Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, is generally considered to be the oldest university in the world.* It was founded roughly the same time as the city of Cairo, in 969 AD. The first lecture was delivered in 975 AD.
Like many centers of learning, Al-Azhar University was originally intended as a place of worship and religious instruction. The mosque at Al-Azhar is one of the most famous in the Muslim world, and is still considered the seat of Sunni Islamic study.
The university pioneered systems of advanced academic instruction with its hierarchy of regular instructors and visiting professors. Its history follows the turbulent rise of the Islamic Empire, replete with political revolutions and competing religious philosophies. While Al-Azhar University has a storied history of religious instruction, it also boasts a robust secular curriculum, offering advanced degrees in engineering and medicine.
As with all matters medieval, historical facts and figures are up to academic interpretation. Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez, Morroco, has also laid claim to the title of oldest university in the world.
Europe's oldest university was founded in 1088 in the northern Italian city of Bologna. The United States's oldest university, Harvard, opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636, not long after the first English colonists arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The original Latin word "universitas" was used at the time of emergence of urban town life and medieval guilds, to describe 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."[2] Although the original Latin word referred to degree-granting institutions of learning in Western Europe, where this form of legal organization was prevalent, it is sometimes extended to other educational institutions of antiquity:
- Greece
- China
- Korea
- Taehak was founded in 372 and Gukhak was established in 682.
- India
- Iran
- Japan
