Ijazah
[1] The license usually implies that the student has acquired this knowledge from the issuer of the ijaza through first-hand oral instruction, although this requirement came to be relaxed over time.
[5][6][7][8] Devin J. Stewart notes a difference in the granting authority (individual professor for the ijazah and a corporate entity in the case of the university).
[4] In a paper titled Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation,[9] Harvard professor William A. Graham explains the ijazah system as follows: The basic system of "the journey in search of knowledge" that developed early in Hadith scholarship, involved travelling to specific authorities (shaykhs), especially the oldest and most renowned of the day, to hear from their own mouths their hadiths and to obtain their authorization or "permission" (ijazah) to transmit those in their names.
This ijazah system of personal rather than institutional certification has served not only for Hadith, but also for transmission of texts of any kind, from history, law, or philology to literature, mysticism, or theology.
In a formal, written ijazah, the teacher granting the certificate typically includes an isnad containing his or her scholarly lineage of teachers back to the Prophet through Companions, a later venerable shaykh, or the author of a specific book.According to the Lexikon des Mittelalters and A History of the University in Europe, the origin of the European doctorate lies in high medieval teaching with its roots going back to late antiquity and the early days of Christian teaching of the Bible.
[2] Makdisi proposed that the ijazat attadris was the origin of the European doctorate, and went further in suggesting an influence upon the magisterium of the Christian Church.
[12] According to the 1989 paper, the ijazat was equivalent to the Doctor of Laws qualification and was developed during the ninth century after the formation of the Madh'hab legal schools.
[2] Madrasas issued the ijazat attadris in the Islamic religious law of Sharia, mathematics, astrology, medicine, pharmacology, and philosophy.
[13] Though Sharia Law was the major subject at most of these madrasas the sciences were treated with the same value in Islamicate society, as many discoveries were made in fields such as medicine where the first hospital was invented[14] and pulmonary blood flow was discovered.
[15] The Islamic law degree in Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious madrasa, was traditionally granted without final examinations, but on the basis of the students' attentive attendance to courses.
Norman Daniel, in a 1984 paper, criticized an earlier work of Makdisi for relying on similarities between the two education systems rather than citing historical evidence for a transmission.
[8] In a discussion of Makdisi's 1989 thesis, Toby Huff argued that there was never any equivalent to the bachelor's degree or doctorate in the Islamic madrasahs, owing to the lack of a faculty teaching a unified curriculum.
[21] Groups of individuals are taught by a faculty composed of many professors, each recognized as experts in their respective fields, and upon completion of a curriculum students receive a diploma.
