Education: Renaissance in Fez

In the ancient city of Fez last week narrow alleys blazed with Morocco’s red and green colors and the air was heavy with incense and the odor of kif (marijuana). From jampacked rooftops thousands of spectators roared “Marhaba!” (welcome). Amid the cheers, Morocco’s King Mohammed V, followed by scholars from 39 nations, walked a cobblestoned mile to the huge Karaouine mosque to celebrate a momentous occasion: the 1,100th anniversary of Fez’s Karaouine University. This Moslem school is older than any university in Europe.

Golden Days. Early in the 9th century, when Fez was still a young hamlet, its ruler cried: “O God, make this city a center of law and science where your book [the Koran] will be studied.” To fulfill this dream, a wealthy widow of Fez commissioned Karaouine mosque, which took 278 years to complete. The mosque was already famed as a university when the first European university was established in Bologna about noo. Begun as a theological seminary, Karaouine soon taught 8,000 students everything from medicine to geography.

In these golden days of Arab power, Moslems were the world’s intellectual elite—the perfectors of algebra (from the Arabic al-jabr: binding together), the founders of analytical geometry and of plane and spherical trigonometry, pioneers in astronomy (through their need to locate Mecca precisely). As scholars flocked in from all over the world—among them a young Frenchman who later became Pope Sylvester II (999-1003)—Fez flourished as the “Baghdad of the West.”

Big Sleep. But with Europe’s resurgence, the Moslem world sank into a long intellectual sleep. By the mid-18th century, Karaouine’s able scientists had departed, leaving behind an obsolete religious curriculum taught by ulemas (wise men), whose main claim to tenure was their power to vote on succession to the Moroccan throne.

Under the French protectorate (1912-56), the once proud university sank even lower as a kind of Moslem Kaffeeklatsch, without exams or degrees, a place of courtyard classrooms where masters and disciples swatted at fusty theological disputes. Students lived in airless cubicles, three to one windowless room, sleeping on the floor and cooking on charcoal burners.

New Mecca. In 1956 came Morocco’s independence. Determined to propel his nation into the 20th century, King Mohammed slashed Karaouine’s religious studies, introduced math, physics, chemistry and foreign languages. In 1957 he jolted traditionalists by setting up a female branch at Karaouine, where the enrollment (6,325) now includes 1,197 women. Soon will come another big revolution: 3,000 cramped boarders will move to airy dormitories on the new campus outside Fez, which will boast 70 modern classrooms and laboratories and such un heard of niceties as a laundry, athletic field, infirmary and dining halls.

A month ago, facing the collapse of their power. Karaouine’s hidebound ulemas publicly protested that the King’s “modern education” was spreading “license, debauchery and degeneracy.” Karaouine’s new French-educated director, Attorney Kacem Abdeljalil, refused to give way. So did King Mohammed. Last week, the white-gowned ulemas abandoned plans to boycott the anniversary ceremonies, glumly turned out to hear Mohammed extol the university’s “renaissance.” After centuries of slumber, Karaouine now has a fair chance of once more becoming the intellectual Mecca of northwest Africa.