Review Author

Review Author(s): Devin J. Stewart Review by: Devin J. Stewart Source: Islamic Law and Society, Vol. 1, No. 3, Gender, Family, and the Courts in Muslim Societies (1994), pp. 367-376 Published by: Brill Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3399236 Accessed: 18-08-2016 04:07 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Islamic Law and Society This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BOOK REVIEW BERKEY, Jonathan, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992), 218 pp., index, bibliography. This book treats the "people, processes, and institutions involved in higher religious education in Cairo from the middle of the thirteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth centuries" [p. 12] - that is, during the period of Mamlfk rule in Egypt (648-922/1250-1517). It concentrates on the "traditional or transmitted sciences" (al-'ulam al-naqliyya), excluding other forms of knowledge the reader might expect to find, given the title, such as the literary or humanistic fields - poetry, artistic prose, history, and so on - and what were termed the "sciences of the ancients" ('ulam al-awd'il) or "the rational sciences" (al-'ulam al-'aqliyya) - mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy - [p. 13]. Drawing on an impressive number of both published and unpublished endowment deeds (waqfiyydt) as well as treatises on education, Mamluk chronicles, and biographical dictionaries, Berkey describes the complex collection of educational institutions in Mamlfik Cairo, including mosques, madrasas, and khdnqdhs, which were involved in the process of teaching the religious sciences, including Islamic law (fiqh), the oral traditions of the Prophet (hadith), and exegesis of the Qur'an (tafsir), as well as the scholars who studied, taught, and resided there. The book's merit lies in its portrayal of medieval Islamic education within a specific social and historical context. Makdisi's pioneering work on medieval Islamic education, The Rise of the Colleges, published in 1981, brought out the significance of many important technical terms related to the transmission of knowledge and medieval educational institutions and remains the fundamental work in the field. Its immense scope, however, leaves little room for attention to variations in local practices and institutions, and it often treats the practice of eleventh-century Baghdad as representative of the rest of the Muslim world, relying on Baghdad's status as the cultural capital of the Islamic world, a status which certainly did not hold throughout the Middle Ages if it did in the madrasa's formative period, and even so cannot support generalization without extensive further research. Berkey avoided some problems of historical generslization by focusing on a specific place and time, Cairo during the Mamlfk period, and it is this type of work that is needed in order to build on Makdisi's scholarship on the madrasa.1 Cairo is an obvious and excellent choice for a focus to complement the work of Makdisi which, though ranging widely in both space and time, drew particularly on his earlier studies on the intellectual history of Baghdad. Cairo during the Mamlfk period indeed became "a city of schools," and was arguably the foremost center of learning in the Arab-Muslim world following the Mongol conquest of Iraq. The sources available for the study of education in Mamlk Cairo, particularly biographical dictionaries and waqf O E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1994 Islamic Law and Society 1,3 This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 368 BOOK REVIEW documents, are relatively abundant, detailed, and reliable. It is hoped that future studies will follow Berkey's example and focus on the history of the madrasa in other major Islamic centers of learning, such as Damascus, Qayrawan, and Fez. Within this focus, Berkey extends the portrayal of the madrasa conveyed by Makdisi by examining its connections to the rest of society and showing the important social roles it played in medieval Cairo. The main thesis of the work is that education in Mamlfik Cairo was not rigid or formal, and that the madrasa and associated institutions cannot be treated as inherently separate or distinct from the city which surrounded them and the people who frequented them. The book includes seven chapters, the first of which is an introduction giving basic background information on Islamic scholarship, the Mamllk regime, and the institution of the madrasa [pp. 3-20]. Here Berkey stresses the high value Muslims placed on education [pp. 3-6 and passim], a point which should be obvious to anyone familiar with the sources but which bears emphasis for those who may be inclined to believe that Judaism and/or Christianity are more favorable to the pursuit of knowledge and more supportive of education than are other world religions. The following three chapters -II: "Instruction" [pp. 21-43], II: "Institutions" [pp. 44-94], and IV: "Professors and Patrons" [pp. 95-127] - concentrate on the academic environment. The last three chapters - V: "Religious Education and the Military Elite" [pp. 128-60], VI: "Women and Flucation" [pp. 161-81], and VII: "Beyond the Elite: Fducation and Urban Society" [pp. 182-218] situate the transmission of knowledge and the academic institutions involved in it within their larger social context. Berkey's analysis demonstrates that the founders of endowments, primarily Mamluk Sultans and their relatives, military commanders, high-ranking bureaucrats, as well as a number of women, established Cairo's most prestigious schools out of piety, respect for learning, and a desire to protect - often at critical points in their careers their accumulated wealth from the vagaries of the Mamlfik political system, thereby ensuring that at least some part of it would remain to benefit their heirs. He shows how the academic life of the madrasas permeated other sectors of society and how the line between learning as an elite activity and piety as a general religious obligation was blurred through public prayers, recitations of the Qur'an and hadith, visitations to tombs, and activities of the various employees and functionaries responsible for the administration and maintenance of endowed institutions. He also treats students and teachers outside this institutional framework, finding that the transmission of knowledge, especially the oral traditions of the Prophet, involved a wide crosssection of society outside the academic elite. Chapter VI, which focuses on the role played by women in the transmission of knowledge, serves as an important corrective to views, common in contemporary debates, that Arab and Muslim women in the pre-moder era were completely and systematically excluded from education. While the information given on the madrasa's larger social role is interesting and valuable, the book leaves many questions unanswered, and it is hoped that the author will continue his research along these lines. From the This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BOOK REVIEW 369 book's subtitle, "A Social History of Islamic Education," one anticipates that it will provide information on the socio-economic backgrounds of students and teachers, professors' salaries, students' stipends, endowment revenues, the economics of one professor simultaneously holding multiple appointments at different institutions, and selling offices. The author touches upon these issues, but makes little attempt to provide the reader with detailed monetary or economic information, despite the fact that such information may be derived from biographical sources and waf documents. Based on his analysis, Berkey criticizes Makdisi's portrayal of the madrasa, holding, in agreement with Tibawi, 2 that medieval Islamic religious education as it manifested itself in Cairo in the thirteenth-fifteenth centuries was persistently personal, flexible, and informal. While such characteristics are seen in many aspects of the traditional Islamic system of education, this reviewer believes that Berkey overstates the case for its informal nature when he finds little order in the educational system of Mamlak Cairo and implies that its functioning bordered on the chaotic. He writes, "The spread of such institutions never resulted in any formalization of the educational process... the whole system remained, as it were, thoroughly nonsystematic." [p. 44] It is true that the Islamic biographical literature takes only a limited interest in the specific institutions in which a certain scholar had studied, while taking great care to record information about an individual's teachers, and that a system of degrees attached to particular institutions did not develop during this period. Islamic religious education nevertheless constituted a system albeit informal, both by modem standards and by comparison with medieval Europe and, especially, China3 - a system that functioned according to rules and procedures and involved ranks and methods of advancement well- known to the participants, all of which lent Islamic education a more systematic character than Berkey suggests. In emphasizing the iihfoimality, flexibility, and fluidity of the Mamlfk educational system, Berkey on occasion overlooks explicit information given by contemporary sources and ignores Makdisi's findings concerning a number of key technical terms and institutions. The data available suggest a system falling far short of utter rigidity, but nearly as far from utter flexibility. In this reviewer's assessment, the process of following a curriculum of study and competing for a position within the academic hierarchy might profitably be regarded as a pattern of negotiation similar to that described by Lawrence Rosen with respect to social relations in modem Morocco.4 There clearly were set curricula of study in particular fields during this period, which, though they may have been informal and may not have been specified in the waqf deeds of various madrasas, reflected a degree of stability and regularity in the transmission of knowledge. The biographical literature provides much of the information necessary to reconstruct, for example, the core curriculum of a Shafi'i law student in the fifteenth century. Students began their studies by memorizing the Qur'an and learning how to write. Beyond this, however, Berkey's comments suggest that study was haphazard. An important stage in the educational process during the period under consideration which Berkey completely overlooks was embodied in the This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 370 BOOK REVIEW institution of the 'ard, literally "presentation," approximately a general oral exam.5 After memorizing the Qur'an, the student would set about memorzing the standard textbooks - al-Sakhawi terms them al-mutun, or "the texts"6 - in various fields. When ready, he would perform a "presentation" of the works he had memorized to a number of scholars - at least ten, in one case7 - in order to establish his right to obtain ijdzas, or certificates of study.8 The student usually did not study these works with the scholars from whom he received the ijczas, and may even have studied them on his own. One generally performed the 'ard in one's teens. Al-Sakhawi reports a student performing his 'ard of al-Nawawi's Minh4j in 802/1399-1400 at the age of thirteen,9 and elsewhere he states that it was unlikely that a certain scholar had performed his 'ard at the age of twenty-one.10 That al-Sakhawi could make such definitive assumptions about age - he uses this last example in order to rectify the reported birthdate of the scholar in question so that his age at the time of his 'ard would have been eleven instead of twenty-one - implies that there were some formal elements and practices in this "fluid" and "informal" system. Furthermore, examination of the works memorized for the 'ard reliably indicates the standard textbooks of the period; they included the Alfiyya of Ibn Milik on Arabic grammar, the Alfiyya of al-'Iraqi on hadrth criticism, Jam' al-jawdmi' of al-Subki on usul al-fiqh, Minhdj al-tdlibin of alNawawi on Shafi'ifiqh, and other works. Berkey mentions some of these standard texts in passing - al-Hiddya by al-Marghinani [p. 96], al-.Hdwi al- saghir by al-Qazwini [pp. 169, 185], al-Minhdj by al-Nawawi [p. 196] - but he does not treat in detail the curriculum of any of the fields considered and leaves the reader with the impression that the choice of textbooks varied widely and depended solely on the personal whims of the individual teacher. Although Berkey makes several references to the prominent position of law among the Islamic religious sciences [pp. 12, 16, 69, 82], he does not address legal education as an independent topic, despite Makdisi's demonstration of law's central role in Islamic education, and despite the many pieces of information Berkey himself cites which attest to law's special position, such as the fact that students and professors of law received higher remuneration than scholars in other fields [pp. 77, 93]. He further attenuates such observations by emphasizing the diversity of the madrasa and by pointing out that instruction in law was not limited to madrasas [pp. 47-50]. Nevertheless, it is clear from the information he presents - for instance, the fact that 400 of the 506 students at the madrasa of Sultan Hasan studied law [p. 67] - that the madrasa remained primarily a focus for the teaching of Islamic law. Given the importance of law in the overall educational system, it would have been valuable for Berkey to provide a more detailed treatment of legal education as well as the relationships between law and other fields in the religious sciences, such as hadith and mysticism.11 The author's treatment of Islamic legal education as it functioned in Mamlfik Cairo shows a number of infelicities and omissions. Berkey's consistent rendering offiqh as "jurisprudence" [e.g. p. 7] is imprecise, forfiqh more properly denotes "positive law," or simply "law," whereas "jurisprudence" corresponds most closely to the Islamic science termed usul al- This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BOOK REVIEW 371 fiqh. This can be seen from the definition of "jurisprudence" in Black's Law Dictionary, which closely corresponds to usul al-fiqh in particular: the philosophy of law, or the science which treats of the principles of positive law and legal relations ... that science which has for its function to ascertain the principles on which legal rules are based, but also to settle the manner in which new or doubtful cases should be brought under the appropitate rules.12 On the other hand, the author renders usal al-fiqh as "foundations of jurisprudence" [pp. 17, 84, 88] or "roots of jurisprudence" [pp. 64, 196, 206], when "jurisprudence" or "legal methodology" would have been more accurate and informative. Similarly, he renders usal al-din as "foundations of religion" [p. 17] or "roots of religion" [p. 64], when "dogma" or "dogmatic theology" might give the general reader a better idea of the substance of this science. Berkey pays only passing attention to the rich legacy of commentaries and glosses written during this period [pp. 14, 24-25], an examination of which, in conjunction with the biographical literature, can indicate which works served as textbooks and, possibly, how they were used. It appears that such works as al-Minhdj and al-Bahja served as the standard texts for advanced courses on law. 13 The mudarris, or professor of law, would teach from his own commentary on these basic texts, so that al-Mahalli's commentary on al-Subki's famous Jam' al-jawdmi' probably represents the lectures of advanced classes on usul al-fiqh during this period. Berkey makes no mention of a related and important aspect of higher legal study, the ta'llq written by advanced law students, their own commentary on their professor's lectures. 14 Berkey stresses that no formal system of degrees, by which he means degrees attached to particular educational institutions, ever developed in pre- modem Islamic education [pp. 16, 22, 43]. Egyptian sources from the Mamlik period show, however, that something approaching a formal degree in law was in use at the time. While Berkey mentions the ijaza of transmission many times, especially in connection with hadith, where it was most important, he mentions only in passing and assigns little importance to the ijdzat al-tadrls wa'l-iftd', "the license to teach law and issue legal opinions" [pp. 31, 121, 153], which Makdisi has likened to a doctorate of law and which was an extremely important part of the system of legal education. 15 This is odd, given that the granting of such permission, expressed with the terms ajdza or adhina, appears frequently in contemporary sources. 16 This permission was personal in nature, being granted not by an educational institution but by a qualified scholar; nevertheless, it clearly involved an actual document, and one of some official or legal standing. Al-Sakhawi and al-Udfuwwi cite passages from the texts of several such certificates of permission,17 and the latter reports that one such ijdza was officially notarized and dated by two witnesses.18 This legal procedure would seem to indicate that the ijdza was more than simply a private document. Berkey recognizes the existence of a body of academic elite and holds that many matters such as the appointments to important teaching posts, were, in This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 372 BOOK REVIEW the end, left up to the academics themselves, and not determined directly by the military or political elite [pp. 99, 107]. He also addresses some crucial phenomena related to the structure and maintenance of that hierarchy, such as the sale of appointments, the concurrent appointment of one professor at different institutions, employment of deputies, and transferral of one's posts to one's sons and favorite students [pp. 96-127]. This is only part of the work necessary to describe this hierarchy and its workings accurately and fully. Berkey points to one important area for further investigation when he reports that many students and scholars earned a living as professional witnesses (shdhid/shuhid) [pp. 80-90]. The activity of professional witnesses, with its complex links to both the legal academy and the judicial hierarchy of chief judges, judges, and deputies, deserves a more systematic treatment. 19 Another key part of the legal system which Berkey does not treat is the institution of riydsa or ri'dsa, the rank ascribed to a top scholar (ra'ls) in a given field. Mottahedeh has discussed the general concept, 20 and Makdisi has treated its application to legal scholarship in particular,21 comparing the ra'ls of a given madhhab to the headman of a legal guild.22 Mamlik sources provide ample evidence that this term and the institution it designated were part of common usage, often reporting of a particular scholar, intahat ilayhi'l-riydsatuffi..., that is, "the rank of top scholar in... devolved upon him." Al-Udfuwwi writes of Mfis b. 'Ali al-Qushayri al-Qusi (d. 685/128687), wa'ntahat ilayhi ri'dsatu'l-fatwd bi-qus, that is, "the rank of top man in Qfis [then the leading center of learning in upper Egypt] in the issuing of legal opinions devolved upon him."23 Al-Sakhawi writes, intahat ilayhi riydsatu ahli madhhabih, that is, "the position of leadership among the jurists of his madhhab devolved upon him."24 As Jackson has noted, a similar term, shaykh al-madhhab, was also in use during this period, and referred especially to the leading jurist of the Maliki madhhab. 25 Berkey emphasizes the importance of the oral as opposed to the written transmission of knowledge, and again, this reviewer feels he has overstated the case in order to stress the personal and informal nature of medieval Islamic education. It is true that memorization played - and still plays - an important part in education in Cairo, but it was for the most part standard written textbooks that were being committed to memory, and not a tradition that was being passed on orally, except, to a limited extent, in the cases of hadith and poetry. Even in the field of hadith, perhaps most conservative in this regard, it became common long before the Mamlfk era to transmit primarily the standard Sunni hadith works - often called "the Six Books" (al-kutub al-sitta) - which were compiled in the third/ninth century and represented, in large part, an attempt to fix an oral tradition on the wane in written texts and organize the material by legal topic for easy reference by those disinclined to memorize it. In nearly all academic fields, ijaza-documents were obtained by scholars for specific texts to establish "oral" chains of transmission linking them with the original author of the text, thereby gaining the authority to teach that work and perhaps also a guarantee of the reliability of the text itself. The obsession with obtaining such certificates, especially evident in the science of This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BOOK REVIEW 373 hadith, was formally upheld in other sciences. Nevertheless, many practices indicate that these trappings of an oral tradition had, by the seventh/thirteenth century and indeed much earlier, become largely a matter of theory and formality in a system concerned equally with the written word as with the spoken. Children five or six years of age, or even younger, would receive ijdzas for works they could not have studied or for attending dictations they did not understand.26 Students often received what was termed "a general certificate" (ijaza 'amma) granting blanket permission to the bearer to relate all the works a given teacher had the authority to transmit, whether or not they had ever studied these works at all, let alone studying them with the scholar granting the ijaza.27 Scholars would obtain ijdzas from each other after meeting only briefly on their travels or would receive ijazas by correspondence, without ever having met their so-called shaykh, or teacher [p. 32]. Such ijizas cannot be taken as evidence that students learned orally in a fluid, informal system of education. Rather, the existence of such certificates suggests that Muslim scholars made a concerted effort to preserve the formal trappings of oral transmission in an age when this was no longer the practical norm. While Berkey notes many of these practices [pp. 31-33], he chooses to emphasize the oral aspect of education and de-emphasize the role played by writing and written texts in the transmission of learning at that time. A few examples from the Mamlik and earlier periods can serve here to demonstrate the tension that existed between the oral and written trans- mission of knowledge, a tension which Berkey resolves by stressing the primacy of the oral. 'Abd al-Wahid b. Isma'il al-Ruyani, an Iranian jurist and judge who died in 502/1108, is reported to have boasted, "If all the books of al-Shafi'i were burned, I could dictate them from memory."28 Muhammad b. al-Muzaffar al-Shaimi al-Hamawi, a contemporary Syrian jurist, made a similar claim, "If the legal rulings of al-Sh&fi'i (madhhab al-Shdfi'l) were lost, I could dictate them."29 Al-Isnawi's remark immediately following this statement, "that is, he could dictate them from memory" (ay yumlihi min sadrih), implies that in his own environment, eighth/fourteenth-century Cairo, dictation, an important teaching method, often meant reading from a written text rather than reciting from memory. The extent of reliance on the written text is shown by the report that Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Daqqiq alBaghdidi (d. 392/1002), after losing his books in a fire, could relate only one hadlth from memory despite his many years of study.30 Al-Isnawi reports of Taj al-Din Muhammad b. Ibrahim al-Marrakushi (d. 752/1351), a scholar residing in Egypt, that "he acquired many sciences, most of them through audition (sama'), because he had poor eyesight, and was nearly blind."31 The statement of course implies that al-Marrikushi's case was an exception to the rule and that learning through reading was as prevalent as the oral/aural transmission of texts. Several additional biographical sources which would have benefited this study are Tabaqdt al-shdfi'iyya, 2 vols. (Baghdad: Matba'at al-irshid, 1971) by 'Abd al-Rahman al-Isnawi (d. 772/1370-71), al-Tabaqct al-sughrd (Cairo: Maktabat al-qahira, 1970) by 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha'rini (d. 972/1565) for the end of the Mamlik period, al-Sakhawi's Dhayl raf al-isr This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 374 BOOK REVIEW (Cairo, n.d.), and his Kitdb al-tibr al-masbak ft dhayl al-suluk (Cairo: Maktabat al-kulliyya al-azhariyya, 1972). An important source recently published is al-Maqrizi's Kitab al-muqaffd al-kabir (Beirut: Dar al-gharb alislami, 1991). With regard to secondary scholarship, one should also consult Jackson, "In Defense of Two-Tiered Orthodoxy: a Study of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi's Kitdb al-ihkdmfi tamylz al-fatdwd 'an al-ahkdm wa-tasarrufdt alqddi wa'l-imdm," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1991. The work contains a few infelicities of translation. The phrase butan al- awrdq, rendered "the hidden meaning of pages" [p. 26] is probably not meant to refer to esoteric layers of meaning behind the literal text and might be better translated as "the contents of books." The word puhba, rendered as "the company" of a shaykh [p. 26] is a technical term, as Berkey knows [see pp. 34-35], referring to the special relationship of an advanced student to his teacher, and could be rendered as "discipleship," as Berkey himself suggests [p. 34]. The word "candles" in the passage cited on p. 199 probably should be "oil-lamps," since the text indicates that the objects in question are to be washed, cleaned, filled, and hung. Although I do not have access to the original text, the Arabic term is almost certainly qindil (pl. qanddil) > Latin candela, which though cognate with English "candle" has the primary meaning of"oil-lamp."32 A number of errors in the names of individual scholars represent more than typographical slips. The scholar al-Adhr&'i [pp. 99n, 229] should be alAdhri'i, the nisba adjective derived from the town Adhric't (now Der'a) in the Hawran in Syria.33 Al-Baqa'i [p. 158] and al-Baqa'i [p. 229] should be alBiq'i, the nisba from the Biqa' valley in what is now Lebanon. Al-Basati [pp. 23n, 229] should probably be al-Bisati.34 Al-Busiri [p. 175] or al-Busiri [p. 230] should be al-Biusiri, author of the famous qaslda in praise of the Prophet. Al-Husni [pp. 104n, 117, 231] should probably be al-Hisni, a nisba of various locations with Hisn ("fortress") in their names such as Hisn al- Akrad. Ibn al-Diri [pp. 97, 104, 155, 231] should be Ibn al-Dayri, for alSakhawi reports that this nisba probably derives from a monastery (dayr) in Jerusalem.35 Ibn Sukkur [pp. 200, 232] should be Ibn Sukkar.36 Abi Shajja' al-Isfahani [pp. 169, 232] should read Abf Shuja' al-Isfahani. The names of three scholars listed as al-Maniwi [pp. 123, 234] should probably be rendered al-Minawi, a nisba to one of several villages in Egypt termed Minya, such as Minyat al-Qamh.37 The nisba al-Ni'mani [pp. 123n, 235] should be al-Nu'mani, because, al-Sakhawi reports, it derives from the name of his ancestor Abf 'Abd Allih b. al-Nu'man.38 Al-Tafahani [pp. 104, 111, 114- 15, 237] should be al-Tafahni, the nisba derived from the Egyptian village of Tafahna, near Dumyit.39 The name given as 'Iyad b, Mius al-Yahsfbi [pp. 214n, 238], the famous Qadi 'Iyad, should read 'Iyad b. Mfus al-Yahsubi.40 The name al-Mahalli al-Dirfiti [pp. 169, 234] should be Dayruti, the nisba of the Egyptian village of Dayriut. The nisba al-Abyiri [pp. 109n, 229] should be al-Ibyari.41 The female name Hujjab bt. 'Abd Allah [pp. 175n, 231] should probably be H.ijab, and Dawud Abu'l-Jawad [p. 175n] should be Abu'l-Jfd. The nisba al-Maydawi [pp. 206, 234] should be al-Maydani, deriving from a location just outside Cairo called Maydan al-Qamhl.42 This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 375 BOOK REVIEW Berkey's work is an important contribution to the limited Westernlanguage material treating education in the medieval Islamic world and in Mamlik Egypt in particular. The author is to be commended for conveying the vitality and complexity of Islamic education as well as its importance in the social life of a major urban center such as Cairo. He admirably brings out the involvement in education of wide segments of society, including women, an important point for those inclined to see education as the domain of a very small academic elite. The variety and fluidity that Berkey stresses, however, are partly the result of our limited understanding of the institutions and practices, however informal, involved in the organization of education in law and other fields. Further investigation of medieval Islamic education within specific historical contexts may reveal more order in the apparent chaos of the source materials. Devin J. Stewart Emory University 1 One should also mention Gary Leiser's important though unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, "The Restoration of Sunnism in Egypt: Madrasas and Mudarrisun 495-647/1101-1249," University of Pennsylvania, 1976. 2 A.L. Tibawi, "Muslim Education in the Golden Age of the Caliphate," Islamic Culture 28(1954), 418-38; idem, "Origin and Character of Al-Madrasah," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 25(1962), 225-38. 3 I thank my teacher and colleague, Prof. Adel Allouche, for calling this point to my attention. 4 See Bargaining for Reality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 5 Makdisi does not treat this term or the institution it designates. While I may only conjecture at this point, it seems that this institution developed during the Mamlfik period. 6 Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Sakhawi, al-Daw' al-lami' li-ahl al-qarn al- tdsi', 12 vols. (Cairo, 1934; reprinted Beirut: Dar maktabat al-hayat, n.d.), vol. 9, 45. 7 Ibid., vol. 9, 53. 8 See, e.g., ibid.,.vol. 9, 26, 28, 31, 37. 9 Ibid., vol. 9, 52. 10 Ibid., vol. 9, 53. 11 In the latter regard, Berkey again prefers to emphasize the fluidity of medieval Islamic learning, observing that the boundaries between law and other disciplines in this period is not clear [p. 12]. His observation that the science of law "had grown out of that of hadlth" [p.12] is questionable, particularly given the present state of research on the rise of Islamic law. 12 Black's Law Dictionary (sixth ed., St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing Co., 1990), 854. 13 See, e.g., al-Sakhawi, al-Daw' al-ldmi', vol. 9, 29, where he states, "He taught the law-course on al-Minhdj and al-Hdwi, granted legal opinions, and became a recognized authority" (wa-darrasa'l-minhdja wa'l-hdwiya wa-aftd wasdra'l-mu'awwala 'alayh). 14 On the ta'liq (or ta'liqa) in general, see George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 116-27; idem, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West, with Special Reference to Scholasticism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 9-12. For examples from the Mamlfk period, see e.g. al-Sakhawi, al-Daw' al-lami', vol. 9, 9, 14. This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 376 23. BOOK REVIEW 15 Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges, 140-52; idem, The Rise of Humanism, 20- 16 See, e.g., al-Sakhawi, al-Daw' al-ldmi', vol. 9, 32, 43, 44, 59. The re- viewer is currently preparing a study of ijtihdd and the ijazat al-iftd' wa't-tadris. 17 See, e.g., ibid., vol. 9, 44; Ja'far b. Tha'lab al-Udfuwwi, al-Tali' al-sa'ld al-jdmi' li-asmd' al-ruwdt bi-a'ld al-sa'id (Cairo: Matba'at al-Jam&liyya, 1914), 235-36, 309. 18 Ibid.,309. 19 On judges in Egypt in the medieval period, see Joseph H. Escovitz, The Office of the Qddl al-Qu.ddt in Cairo Under the Bahri Mamldks (Berlin, 1984); Adel Allouche, "The Establishment of Four Judgeships in Fatimid Egypt," Journal of the American Oriental Society 105(1985), 317-20. 20 Roy Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 129-57. 21 Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges, 129-33; "Suhba et riyasa dans l'enseigne- ment m6di6vale," in Recherches d'islamologie. Receuil d'articles offert d Georges C. Anawati et Louis Gardet par leurs colldgues et amis (Louvain, 1977), 207-21. 22 Makdisi, The Rise of Humanism, 21. 23 Al-Udfuwwi, al-Tili' al-sa'ld, 381. 24 Al-Sakhawi, al-)aw' al-ldmi', vol. 4, 99. 25 Sherman Jackson, "In Defense of Two-Tiered Orthodoxy: a Study of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi's Kitdb al-ihkdm fi tamyiz al-fatdwd 'an al-ahkdm wa-tasarrufCt al-qddl wa'l-imdm," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1991, 50-52. For additional uses of this term, see, for example, al-Sakhawi, al-Daw' al-ldmi', vol. 9, 59, where he refers to shaykh al-madhhab 'Izz al-Din al-Kinmni (d. 876/1471). 26 Al-Sakhawi mentions one scholar who had "attended" a dictation session when he was three months old (ibid., vol. 1, 17). 27 See, e.g., ibid., vol. 1, 14. 28 'Abd al-Rahman al-Isnawi, Tabaqdt al-shdfi'iyya, 2 vols. (Baghdad: Matba'at al-irshad, 29 Ibid., vol. 1, 30 Ibid., vol. 1, 31 Ibid., vol. 2, 1971), vol. 1, 277. 277. 253. 260-61. 32 El-Said Badawi and Martin Hinds, A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1986), 719. 33 EI2, vol. 1, 194, s.v. "Adhri'at" (F. Buhl-N. Elis6eff). 34 Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2 vols., 3 supp. vols. (2nd ed., Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1937-49), SII, 395. 35 Al-Sakhawi, al-Daw' al-ldmi', vol. 3, 249. 36 Ibid., vol. 2, 33. Al-Sakhawi informs the reader that there is a damma vowel on the sin and that the kdf is geminate, and neglects to specify the vowel on the kdf probably because he thinks it should be obvious by then that the name in question is the common word sukkar "sugar." 37 Al-Sakhawi tells us that the nisba al-Minawi is thus derived in several passages and mentions in particular a Minyat Abi 'Abd Allah in the Sharqiyya region (ibid., vol. 1, 223, 322). A. Saleh Hamdan gives "al-Munawi" rather than "al-Minawi," holding that the name derives from an Egyptian village named Munaw or Munayt. (EI2, vol. 7, 565, s.v. "al-Munawi"). In moder Egyptian Arabic, however, the common nisba derived from al-Minya is al-Minyawi. 38 Al-Sakhawi, al-Daw' al-ldmi', vol. 1, 78. 39 Ibid., vol. 4, 98. 40 EI2, vol. 4, 289-90, s.v. "'IyMd b. Misa" (M. Talbi). 41 Al-Sakhawi, al-Daw' al-ldmi', vol. 1, 348n. 42 Ibid., vol. 2, 9. This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Thu, 18 Aug 2016 04:07:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms