THE STORY OF FATIMA AL-FIHRI

The University of Oxford, Harvard, St Andrews: all extremely well-known, established places of education that we would have thought to be trailblazers and frontrunners of their time. But did you know that the Guinness World Records acknowledgestheUniversityofal-QarawiyyininFez, Morocco, as the oldest existing and continually operating educational institution in the world, foundedbyFatimaAl-Fihri?

Born into a wealthy merchant family located in Tunisia in the early ninth century, Al-Fihri received an education (despite the fiercely patriarchal and restrictive gender expectations of the time), where she promoted the value of learning. This continued when her family emigrated to Fez, where, along with her sister Mariam, she founded the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University; consisting of a courtyard, prayerhall,libraryandschoolrooms.

At first, the education taught included courses in religious instruction and the Qu'ran,butitssyllabusexpandedintoArabicgrammar,mathematics,astronomy andmusic-eventuallyhandingoutdegreestoitsstudents.Itsreputationswiftly grew, known to be a famous spiritual and pedagogic centre visited by scholars andintellectualsglobally.ItwasFatimaAl-Fihri'sideaforaneducationalhubthat provided opportunities for advanced learning spread throughout the world in the Middle Ages, resulting in the founding of Europe’s oldest institutions in the following centuries, including the University of Bologna (founded 1088) and the UniversityofOxford(foundedaround1096).

After al-Fihri’s death, the institution continued to be extended. The mosque became the largest in Africa, with a capacity of 22,000. Al-Fihri's legacy has not been forgotten: an award has been named after her in Morocco, which is granted to women who make educational achievements and contribute to empowering women. Furthermore, an academic program and a scholarship giventostudentsfromEuropeandNorthAfricapaytributetoFatimaal-Fihri.

Fatima al-Fihri is one of the earliest advocates of female education that we know of on the globe. In al-Fihri’s case, she used her resources – her tenacity, vision, and financial wealth, to build a school that allowed for girls to study alongside boys. We must therefore use al-Fihri’s work as a launching point to exploreothereffortstoeducategirlsandwomenaroundtheworld.

BY ABBIE DENNIS