this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2025
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[–] Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 42 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

The actually reality is this:

Literally nothing is known about this woman outside of a single narrative written by a supposed 14th century Moroccan historian, Ibn Abi Zar', who we know nothing about either outside of him being a historian. Actually, most academics doubt that he was any sort of scholar to begin with because the source of this information is not reliable.

There's literally ZERO evidence to support that this historian was one or that this woman was even real. In fact there's evidence that supports the notion that this story is fake because the inscriptions inside the mosque use a different script than what is claimed in the story. Most academics are skeptical of her existence and her story is treated as a cultural legend rather than historical fact.

Also within the folktale story, which by the way was written over 600 years after her supposed death, claims that she, along with her sister, inherited the wealth from their wealthy merchant father, and they both decided to use that fortune to build two parallel mosques in the same city.

The thing is that mosques in the early islamic periods were more like community centers than purely religious institutions. So it wasn't uncommon for mosques to have a learning center as a part of the complex. Keep in mind, these learning centers were islamic schools that taught islam. They weren't centers for researching and preserving knowledge like modern universities.

Over time, these mosques were repurposed to the needs of their time. Some were turned into purely religious institutions, some were demolished, some were turned into political seats of power, some remained community centers, and some evolved into purely islamic madrasas. Al Qarawiyyin was one of the latter. So this post is nothing more than blatant misinformation.

Tl;dr: This story is fake, this person isn't real, the historical source is unreliable, and the institution is not an actual university but a mosque that later became an islamic madrasa.

[–] shawn1122@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)
  1. al-Qarawiyyin was started as a mosque-madrasa complex.

  2. Science and spirituality were intricately entwined during this era. As an example, Dharmic concepts of sunya led to the conceptualization of zero and its use in mathematical operations which is foundational to many subsequent scientific advancements and necessary to our communication through this platform.

  3. Part of what sets al-Qarawiyyin apart is that it offered degrees or certificates of scholarly achievement before other institutions.

  4. This is why UNESCO’s World Heritage description of the Fez Medina explicitly calls al‑Qarawiyyin “the oldest university in the world,” and Guinness lists it as the “oldest existing, continually operating higher‑learning institution”.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Nah I think OP is right. Googling around the story seems mostly made up for bragging points. It also started as religious school not sciences 100% and probably did more harm than good for women's rights considering Morocco is at the very fucking bottom (137th).

[–] shawn1122@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Interesting that googling would take precedence over UNESCO or Guinness in a science community of all places. Guinness particularly is known to have rigorous quality standards.

I'm going to trust actual organizations with institutional standards over a Google search. That's just me though. Other readers can draw their own conclusions.

[–] AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I trust UNESCO, but isn't Guinness basically pay-to-play, like if I got together with my entire city and we baked the world's largest pizza, verified by a number of neutral third parties but I don't pay the $$$ to bring the Guinness team, according to them it doesn't count?

[–] skeuomorphology@feddit.uk 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The UNESCO claim seems to be false, too. There is no mention of al-Qarawiyyin in UNESCO's description of the Medina of Fez: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/170

In any case, UNESCO make it crystal clear that they only publish the nomination description, which is written by the state party (in this case the Government of Morocco). UNESCO understandably and explicitly disclaim the description documents, and only publish them for transparency.

I do wish we didn't have these reality-distorting memes everywhere. Leave them to the far right - they don't do Islam any favours, and they piss off real historians.

[–] shawn1122@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

This is cited from 2012 according to Wikipedia. Archived versions can be accessed in the citations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_al-Qarawiyyin

This article from BBC in 2018 also makes the same mention:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180318-the-worlds-oldest-centre-of-learning

[–] skeuomorphology@feddit.uk 1 points 9 hours ago

Yes: that's the listing I went through. What you'd conclude from the documentation is that, at some point during the nomination process, the Government of Morocco made that claim. They've either since withdrawn the claim, or UNESCO has removed it. But, as with any false claim, once made it gets repeated, and the later repetition gets cited as evidence for the original claim (a form of circular citation, and one that historians get quite annoyed by because it's usually quite a deliberate attempt to 'hack' the record).