MENAS 398 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Minaret, Kaaba, Bimaristan

• School: U of M
• Department: Middle Eastern And North African Studies
• Course: MENAS 398
• Professor: Noah Gardiner

Document Summary

The arab people were a very advanced people who engaged their minds in critically challenging subjects and sought to improve and increase their knowledge at every opportunity possible. According to hadith, it was recorded that the prophet muhammad said it is the duty of every muslim man and woman to seek education as a part of their imaan. These advisements and prescriptions of islam became the stimulus for arabs to partake in their quest for knowledge, which inadvertently constructed them to become one of the most knowledgeable civilizations amongst the world. From an early period the arabs established specific havens to nurture their shared desire for knowledge like madrassas and halqas. The madrassas were homes to both young and adult alike, and ranged in topics from quranic and hadith teachings to scholarly sciences like chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, physics, and music. The madrassas and halqas were structured as oral presentations of knowledge from the educators to the students.