Fatimid Institutions of Learning

perspective, generally receive recognition for the founding of Cairo and for the glory of having established the oldest continuously operating university in the world, al-Azhar. But, in the course of various exaggerations about al-Azhar, Fatimid institutions of learning have become disconnected from the meager evidence for them in the surviving historical records. A kind of boosterism has taken over the story of al-Azhar under the Fatimids and made of it a mythic prototype of the madrasa, at the minimum, or even the modern university, at the most outrageous.1 The false fame of al-Azhar has not, unfortunately, done the study of the Fatimids as much good as harm. Unchecked and unexamined, these legends hinder the evaluation of critical information concerning the relationship of state policy particularly in reference to religious ideology and the methods and efforts, or lack thereof, employed for its propagation. As a Shiite dynasty, the Fatimids presumably maintained an interest in establishing and fostering educational institutions that could promote their religious cause, or at the least, could ensure some measure of public loyalty. If al-Azhar actually possessed even a small portion of the eminence often accorded it, what explains Fatimid failure to attract scholars, or to build a solid record of academic conversions among those attached to it? Ismaili scholars, with few exceptions, are not known to have had any connection with such an institution. Al-Azhar was simply neither a major educational institution in the broader sense nor