In its broadest sense, education is an informal means by which the observed actions and habits of people continue from one generation to the next. In its narrow sense, education is a formalized process by which a society purposely and systematically communicates its skills and traditions, usually to the young, for preservation and posterity. Through informal and formal means, civilizations since ancient times succeeded in passing down wisdom inherent to their own environments. As centers of learning developed, at the core of each was a belief system that gave purpose and direction to educational pursuits.
The educational character of every civilization was also shaped by the acquisition of imported informationâknowledge brought in from foreign lands. These transfers of knowledge sometimes took place when the curious, drawn by tales of advanced scholarship in distant places, ventured across borders to acquire it for themselves. As centers of learning arose in the ancient world, and their reputations for enlightenment spread, the gathering of knowledge-seekers they drew invariably included âforeignersââstudents not native to the immediate local area. Then as now, inquisitive people were compelled to explore, leaving behind the familiarity of home to seek fresh abilities, and then returning to their native lands to apply them. Few societies have been so remote or removed that they could not be affected by student migration. Other transfers of knowledge were not so peaceful. They could be by-products of conquering armies who sought to impose their own traditions onto occupied territories, either through extended human contact or by mandate.
Knowledge exchange, in its many forms, has deep roots in antiquity. This history will therefore first examine the origins of higher learning, and the earliest examples of academic migration. A brief review of the ancient and scholarly contributions of several world regionsâthe Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the Americasâbegins the narrative.
Middle Eastern Origins of Language and Scholarship
Citizens of ancient Phoenicia were called âpurple people.â From about 800 to 1200 BCE, when the civilization was at its prime, Phoenicia comprised a series of city-states along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in what is now Syria, Lebanon, and northern Israel. The island city of Tyre and the city of Sidon were its most powerful centers. A great maritime populace, Phoenicia was known for its fine ships, decorated with elegant carvings of horsesâ heads that paid tribute to Yamm, their god of the sea. The region was also renowned for the magnificent purple dyes that had been manufactured in Tyre for centuries, prized for their exceptionally rich and deep colors. Initially used for the robes of Mesopotamian royalty, the dyes had given Phoenicia its name, derived from the Greek word Phoinikes, or Tyranian purple. For generations, the industry would render the hands and arms of its workers a vibrant hue.1
Phoenician innovation went much further than dyes and decorative arts. It was no less than the birthplace of the alphabet, proclaimed the Greek chronicler Herodotus, and a basis for all Western languages. Evidence of ancient Phoenician words can still be found throughout the English language. The city of Gebal (called Byblos by the Greeks), for example, gave the Christian Bible its name.
The ancient Near East witnessed the origins of civilization in an area known as the Fertile Crescent, a region between and surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Referred to as Mesopotamia, which means âbetween riversâ in Greek, its territory extended into what is now eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Iraq. Among the first to flourish there were the Sumerians and Akkadians (later known as Babylonians and Assyrians), who by the fourth millennium BCE had developed city-states in the region, adorned with massive ziggurats built for the worship of patron deities. The most prominent of these city-states was Sumer, which gave its language to the area and invented the worldâs first known formal cuneiform system of written communication, a predecessor of the Phoenician alphabet. Later the Assyrian Empire (1250â612 BCE) and the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911â605 BCE) dominated, governing all of what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Cyprus, and Bahrain, along with areas of Iran, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia. Assyrian imperial expansion brought into their sphere many nomadic and barbaric communities.
In ancient Mesopotamia and the immediately surrounding regions, the chief languages were Semitic, subdivided into several different families. The Akkadian family, to which both Assyrians and Babylonians belonged, was the oldest and most used of the languages in Mesopotamia. The Canaanite family included Biblical Hebrew, Phoenician, with its North African offshoot Carthaginian, as well as a few other closely related tongues. By the beginning of the Christian era, many of these languages had for the most part disappeared, replaced by a group belonging to another Semitic family, called Aramaic. Of the Canaanitic languages, Phoenician was still spoken in the Levant seaports and the North African colonies and Hebrew survived in Jewish regions as a language of religion, literature, and scholarship.2
The Arabic language, historically the last of the Semitic types to enter the region, was for the most part confined to the central and northern parts of the Arabian Peninsula. At the dawn of the Christian era, the more advanced communities of the southwest, present-day Yemen, spoke another Semitic language known as Southern Arabian, similar to Ethiopic. Arabic speakers entered and settled in the Syrian and Iraqi borderlands in the north, even before the great Arab conquests of the seventh century, leading to the triumph of Arabic throughout the region. In the Fertile Crescent, Arabic eventually replaced Aramaic, although the latter still survives in the rituals of some of the Eastern Churches and in some remote villages.3
It may be helpful to note here that the worldâs language systems can be classified into several types, including pictographic, ideographic, logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic. Pictographic writing systems are designed to represent words, ideas, or groups of words by means of a visual portrayal of their associated meaningsâa box image to portray a house, for example. This method was inconvenient for conveying ideas other than simple nouns, however, so it gradually yielded to a more abstract system of marks called cuneiform, which could function both phonetically (representing a sound) and semantically (representing a meaning or concept). Ideographic systems represent words or ideas by less obvious means. Logographic writing systems represent whole morphemes or words. Syllabic writing combines syllables with signs, and alphabetic systems represent the individual and distinctive sounds, or phonemes, of language.4 English is an alphabetic writing system based upon phonetic signs. Many subcategories of languages exist, some combinations of different writing systems.
Most historians agree that the alphabet was a product of the Middle East, largely an invention of the Phoenicians, and a vast improvement on the earlier methods of hieroglyphs or cuneiform. Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic would be derived from the first alphabet conceived by these mercantile people of the Levant coast.
The proximity to coastal ports and the geographical position of the Middle East had made it the center of trade routes. It also put it in the path of invading armies, a circumstance that exposed the region to many outside cultures. Routes converged upon these territories from the east through the Iranian plateau and from the north through the Caucasus, the Hellespont, and Asia Minor. Ancient trails penetrated the Middle East from the west through the Mediterranean Sea; and from the south through Arabia, Egypt, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. Along these same routes also came migrations of peoples, who brought with them unfamiliar languages, beliefs, and traditionsâinfluences that continuously re-shaped the cultural environments and educational capabilities of the various territories.
By the first century CE, the expanding Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire had come to govern the entire Eastern Mediterranean, a region that extended from the Balkans to the Euphrates. Defined by Christianity, the Byzantines would rule for the next 500 years, but in the seventh century a new religion, Islam, was gaining momentum. Like Christians, those of the Islamic faith sought to convert non-believers. And just as Christianity had done, Islam quickly developed into more than one sect. Most Muslims came to identify themselves as either Shiaâthose who believe Muhammadâs successor to be a descendent of the Prophetâs daughter Fatimaâor Sunni, who hold to the philosophy that Muhammadsâs successor should be the most promising, chosen individual. It is a division of ideals that has since developed a duality in the Muslim world.
For about four centuries, it seemed likely that Shia Islam would prevail, and it reached a height of power around 1000 CE, but then the Seljuk Turks came to dominate, followed by their Ottoman successors, all fiercely Sunni. Shi-ism continued to survive in Persia and other areas, but over time constituted a declining minority of Islam. In fact, the basic beliefs and rituals of Sunni and Shia Islam are quite similar. The original divisions were to some degree political and had to do with disagreements regarding the succession of power after Muhammadâs death.
Muhammad had upheld the importance of learning and literacy, and information important to Islam and its traditions was routinely recorded and archived by hand. It was the introduction of paper from China in the eighth century, aided by the development of printing, that enabled its dissemination to the broader population.
Printing was not entirely unknown in the early Middle East, as there is evidence of woodblock stamps from ancient times. When movable type and other more advanced printing techniques reached the Middle East, centuries after their invention, it was not via China but from the West, with Christians and Jews serving as the first typesetters.5 By the seventeenth century, printing presses were operating in the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman chroniclers, who rarely wrote about anything related to the West or Western progress, enthusiastically reported the invention, devoting an unusual amount of coverage to Gutenbergâs first press. Convincing the skeptical Turks of the value of printed materials took time, however. Many rejected the idea of books produced by printing houses, preferring handwritten ones. Published books lacked the grace and beauty of the traditional texts, claimed Ottoman intellectuals, who were keen on aesthetics, favoring the shining ink and the elegance of golden gilt. Besides, they argued, there were many well-established calligraphers with fine reputations working in the region, and they could all write very quickly.
The practicality of the printed product eventually won out, to the worldâs academic benefit. Before printing, much of what was known about the ancient Middle East came from individual handwritten documents that were painstakingly translated from Greek or other ancient languages into Arabic, then later from Arabic into European languages. Only a few could access these earliest historical and scholarly documents. Representing a different sort of higher learning migration, the subsequent dissemination of printed materials provided educational sources far beyond the previous scope.
The dissemination of Islamic writings brought with it fresh inclinations toward education and scholarship, with a special interest in the heavens. Islamic tradition mandates daily prayers and other rituals take place in accordance with specific positions of the sun; therefore, astronomical timekeeping was a central focus for early Muslim scientific scholars. The Quran, the source of many traditions in Islamic teaching, refers to astronomical patterns in the writings. In addition to providing a means for knowing when to pray or perform religious rituals, the study of astronomy served to determine the latitude and longitude of important places in the Islamic world, helping the faithful pray in the correct directionâfacing toward Mecca. Muslim scholars offered a model of the solar system with the Earth as one of several planets orbiting the sun, centuries bef...