Now You Can Visit the Oldest Library in the World

June 16, 2016 10:41 AM

al-Qarawiyyin Library in Fez, Morocco, is the oldest library in the world, but until last month, only researchers had access to it. Built in 859, the library was a beacon for scholars, poets, and theologians for hundreds of years, but in recent years it had fallen into terrible disrepair. Now a massive, three-year restoration effort hasn’t just revitalized the building – it’s opened an ancient center of scholarship up to a new generation of readers!
posted by Shmuel510 (17 comments total)

Needs "goodnews" tag.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:47 AM on June 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

Done!
posted by Shmuel510 at 10:48 AM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Woo! A tough-talking Moroccan friend got me in for a few minutes to peek, but that’s less a visit and more a snapshot. (Also, if you want to actually navigate the streets of Fez in order to find the library you might need a savvy Moroccan friend to help you navigate, but that’s a good excuse to go meet some Moroccans.)
posted by Going To Maine at 10:52 AM on June 16, 2016

I'm wary of claims put forward for Karaouine. Ian David Morris, a student of this era in Islam, puts forward a much more mixed appraisal of what the building actually represents.
posted by Emma May Smith at 10:59 AM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

Well, a subset of "a new generation of readers" can visit ... those who are Muslim, according to the linked article. Us pagans are out of luck.
posted by sudogeek at 11:00 AM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

That article says that only the mosque entrance is closed to non-muslims. There is a separate entrance for those who can't go in through the mosque.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:04 AM on June 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

I hear library, I want pictures of books. There are some good ones here
posted by BWA at 11:04 AM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

> I'm wary of claims put forward for Karaouine. Ian David Morris, a student of this era in Islam, puts forward a much more mixed appraisal of what the building actually represents.

I dived in all excited—ooh, it's going to turn out it's not really a library, it's a chemical-weapons storage facility!—but was bitterly disappointed. The Big Reveal: "The claim that Fātimah founded a university is not just misleading; it’s flatly untrue. She founded a mosque." Which shortly developed a university and library annex. Well, whoop-de-doo. I mean, I'm glad to have a historian clarify the details, but that hardly makes this a non-story or throws cold water on the whole library thing. I think this is great news, and I thank Shmuel510 for posting it.
posted by languagehat at 11:44 AM on June 16, 2016 [11 favorites]

Jeez, I'm sorry. I was just sharing something I had read about the same building. You have no need to be so aggressive.
posted by Emma May Smith at 11:46 AM on June 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

I am at once grateful for the correction of misleading and erroneous history, and really excited that what could arguably be the world's oldest library and university (a three way tossup between here, Oxford and Bologna) is getting the restoration it deserves.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:48 AM on June 16, 2016

I didn't mean to sound aggressive—I was aiming for "funny"—but you might have provided a little more context; if you reread your comment and pretend you don't know what the link is going to, you might see that you sound more dismissive than you doubtless intended to.
posted by languagehat at 11:49 AM on June 16, 2016

Emma May Smith's link in turn links to the Encyclopedia Iranica's history of the medieval madrasa, which further complicates the story:

The first notices of buildings called madrasas also appeared in the 10th century (Halm, pp. 438-39)... In some early references the terms for mosque and madrasa appear to have been used interchangeably, as teaching took place in both... From the point of view of the teachers and students, however, there was no difference in curriculum or procedure between mosque and madrasa.

I know absolutely nothing about early Islamic educational and religious institutions, but I wonder whether the red line that Ian David Morris is drawing between mosque and madrasa is really blurrier than he would like.

He still has a good point though -- putting aside its later history, why single out this mosque as the world's oldest university, when presumably there are any number of 9th century mosques that served a educational role?
posted by crazy with stars at 12:22 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

OOOH, I love old libraries. This one's gorgeous. More pictures of the facilities here.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 4:20 PM on June 16, 2016

(So to be clear, anything that's a picture of a tiled courtyard with a fountain in it is probably a shot of the mosque (e.g.). There might be tiled courtyards in the area around the library proper, but that’s not quite the same.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:16 PM on June 16, 2016

I'm pretty sure the tiled courtyard isn't in the mosque, I seem to remember wandering through the study alcoves around it when I visited (and I surely did not enter any mosques in Fez). Forget the equivocations on who founded what and when, Karaouine is an ancient and beautiful place of higher learning.
posted by N-stoff at 9:50 PM on June 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

Many thanks for posting this, Shmuel510! A long time ago, I was in Tamegroute, on the Draa river in southern Morocco, and had the good fortune to be shown the library there. It was once a major library in north Africa. (Here's someone else's blog post on the library). This brought back a lot of memories.
posted by carter at 6:26 AM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

this is so cool; thanks for this post.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 7:10 PM on June 19, 2016