Fatima al-Fihriyah

c. 800 - 880 CE

A wealthy immigrant to Fez from Kairouan who used her inheritance to found the university of al-Qarawiyyin in 859 CE. Twelve centuries later it is still operating, listed by UNESCO as the oldest continuously-functioning degree-granting institution in the world.

Life

Fatima bint Muhammad al-Fihri was born in Kairouan (modern Tunisia) about 800 CE. Her family emigrated to the new city of Fez in Morocco in her youth. Her father, a wealthy merchant, left her and her sister Maryam a large inheritance on his death.

Both sisters used their inheritance to endow religious and educational institutions in Fez. Fatima's endowment, begun in 859 CE, founded a small mosque with an attached teaching institution in the Andalusian quarter of Fez. She called it al-Qarawiyyin, "the Kairouan mosque," after her home city.

Over the following twelve centuries the institution grew into one of the great centres of Islamic learning. It taught Arabic grammar, Islamic law, theology, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. Its graduates include Ibn Khaldun (father of sociology), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Ibn al-Arabi, Leo Africanus, Pope Sylvester II (Gerbert of Aurillac), and Maimonides.

UNESCO and the Guinness Book of Records list al-Qarawiyyin as the oldest continuously-operating degree-granting institution of higher education in the world. It has been in continuous operation for 1,167 years. It is still open. Students still enrol.

Fatima al-Fihriyah is one of the great counter-examples to any argument that Islam has excluded women from public life. She died in 880 CE. Her tomb is in Fez.

Stories

Each story below is drawn from the classical Islamic historical sources.