The original Latin word universitas refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc".[3] At the time of the emergence of urban town life and medieval guilds, specialized "associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights usually guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or the towns in which they were located" came to be denominated by this general term.
In modern usage the word has come to mean "An institution of higher education offering tuition in mainly non-vocational subjects and typically having the power to confer degrees,"[5] with the earlier emphasis on its corporate organization considered as applying historically to Medieval universities.[6]
The original Latin word referred to degree-awarding institutions of learning in Western and Central Europe, where this form of legal organisation was prevalent and from where the institution spread around the world.
Academic freedomEdit
An important idea in the definition of a university is the notion of academic freedom. The first documentary evidence of this comes from early in the life of the University of Bologna, which adopted an academic charter, the Constitutio Habita,[7] in 1158 or 1155,[8] which guaranteed the right of a traveling scholar to unhindered passage in the interests of education. Today this is claimed as the origin of "academic freedom".[9] This is now widely recognised internationally - on 18 September 1988, 430 university rectors signed the Magna Charta Universitatum,[10] marking the 900th anniversary of Bologna's foundation. The number of universities signing the Magna Charta Universitatum continues to grow, drawing from all parts of the world.
AntecedentsEdit
See also: Ancient higher-learning institutions
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the earliest universities were founded in Asia and Africa, predating the first European medieval universities.[11] Scholars occasionally call the University of Al Quaraouiyine (name given in 1963), founded as a mosque by Fatima al-Fihri in 859, a university,[12][13][14][15] although Jacques Verger writes that this is done out of scholarly convenience.[16] Several scholars consider that al-Qarawiyyin was founded[17][18] and run[19][20][21][22][23] as a madrasa until after World War II. They date the transformation of the madrasa of al-Qarawiyyin into a university to its modern reorganization in 1963.[24][25][19] In the wake of these reforms, al-Qarawiyyin was officially renamed "University of Al Quaraouiyine" two years later.[24]
Some scholars, including Makdisi, have argued that early medieval universities were influenced by the madrasas in Al-Andalus, the Emirate of Sicily, and the Middle East during the Crusades.[26][27][28] Norman Daniel, however, views this argument as overstated.[29] Roy Lowe and Yoshihito Yasuhara have recently drawn on the well-documented influences of scholarship from the Islamic world
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