416
Ah, so SHE was responsible for my low GPA!
(thelemmy.club)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
416 points (99.1% liked)
History Memes
2064 readers
1005 users here now
A place to share history memes!
Rules:
-
No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, assorted bigotry, etc.
-
No fascism (including tankies/red fash), atrocity denial or apologia, etc.
-
Tag NSFW pics as NSFW.
-
Follow all Piefed.social rules.
-
History referenced must be 20+ years old.
Banner courtesy of @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world
OTHER COMMS IN THE HISTORYVERSE:
- !historymusic@quokk.au
- !historygallery@quokk.au
- !historyruins@piefed.social
- !historyart@piefed.social
- !historyartifacts@piefed.social
- !historyphotos@piefed.social
founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
What about Plato's Academy? It was an institution of higher learning, and it certainly existed long before the one in the meme. I'm not saying that the Academy was the first one either, it wouldn't surprise me if there were others before hand.
It seems to me like the claim "the oldest currently existing university" got converted to "the first university" and those are definitely not the same.
A. It was a mosque. It got converted later to a madrasa, so no, She didn't found an education center.
B. A madrasa Is the equivalent to a Christian seminary, not a full fledged university
Plato's Academy definitely did not start as a mosque... So I guess you're refering to al-Qarawiyyin University.
Islam did a much better job of incorporating science, so it's not really comparable to a seminary either. It's not like they only taught theology there. We owe a great deal to the science being done by Muslims in those days. A hell of a lot more happened there than in the Middle Ages in Europe.
Besides, the university of Cambridge also started as a religious institution. I see no difference. All old universities have religious roots I guess? It took a long time for mankind to come up with secular education so why are the Islamic roots even a cause to question the validity of this university?
The University of Taxila predates both Plato's academy and the instiution in question. The meme makes a somewhat dubious claim. It may be more accurate to say it's the oldest still operating place of higher learning.
Certainly, if we want to get into the question of who exactly was first, we could probably come up with a few dozen names. That it is very early in the academic tradition is what's important to the meme and the message.
I would say "yes-and-no."
Whatever university has the strongest claim to be the oldest currently existing university probably also counts as the first university, because of the irregularity of the structure of learning institutions in the Classical and pre-Classical era (to the best of our knowledge). Plato's Academy, which you mentioned, was arguably more of an enduring round-table than an institution with students and teachers, and to our knowledge didn't have any sort of curriculum. Plato's Academy was a place where philosophers and important folk got together to mutually intellectually enrich each other, rather than to pass on specific knowledge or competencies.
Generally we consider a university more like a school - with set staff, set students, and a set course of learning; Plato's Academy had a head, I believe, but not regular teachers or students, and simply discussed matters in a learned way amongst themselves. If you went there ignorant, you would learn something, but attendance and learning, or attendance and teaching, were not synonymous; and you came and went according to when you were satisfied with what you were discovered, rather than there being courses or degrees that could be completed.
China might have a good claim on the oldest university, tbqh, but I couldn't trace the history there, personally. It's far from my fields of interest.
That's a weird argument. So if the University of al-Qarawiyyin stops operating, then some other place becomes the first university?
That's more of a modern understanding of what a university is like (and I doubt it is an accurate description of the mosque that Fatima al-Fihri made).
A 'community of masters and scholars' one might say, or in latin 'universitas magistrorum et scholarium' which is the origin of the word 'university'. The original point of Universities was the same as that of the Academy. The teaching of students is just a side effect of achieving that goal since teaching is a great way to learn.
No, just saying that considering the development of institutions of higher learning, there's a good chance that the first university and the oldest continuously operating one are one and the same. Not that it necessarily implies that they are one and the same.
My point here is simply that Plato's Academy never developed into an institution like that. I'm sure that if it did, none of us would begrudge Plato the honor of being the founder of the world's oldest university.
See, here I have to disagree. The point of universities was to provide a community of masters and scholars, but explicitly for the access of the less-educated in order to perpetuate the knowledge possessed to the next generation, in the same spirit as guilds held masters and journeymen alike. All of the major institutions recognized as universities that I'm aware of (admittedly only a few, it's not my main field of interest) starting out with this more 'school-like' structure, rather than the structure of a round-table of academics. I know several developed out of more traditional church schools.