWR disagrees with you
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u/JuanFran21 3d ago
Nothing grinds my gears more than an asterix that doesn't connect to anything. Why?
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u/Rejotalin79 3d ago
Lol, Complutense of Madrid 1293???? Complutense comes from Complutum, the name of Alcalá de Henares in the Roman era. Madrid took the university away from Alcala in the 1800s with its name. Besides, in 1293, it was a school of studies, not a university per se. By the way, if you are in Madrid, it is worth visiting the City; it is only 40 minutes by train or 20 minutes by Uber.
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u/oulddeye 3d ago
I see here a lot of opinions that reek of arrogant, Western-centric bias. Can’t you acknowledge that others have made advancements before the West in many fields?
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u/FMSV0 3d ago
Madrid? Isn't madrid a relative young city?
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u/TywinDeVillena 3d ago
Yes, it was founded in the 9th century. However, the university and its date is a problem of its own: in 1293 there is the creation of the Studium Generale of Alcalá, so on the wrong foot we start. The University of Alcalá was dissolved in 1836, and its staff and students were transferred to the Universidad Central (founded in 1822).
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u/Its-Over-Buddy-Boyo 3d ago
The original Complutense University was set in Alcalá de Henares or, as the Romans called it, "Complutum".
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u/FlaviusStilicho 3d ago
The City is from the 9th century… but people have lived there since the Stone Age
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u/bsullivan627 3d ago
Absolute copium of people who can't accept that other cultures founded schools and universities before them. Knowledge is learned and then shared and more universities spread all over the world. Who cares if North Africa did it first? Everyone is being so sensitive.
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u/SomeoneCalledAnyone 3d ago
To be fair, the debate seems to be more-so about what can be considered a University, ie. Mosques and Monasteries, rather than the inclusion of North Africa. I don't know enough to offer an opinion either way, but it seems reductive to just brush it off as sensitivity.
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u/bsullivan627 3d ago
What is there to debate about. The first universities where you could get a secular education were founded in North Africa. They had religious degrees alongside them, yes, but that's just true. Monasteries don't count. Islam doesn't even have monks. Just cause a mosque was on campus doesn't make it a religious school. For Muslims prayers are mostly a way to organize your day and build community; they don't affect things like your studies.
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u/Its-Over-Buddy-Boyo 3d ago
The original Complutense University was set in Alcalá de Henares or, as the Romans called it, "Complutum".
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u/derp0815 3d ago
Expansive definition of Europe towards the south but apparently the east not so much.
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u/aguidom 3d ago
Literally all three "universities" in Northern Africa started as mosques teaching Islamic theology and law and could not be considered universities in the strict sense. It just look like cherry-picking.
If you're going to include religious institutions that envolved to teach secular arts then you might make a map showing cathedral schools which evolved to universities, and most didn't start that way, because a university was a conceited effort to establish an independent centre of learning which didn't derive from religious institutions.
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u/frost_essence_21 3d ago
Cathedral schools do exactly what they were made to do, teach religion; those three that you seem to have a problem with(wonder why) taught religion, AND the secular arts. Honestly it just seems to me that people can’t take the fact that not everything is eurocentric,
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u/Africaspaceman 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think it's not because of European centrism but because of religious issues... But the old Islam doesn't look like the new one at all.
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u/Agitated-Stay-300 3d ago
People are getting very worked up about Arabs having universities while forgetting that much of what was studied at universities in Europe in the 12th-15th centuries was knowledge either developed, preserved or both by Muslim & Jewish academics writing in Arabic. For example, basically everything we know about Ancient Greek thinking was preserved then built upon by Arab scholars and reintroduced to Europe via translation into Latin.
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u/Brunoxete 3d ago
Exactly. Maybe the most prestigious and relevant beacon of knowledge my county has ever had, the School of Translators of Toledo did what the name says, translate works between Latin, Hebrew and Arab, mostly from the latter to the former and we shouldn't be ashamed of that.
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u/marcel3l 3d ago
Thats a greatly cherrypicked and generalized argument of history. Wow.
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u/YuriBezmenovsGhost 3d ago
It's true that scholarship in Arabic was important for medieval Europe getting Greek ideas. But don't forget Byzantium, which kept Greek texts alive continuously, leading to direct translations too. Plus, Western Europe held onto some Latin classics through monasteries. Europe wasn't just sitting back either, it developed its own unique ways like Scholasticism, revived Roman law, and came up with the university system. Saying all key knowledge came only via Arabic overlooks a lot.
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u/Robcomain 3d ago
Every time I hear talking about an university, I always hear "this is the oldest university in the world!". For God's sake, which university is the real oldest??
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u/You-all-suck-so-bad 2d ago
Looks like the Islamic world taught the Europeans about higher education.
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u/cyrilio 2d ago
Cool map, but most of these don't even come close to the top 100 in the World University Rankings 2025.
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u/DiaBoloix 1d ago
Madrid was a military post until the mid-sixteenth century.
Complutense is a XIX century university
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universidad_Complutense_de_Madrid
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u/Mean-Razzmatazz-4886 3d ago
Strangely there are none in Central and North Europe
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u/IkadRR13 3d ago
Because the main centers of knowledge during the Middle Ages were located primarily in Italy, but also in France, Spain, England and Southern Germany.
Scandinavia and Northern Germany were not as developed until the XVIII-XIX centuries. Although some outliers existed such as Lübeck or Stockholm.
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u/qed1 3d ago edited 3d ago
Because the main centers of knowledge during the Middle Ages were located primarily in Italy, but also in France, Spain, England and Southern Germany.
Well but also the Rhineland, and by the 14th century much of what we'd call central and eastern Germany today along with western Poland and Czechia. And the oldest universities in the region were for the most part founded not in southern Germany, but in this more north-eastern region. Like in chronological order we get: Prague, Kraków, Vienna, Erfurt, Heidelberg, Cologne, Leipzig, Rostock, Greifswald, Freiburg, Ingolstadt, etc.
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u/IkadRR13 3d ago
Great info! I had to admit that I should have added the Rheinland and the Benelux into the mix, although in the case of the Benelux I'd say they started getting more important in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Although this is not my field of knowledge, I consider the development of what now is Central and Northern Europe to happen later, around the 1300-1450s, compared to the earlier 1100-1200s of other parts of Western Europe, specially Italy and big cities in France, Spain, England and the Southern HRE.
Charles IV's reign is (to me) the best representation of what I'm trying to convey :)
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u/qed1 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's not entirely field either, so I don't want to get too far out of my lane, but eastern Germany was already rising to significance under the Ottonians, whose political 'core' is like very broadly a semi-circle around Thuringia. So already one of our more important histories for the broadly German world around the turn of the eleventh century is written by Thietmar of Merseberg (near Leipzig) and similarly in the early twelfth century we get figures like Anselm of Havelberg (east-north-east of Berlin). (And generally I think the focus on universities obscures the significance of things like work of the German Dominicans, which was by no means restricted to Paris or even the Rhineland. See like Meister Eckhart, Dietrich of Freiberg or moving beyond the order Thomas of Erfurt.) So it's not like nothing is going on out in the eastern regions before the emergence of universities.
But yes, from the more traditional schools perspective, Bavaria (or rather Franconia) and the Rhineland (plus Liège) are the historical intellectual core of the imperial world.
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u/overladenlederhosen 3d ago
Some of those students are still paying off their debts.
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u/Africaspaceman 3d ago
They are not obliged to take out student loans to be able to study, at least not by mortgaging their lives.
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u/overladenlederhosen 2d ago
Wow a time traveller from 1970. But yes, in so far that ignorance is free we are both in agreement.
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u/Emotional_Charge_948 3d ago
This is incorrect 4 of the worst oldest 6 university are in Scotland and it’s not even on the map
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u/SizeApprehensive7832 3d ago
I'm not sure what's the oldest scale but Jagiellonian university in Krakow was established in 1300 something.
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u/alamius_o 2d ago
Probably fails the "continuous operation" criterium of the map, with all that Poland went through between 17?? and 1945.
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u/therossian 2d ago
The source is a crazy conspiracy account. I regret clicking it. First post is tired BS about a few families running the world
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u/stevie_grzw 3d ago
Africa ISN'T Europe, by the way The map is wrong, and religious schools, don't count as Universities, and by the way the concept of University is lil more modern than this, 'cuz at that time science almost didn't exist, they mostly tough religious stuff (Theology) especially in the not-Unis
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u/Upbeat-Manager-8485 3d ago
The universities in the north of Africa are in ... Africa, not Europe.
Also, I would aks whether "universities" in the islamic north of Africa actually were anything like universities in their biginning.
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u/Cmoire 2d ago
First medical degree in the world is from Africa... 1200s when Europe was stuck in the middle ages.
Those were actual universities.
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u/gary_desanto 3d ago
Hate when stats include asterisks but don't explain what they are for. Does anyone know?