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Middle East and Egypt (11th–12th c.)Culture and art

The Nizamiyya madrasa opens in Baghdad

In September 1067 the Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk opened in Baghdad the college named after him, the Nizamiyya, where Shafi'i law was taught free of charge. It became the most famous of the Nizamiyyas, a network of endowed madrasas across the Seljuk empire that served as a model for later Islamic colleges.

Date
September 1067month known
Place
Baghdadtoday: Baghdad, Iraq · Middle East and Egypt
Participants
Nizam al-Mulk, Alp Arslan, Seljuk Empire
Threads
Middle East and Egypt (11th–12th c.)
Also known as
Nizamiyya; Nizamiyya of Baghdad; Madrasa Nizamiyya; Низамия; Низамийя

Nizam al-Mulk, a Persian from Tus who served as vizier to Alp Arslan and then, for twenty years, to Malik-Shah, is widely credited with creating the first network of official madrasas — colleges of Islamic law supported by pious endowments (waqf). Besides Baghdad, Nizamiyyas were founded at Nishapur, Isfahan, Balkh, Herat, Amol, Mosul and Basra. They followed the Shafi'i school of law, to which the vizier belonged; in Baghdad every teacher, preacher and librarian had to be a Shafi'i in law and an Ash'ari in theology. The Baghdad college, on the east side of the city, was founded in 1065 and inaugurated in September 1067.

The opening was marred by a dispute. The chair was offered to Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi, the most prominent Shafi'i jurist of Baghdad, who accepted but stayed away from the ceremony because the ground and the materials of the madrasa were said to have been partly taken by force. His rival Ibn al-Sabbagh was installed instead, but under pressure from Nizam al-Mulk and from his own students Abu Ishaq relented and gave his inaugural lecture twenty days later, on 13 October 1067; he headed the college until his death in November 1083. In the 1070s the Nizamiyya was drawn into the riots between Shafi'is and Hanbalis that shook Baghdad, and on a journey to Khorasan in 1083 Abu Ishaq found his former students everywhere serving as judges, muftis and preachers. From 1091 to 1095 the professor was al-Ghazali, who left after a spiritual crisis that led to his greatest works.

Historians have long seen the Nizamiyyas as instruments of the Sunni revival under the Seljuks and of Nizam al-Mulk's struggle against Ismaili propaganda. George Makdisi warned, however, against the excessive regard paid almost exclusively to this one college, which overshadowed the many other mosques and schools of 11th-century Baghdad.

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Related events

  • Tughril Beg enters Baghdadbetween 17 December and 18 December 1055 · Middle East and Egyptthe Nizamiyya was founded in the Baghdad of the Seljuk sultans, who had ruled the city since 1055
  • Hasan-i Sabbah takes Alamut1090 · Middle East and EgyptNizam al-Mulk, the founder of the Nizamiyyas and an enemy of the Ismailis, was murdered in 1092, by the usual account by one of Hasan's men

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11th century

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Nizamiyya of Baghdad
  2. Wikipedia (English): Nizamiyya
  3. Wikipedia (English): Nizam al-Mulk
  4. Wikipedia (English): Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi
  5. Wikipedia (English): Madrasa
  6. Wikipedia (Russian): Низамия
  7. Wikipedia (Russian): Низам аль-Мульк
  8. Madelung W. Abū Esḥāq al-Šīrāzī // Encyclopaedia Iranica. — Vol. I, fasc. 3. — 1983. — P. 280–282
  9. Makdisi G. Muslim Institutions of Learning in Eleventh-Century Baghdad // Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. — 1961. — Vol. 24, no. 1. — P. 1–56