Islamic Education: History and Tendency

The Islamic Empire lasted for nearly 1,000 years and is credited with an unrivaled period of progress that affected most sciences and disciplines of the day. The Islamic Empire, through its emphasis on knowledge and learning, advanced discoveries in such diverse fields as geometry, astronomy, geography, medicine, optics, and physics, plus comprehensive contributions in theosophy, philosophy, and encyclopedic compilations (Nasr, 1987, p. 216). It is no wonder, then, that at least 60 major centers of learning spanned the Islamic Empire from Baghdad and Isfahan in the East to Cordoba in the West that courted the wisest and most influential leaders of ilm human knowledge (Nakosteen, 1964). How is it, then, that after 1,000 years of intellectual propensity and leadership, the Islamic world has failed to retain its dominance in even one of the fields that it historically mastered? What were the contributory events that disrupted this system, and why didn't the empire have the ability to adapt or to transform with the changing intellectual environment? This article is an analysis of these issues, with a specific focus on the educational institutions that both spawned and doomed the Eastern intellectual revolution.