Dr博士. Sultan T. AbuOrabi Gulf Education Conferences .pptxVIP

1 HIGHER EDUCATION SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN THE ARAB WORLD Dr. Sultan T. Abu-Orabi Secretary General Association of Arab Universities Dr.abuorabi@ secgen@.jo The Arab World22 Countries:Asia :12 Africa: 10 2 Higher Education in the Arab World According to the Middle East Brief , no.36 May 2009, Higher learning is deeply rooted in the history and societies of the Arab Middle East. After the seventh century and the islamization of the Arab world, local religious schools known as madrasa became the main institutions of higher learning in the Middle East. They established and disseminated educational standards that are still applied in present-day universities, such as the separation of master’s from doctorate programs, tenure, and protections for academic freedom. 3 Madrasas like Al Zaytounah (Tunisia, 734 AD), the Qarawiyyun in Fez (Morocco 859AD), al-Azhar in Cairo (Egypt, 970AD), Al Mustansiryah (984 AD) and Al-Koufa University in Iraq and several universities were established in the Andulus area during the ninth and tenth centuries, i.e. Cordoba Granada. They originated in intellectual movements such as humanism and scholasticism, which nurtured the subsequent flourishing of Western scholarship after the twelfth century. Those universities are argued to be the first universities in the world ever established (even before the first European University – Bologna University 1088AD)and most of them were funded by the Islamic Waqf (Endowment). 4 Al-Qarawiyeen UniversityFounded in 859 5 6 During the same period, other institutions of the Arab world such as hospitals, libraries, observatories, and private homes known as “academies” undertook the development of the nonreligious sciences, inspired by the ancient Greeks. The most famous of these academies was the Beit al Hikma (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad, where numerous fields within the sciences (astronomy, physics, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, geography) flourished until the s