The Ijazah Names Every Teacher Back to the Author — Epoche B1
In classical Islamic scholarship, a student who finished a book received an ijazah: a written licence from the teacher, permitting that student to teach the book to others. The licence named the teacher, the teacher's teacher, and so on down the line — sometimes, in the longest chains, all the way back to the author. The chain existed for a practical reason. Before printing, a text travelled by being copied, and copying goes wrong: a word drops out, a scribe repairs what he cannot read. But if a book may only be taught by someone who heard it read aloud, word by word, by someone who heard it in turn, then errors have nowhere to hide. Each link had been tested by a living ear. Such a chain of names is called an isnad — quality control long before the phrase existed. This is why reciters of the Quran still hold ijazahs today. The student recites the whole text from memory to a certified teacher, who corrects every vowel and every pause, and only then issues the licence with the chain attached. Women appear in these chains throughout the history of the tradition, licensing men and women alike. And this is what a certificate built on persons preserves that a diploma does not. A diploma is issued by an institution, and it records that someone attended and passed. An ijazah puts a name and a reputation at risk. If the licence proves undeserved, the teacher who granted it is damaged, and so is every name above him. Trust, in this system, is not a stamp on paper. It is a line of people, each one willing to be quoted. References Makdisi, G. (1981). The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Berkey, J. P. (1992). The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nelson, K. (1985). The Art of Reciting the Qur'an. Austin: University of Texas Press.