Sources

The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/sources/the-rise-of-colleges-institutions-of-learning-in-islam-and-the-west.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/sources/the-rise-of-colleges-institutions-of-learning-in-islam-and-the-west

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-the-rise-of-colleges-institutions-of-lea,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/sources/the-rise-of-colleges-institutions-of-learning-in-islam-and-the-west},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

George Makdisi was a historian of medieval Islamic institutions, and this Edinburgh University Press book is his scholarly comparative history of the madrasa and the college as institutions of learning across the medieval Islamic world and the medieval West, including Cairo's Al-Azhar. Its strength is genuinely comparative institutional history, tracing how legal education, endowment structures and degree-granting practice developed in parallel and in some cases influenced each other across both civilizations, a claim built from close reading of Arabic institutional and biographical sources. Its limit is that it is a study of institutional development specifically, not of doctrinal content, so a claim about what any one Sunni legal school actually taught needs a source focused on that school's own jurisprudence rather than this institutional history.

Facts

Assessment

Reliability Tier

George Makdisi's scholarly comparative history of the madrasa and college as institutions of learning, useful for the madrasa's institutional development rather than any one school's doctrinal content.

Notes

George Makdisi's scholarly comparative history of the madrasa and college as institutions of learning in the medieval Islamic world and the medieval West, including Al-Azhar. Use for established historical facts about the madrasa's institutional development across Sunni legal schools; a focused institutional history, not a source on any one school's doctrinal content.

Citation

Author

George Makdisi

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Publication Year

1981

URL

https://archive.org/details/riseofcollegesin0000makd

Source Type

academic monograph

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Sunni

This source names Sunni directly: "content, so a claim about what any one Sunni legal school actually taught needs a source focused on that school's own jurisprudence rather than this institutional history."

Source The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the WestGeorge Makdisi

Claims Backed By This Source (39 claims)

This source backs 39 claims across the atlas. As facts: 19 well-attested. As cited relationships: 11 holds. Plus 9 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.

Disposition By Topic

Schools of Religious Law, 10 claims: 5 holds, 5 general references.
Religious Organization & Structure, 9 claims: 5 well-attested, 3 holds, 1 general references.
Sources, 9 claims: 8 well-attested, 1 holds.
Sacred Sites, 6 claims: 4 well-attested, 1 holds, 1 general references.
Articles, 2 claims: 2 well-attested.
Denominations, 2 claims: 1 holds, 1 general references.
Historical Periods, 1 claims: 1 general references.