Fatima al-Fihri a Moorish Woman Founded The World’s Oldest University

 

“Fatima al-Fihri was young when her family moved to what is now modern-day Morocco. After her father’s death, the young, Muslim woman of color used her inheritance to build a mosque for those in her community to both learn and practice their faith”

Source: The World’s Oldest University Was Not Only Founded By A Woman Of Color, It’s Located In Africa

 

“The oldest standing university on earth is in Morocco. Known as Al-Qarawiyyin, the university was founded in 859 AD by a young princess from Tunisia, Fatima al-Fihri. The university has been recognized by UNESCO and the Guinness World Records as the oldest existing, continuously operating university, as well as, the first institution to issue educational degrees.”

Source: The oldest university is in Africa, and was founded by a woman

 

Al-Qarawiyyin is the oldest university in the world

“Education was universal in Muslim Spain, while in Christian Europe, 99 percent of the population was illiterate, and even kings could neither read nor write. The Moors boasted a remarkably high literacy rate for a pre-modern society. During an era when Europe had only two universities, the Moors had seventeen. The founders of Oxford University were inspired to form the institution after visiting universities in Spain. According to the United Nations’ Education body, the oldest university operating in the world today, is the University of Al-Karaouine of Morocco founded during the height of the Moorish Empire in 859 A.D. by an Arab woman named Fatima al-Fihri.”

Source: History: How African Muslims “Civilized Spain”

 

The oldest university is in Africa

“Fatima Al-Fihri migrated with her family in the early ninth century from Qayrawan in present-day Tunisia to the city of Fez in Morocco. This was during the rule of Idrees II, an extraordinary ruler and devout Muslim. Fez at that time was a bustling metropolis of the “Muslim West” (known as al-Maghrib), and held the promise in the people’s imaginations of fortune and felicity. Having become one of the most influential Muslim cities, Fez boasted a rich combination of religion and culture, both traditional and cosmopolitan. This was the city, on the left bank of the River Fez, where Fatima’s family settled and she eventually married. After much toil and struggle in humble beginnings, the family of Fatima was eventually blessed with prosperity. Her father, Mohammad bin Abdullah Al-Fihri, had become a hugely successful businessman. After the deaths of Fatima’s husband, father, and brother in short succession, Fatima and her only other sibling, Mariam, received a sizable inheritance which assured their financial independence. It was in this latter period of their lives that they distinguished themselves. Having received a good education, the sisters in turn hastened to dedicate all of their wealth to benefiting their community. Observing that the local mosques in Fez could not accommodate the growing population of worshipers, many of whom were refugees from Islamic Spain, Mariam built the breathtaking and grand Andalusian Mosque in 245AH/859CE.”

Source: Fatima al-Fihri: Founder of World’s Very First University

 

Mosque of al-Qarawiyyin — TripAdvisor

“Fatima al-Fihri was a Muslim woman from Tunisia who founded the first known university more than 1,000 years ago: the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco. Guinness World Records acknowledges it as the oldest existing and continually operating educational institution in the world . . .”

Source: The true story of Fatima al-Fihri, the founder of the world’s first known university

 

Books of the Qarawiyyin library — TRT World

“Al-Fihri established the concept of a university as we know it today. Her idea for an educational hub that 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 University of Oxford (founded around 1096).”

Source: The true story of Fatima al-Fihri, the founder of the world’s first known university

 

Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period By Boyd Dawkins

William Boyd Dawkins

“In Scotland the small dark Highlander, and in Ireland the black Celts to the west of the Shannon, still preserve the Iberian characteristics in more or less purity, crossed with Celtic, Danish, Norse, and English blood ). From this outline of evidence of history and ethnology it will be seen that the Iberic tribes occupied an important position in Europe in ancient times, and are still amply represented in the present population. When we consider the many invasions of strangers, and the oscillations to and fro of different peoples, it is impossible not to realize the strange persistence of the race.” (p. 331) 

 

 

“The Iberic Element in the present Populations of Spain.  The physical characters of the races defined in the preceding pages are still possessed by the present inhabitants of Spain, France, and Britain. The Iberic element in the population of Spain has mainly contributed to the long headedness of the modern Spaniard, although the character may be partially derived from Gothic and Moorish invaders. The Basques on the north-west, protected from attack by their inaccessible country, have preserved the race-characters, as might be expected, in their greatest purity. With regard to the rest of the peninsula, sufficiently accurate observations have not yet been made to justify any conclusions as to the exact areas now occupied by the descendants of Iberian aborigines and Celtic invaders.”

“The problem is rendered almost hopeless from the great changes which must have resulted from the conquest of the Goths and Moors, for if the former contributed their fair or “xanthocroic” characters to the modern Spaniard, it is no less certain that the latter have equally handed down to him their dark complexions and lithe active forms. I do not know that any important physical difference has been observed between the Moor and the Iberian; and it is very probably that the two are closely allied together, and connected with the Berbers of northern Africa, considered by Professor Busk to belong to the same stock as the Iberians.”

 

Source: Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period By Boyd Dawkins

 

 

 

Our earliest ancestors in Britain By Boyd Dawkins

William Boyd Dawkins

 

“In the year A.D. 449 certain Englishmen–for they were Englishmen before our England had received its name–came over here from the North of Germany and from the southern shores of the Baltic Sea. They came with their wives; families, and little ones–they brought their England with them; and after a long war of conquest a series of fighting’s and battles–they gradually pushed away farther and farther to the west that population which had been in possession of this country before it was England–during the time in which it was known under the name of “Britain.” It was not till the year 607 that these English men pushed the borders of England westward as far as Chester. Immediately after the fall of Chester those Englishmen who carved out for themselves the kingdom of Northumbria, including Yorkshire, advanced northwards, and conquered this district, which we now know under the name Lancashire.”

“Up to that time the district was as completely a part of Wales as Denbighsire or any other Welsh county is now; and it was merely by a long process of conquest that the English pushed the Britons west and north, until at last they are only to be found in Wales, Cumberland, Westermoreland, the Highlands of Scotland, Cornwall, and part of Devon. The people whom these English displaced were saturated with Roman civilization. They boasted they were citizens of the Roman Empire—Cives Romani. During that long war of invasion by which our ancestors displaced the people who had preceded them in this country, we hear of great outcries as to the ruthless nature of this invasion. Our ancestors were not men of peace in any sense–they were men of war; and they burned and destroyed everything that was Roman, everything that was British, everything that was termed Welsh–for the term “Welsh” we owe to them–they destroyed that civilization utterly by fire and sword. I must now say a word regarding the Roman invasion. The Roman invasion of this country was distinctly analogous to our occupation of India.”

 

“The Romans did not establish great bodies of Italian colonist in this country, like our colonies in America. They merely occupied it as a military colonists; they formed garrisons here and there; they developed trade; they took as much money out of the country as they could by a most oppressive system of taxation; but in exchange for all that they introduced their own laws and system of politics, doing so much the same work that we are doing in India. They did not introduce into this country any new ethnical elements which are traceable in the present population. The Welsh, or “Ancient Britons,” as they are called in books were in possession of this country long before the Romans came here. When we come to analyze the Welsh people, we find there are two distinct types. On the one had we have the ordinary Celt, or Welshman, as we term him— a tall, fair haired, round headed sort of man–and on the other hand we have the small dark Welshman, who is totally different.”

“I wish to call your attention to these small dark Welshman. for although at first blush of it you might think there was nothing very interesting about them, yet before we leave this room I think we shall have reason to believe that there is a great deal of interest attaching to the arrival of these small dark Welshmen in this country, and to the civilization which they brought along with them. Before I put these points before you I must give you an outline of the sort of materials in my possession which will enable me to give you an idea of these things. Outside the historical frontiers, beyond the written record of history, we have a regular series of civilizations established all over Europe. Just on the other side of the historical record we have that civilization which is marked by the knowledge of iron–that i to say, long before the written record existed in this country there was a people here who were acquainted with the knowledge of iron, and such a knowledge necessarily implied a comparatively high civilization. (p. 96-97)

“At the time when Wales was conquered by the Romans we find that Tacitus describes a certain small dark Iberian population, which I have named. At the present time you have merely to go into the market-places of St. Asaph or Denbigh and you will see small dark Welshmen, with black eyes and hair, contrasting in every point with our ordinary ideas of Welshmen. We find traces of these small dark people in the Highlands of Scotland. Here and there one meets with what is called a “dark Highlander” — a small, black, long-headed man– quite differently from ones idea of a Highlander. So in the southern parts of Ireland we meet a race of people identical with small dark Welshmen. (p. 104)

 

The Knights Templar of the Middle East: The Hidden History of the Islamic Origins of Freemasonry

Prince Michael of Albany and Princess Angelique Monét in Palais 2

 

“The Gnostic movement spread far and wide. In Africa, the original Essene ministry had been led by Judge, the third son of Mary and Joseph, who had settled in Mauretaina (present day Morocco). In fact, his daughter Anna married into the Mauretanian royal family, which, in turn, descended from Queen Cleopatra VII and her fourth husband, Marc Anthony. (History tends to forget that Cleopatra was quire fruitful. She gave birth to Julius Casear’s son, Ptolemy Ceasareon, and gave Marc Anthony two sons, Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philometer, and one daughter, Cleopatra Selene.) Cleopatra Selene married King Juba II of Mauretania (thus bringing a strong lineage from the Barcha family, an ancestry that can be traced as far back as the sister of Hannibal the Great.) It is from this union that both Janaani (John) Marcus bar Ptolemey (later to be known through a deliberate miss-translation as the apostle Bartholomew) and the later Idrisid Kings of Morocco are descended. From North Africa, it soon spread to the European continent.” (p. 11) 

 

Map By Girolamo Ruscelli Mauritania Nuova Tavola [North Africa and West Africa] Girolamo Ruscelli Place/Date: Venice / 1562

“The North African involvement into Spanish affairs should not surprise anyone. After all, North Africa, then called Mauretania, and Spain both had been provinces of the Roman Empire, and, as such, they had traded with one another for centuries. For a political party in Spain to call upon the neighboring Moors was, in fact, nothing new. North Africa had been conquered by Islam when the exarchate of Carthage, now in Tunisia, succumbed to the Umayadds in AD 698. This meant that the Byzantine Empire had lost a rather big chunk of its western territory. While newly conquered on behalf of Islam, the Arabian influx of people was not excessive, so the flow of trade with Spain and other parts of Mediterranean cities had gone on as usual. Except for converting to Islam, little changed in the life of the native Berbers. When the call came from Spain, the Moors were quick to oblige and sent crack troops under the leadership of Tariq Ibn Ziad, then governor of Tangier.” (p. 12). 

 

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Shutterstock (224607j)
PRINCE MICHAEL JAMES ALEXANDER STEWART OF ALBANY
HISTORICAL ROYALTY

 

“While the Christian Church had rejected, over the centuries, the Hellenistic views and treatises of great master philosophers (such as Plato, Euclid, Ovid, Horace, and Aristotle), the scriptoria of Baghdad and Marrakesh in Morocco were busy translating them into Arabic in the tenth and eleventh centuries AD. These works were later translated, in Cordoba, into Latin and still later vernacular languages of western Europe, and would form the basis of the Renaissance period. The same applied to the works of Ptolemic geography, works of Sanskrit astrology, and to medical works from Hippocrates and Galen, all of which were first heartily embraced by both the Umayyad and the Abbaside dynasties. Arabic translations of these literary works were made from books originally written in both Syrian and Greek. What these Islamic scholars also did was check all the data over the years and either corrected them when needed and improved on them all of the time.” (p. 46-47)

 

 

“But Islamic Spain did much more than reintroduce the concept of wisdom. It introduced to the rest of Europe an age of science and philosphy uninhibited by the faith. This was the era of true freedom of artistic expression, and, for three centuries, Cordoba was a place where linguist and intellectuals could meet and talk without constraints, where metaphysics, pure arithmetic, optics (later borrowed by Leonardo da Vinci), meteorology, medicine, music, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, grammar, poetry and architecture, even fashion, was encouraged and practiced. The use of the system numerals called, in the West, “Arabic” and the adoption of the Indian concept of zero enabled the Muslims to make sophisticated calculations that were impossible for those Europeans using cumbersome Roman numerals.” (p. 46-47)

 

 

Source: The Knights Templar of the Middle East: The Hidden History of the Islamic By Hrh Prince Michael of Albany, Michael James Alexander Stewart, Walid Amine Salhab

Historical Dictionary of Morocco By Thomas K. Park, Aomar Boum

” ‘abid al-bukhari. The Moroccan term ‘abid al bukhar derives from a 17th-century requirement that on induction into the army the soldiers had to swear an oath of allegiance to the sultan on the Sahih (a compilation of Hadith renowned for its scrupulous accuracy) of Muhammad bn ismail abu abd allah ak jufi al-bukhari (810-870). Once begun, the army was maintained by a core population raised in a settlement at Sidi Slimane (near Meknes) who were separated by gender at maturity and sent to the army or as servants to the royal household.”

“The army of black soldiers built by sultan mawlay ismail (1672-1727) was drawn from black residents of Morocco and in part from new slaves imported from the Sahel. The majority of the 50,000-150,000 thousand ‘abid probably were indigenous to Morocco and may were drawn from the populations that had worked in the sugar cane fields until these progressively were abandoned due to competition from the Carribbean.”

“During mawlay isma’il reign half were stationed at the captial, Meknes, and the other half were distributed in the other major urban centers, Technically, the ‘abid al-bukhari held jaysh status, but in practice few had significant landed resources or other wealth to back up their military salaries. The ‘abid al-bukhari took over the government at the death of mawlay isma’il (1727) and ruled through various puppet sultans until the advent of mawlay muhammad bn’ abd allah in 1757 who reduced the size of the abid al-bukhair contingents to around 15,000 (Meyers 1974).”

“By the the time of Mawlay Sulayman (1792-1822) the abid al-bukhari were regularly outnumbered in battles by the regular troops (na iba) levied for particular campaigns from tribes allied with the sultan. Toward the end of his reign, they split into factions supporting the sultan and his dynastic rivals in the south. The abid al-bukhari were finally disbanded in the reign of mawalay ‘abd al-rahman (1822-1859). “

Source: Historical Dictionary of Morocco By Thomas K. Park, Aomar Boum