The world's first, and still-operating, university is in Morocco

Over a thousand years ago, when Europe was reeling from the Dark Ages, the Middle East and North Africa were shining with the light of knowledge. Under the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258AD), the entire region represented a beacon of hope, radiating cosmopolitanism, with its cities from the Levantine region, to the coasts of today's Morocco proudly home to different cultures and traditions.

During this era, dubbed the Golden Age of Islam, a young Muslim woman, Fatima Al-Fahri, established the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fes, Morocco, in 859 AD. According to the United Nations, Guinness World Records, Manchester University Press and other credible sources, al-Qarawiyyin is the oldest university of the world still in use today. 

Prestigious institutions like the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna and Columbia University, came two to eight centuries later. 

Like today's modern universities, al-Qarawiyyin periodically hosted debates, symposiums and housed several libraries in its main premises and outside annexes. 

Indeed, its historical library is still open to the public, and it exhibits Fatima’s original diploma on a wooden board. It also boasts more than 4,000 manuscripts on a range of subjects. The 14th century text, Muqaddimah, written by famous Muslim polymath and historian, Ibn Khaldun, is also available there.

By the late 20th century, the university had started to decay and until recent years, no one had undertaken the task to save it. A few years ago, the Moroccan government finally rose to the occasion and hired a Toronto-based architect, Aziza Chaouni, to give it a much-needed face-lift.

Regrettably, the several decades of accumulated rot proved destructive enough for some rare manuscripts. Some had been written by the greatest minds of the Middle Ages, such as Ibn Khaldun, the historian widely seen as a forerunner of today's sociology. 

What makes the university so important today?

Abdelfattah Bougchouf, the library curator at al-Qarawiyin, told Al Jazeera in 2016, that people come to him from all over the world simply to check facts on the collection of old manuscripts. 

The university has had a far-reaching influence over global scholarship, reshaping the future of humankind. 

The university was established on the concept of higher education as we know it today. Al Fihri's idea was to create a space where bright philosophical and scientific minds could assemble for advanced learning and spread their knowledge throughout the world in the Middle Ages. That is exactly what happened. The university left a blueprint, and as a result of it, passed on a structure of learning that has been emulated by Europe during the founding of its oldest institutions in successive centuries, including the University of Bologna (founded 1088) and the University of Oxford (founded around 1096).

Step by step construction 

Al Fihri was born in Tunisia in 800 AD. She was heir to a financial dynasty who believed in science, the power of logic and reasoning. By the time she inherited a large fortune after her father's death, she had already moved to Fes, a bustling cosmopolitan city of the time. When she arrived, she invested a large portion of her wealth in founding a mosque and an educational institution. 

She still inspires people in Morocco. According to Abdul Majid al Mardi, the imam of the university’s mosque, which is one of the oldest structures in the compound, al Fihri was a visionary. "She left behind a great legacy. This building stands as a beacon of science. This university had a huge impact on different cultures and civilizations. It was a spring of innovation," he explained to Al Jazeera in 2016.  

Al Fihri started the university's construction in 859 AD after purchasing a piece of land from the El-Hawara tribe. The foundation stone was laid in the holy month of Ramadan and she   named it after her birthplace – Qayrawan – in Tunisia.

Besides giving birth to towering Muslim scholars and intellectuals such as Ibn Rushd, people from other faiths also graduated from the university. Some believe that among them, the Jewish philosopher Maimonides was one of its foreign alumni, as well as Gerbert of Aurillac, who is better known as Pope Sylvester II. Several historians say he was the first to introduce Arabic numerals to the rest of Europe.