Dr Mahmoud Masri is a visionary scholar who has initiated several educational initiatives that aim to fill the gaps in the realm of the Islamic Sciences. The Darul Marifah Foundation invited him to answer some questions, and share his insights into the vision, goals and achievements of these projects.
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Your project is one of many important educational initiatives. Tell us briefly about the idea behind establishing it. Will there be more projects like it to come in the future?
These projects, the “Dūr of Istanbul,” all share the same objective. Through them we aim to fill various gaps in the scholarly realm of Islamic Sciences as well as other sciences of our cultural heritage. These various disciplines grew out of our religious tradition to produce the fruit of a civilization that has shone bright for over ten centuries.
At the start of 2020, we began by establishing Dārul Fuqahāʾ. It unites between the classical framework of learning, which relies on the tradition of the ijāzah when passing on Islamic knowledge from scholars to students, with the more contemporary work of the academy. It is home to the Ijāzah Program in Fiqh and Uṣūl al-Fiqh, which runs year-round and is taught over seven levels, as well as the International Summer Ijāzah Program, which is held over the period of a month and in which we host students from outside of Türkiye. There are also secondary programs held that complement the two main efforts in order to achieve the additional goal of spiritual guidance and preaching, including short audio and video recordings and hosting meaningfully engaging activities and events.
Then at the start of 2021, we launched Dārul Makhṭūṭāt, under which we conducted the Ijāzah Program in the Study of Manuscripts. This program is central to the institution, which seeks to pass on these sciences to the next generation. These sciences include the indexing of manuscripts, as well as their production, restoration, authentication, and their critical, codicological, artistic, and historical analysis, and these are all taught over seven levels. The institute also undertakes other endeavors, such as the first ever Arabic Manuscript Encyclopedia, a digital manuscript library, an annual conference, an academic journal, the Spreading Heritage Project, and the Producing Scholars Program.
We simultaneously launched Dārul Muwashaḥāt, which oversees the Ijāzah Program for Religious Anāshīd (hymns) and poetry and focuses on passing on our oral heritage to future generations. It too is taught over seven levels. Documenting our heritage of anāshīd (hymns) requires not only focusing on the words, but also on the rhythm, tempo, the musical notation, and these are of the utmost importance to the institution. In addition to all of this, we document this output through professional and high-quality audio and video recordings. One of the central projects of the institute is to produce an archive that houses the recordings of the greatest instructors of anāshīd (hymns) who have passed, as well as documenting their content.
In 2022 Dārul ʿIrfān launched and became the official home for all these institutes in Istanbul. We also launched Dārul Iʿjāz al-ʿIlmī, an institute focused on the miracles found in the Qurʾān and Sunnah, which seeks to spread the culture of miracles within academy, as well as among the youth. Scientific miracles are of the most important means to calling to Allah, and our exhibitions of scientific miracles is a core means of spreading this culture. Conferences were held in tandem with exhibitions in order to introduce the study of miracles, as well as academic intensives that took a more detailed look at the subject. One of the most important efforts in this institute is the initiative to build a digital library of miracles found in the Qurʾān and Sunnah.
At the beginning of the year 2023, we launched Dārul ʿArabiyya. On the very first day we began the Ijāzah Program in the Arabic Sciences, as well as a program to produce standards for teaching Arabic to non-native speakers. The former contains an advanced level program for the Arabic sciences such as grammar, morphology, rhetoric, prosody, semantics, lexicology, and more. A student will study these after completing the first three levels in the general program across all our institutes, which were produced by Dārul Fuqahāʾ. These initial three levels expose the student to a basic level of study of all of the Islamic sciences. Dārul ʿArabiyya will offer this student four further levels of specialization in order to complete the entire seven-level program. Our second program undertakes the important mission of raising the quality of education of the Arabic language for non-native speakers by conducting workshops, practical intensives, lectures, and conferences, as well as the publication of a yearly peer-reviewed journal—all for the purpose of encouraging and establishing standards according to the ten areas of education that the program will set, and to develop measurable indicators for each of those areas.
These are six institutes that have already been established by the grace of Allah. There are four more to follow, which when complete, will make ten institutes, with Allah’s permission.
We are looking forward to opening at the start of 2024 two institutes. The first is Dārul Fuqarāʾ, whose main program will be the Ijāzah Program in Tawḥīd and Taṣawwuf. It will consist of seven levels: the first three, will be covered in the general program shared by all the institutes, and then four advanced levels of specialization in the sciences of the institute. The second institute will be Dārul ʿImrān, which will oversee programs related to Islamic Civilization. ʿImrān (development), according to our Islamic understanding, is when a society strikes harmony between the material and the immaterial. It pertains to the architectural and artistic heritage, just as it does to the study of sociology and its various sciences.
The final two institutes are planned for 2025: Dārul Qurʾān and Dārul Ḥadīth. In the first, the central program will be the Ijāza Program in the Qurʾān and its Sciences, and in the second it will be the Ijāza Program in Ḥadīth and its Sciences. Each is made up of seven levels, the first three of which will be under the general program shared by all institutes, and the final four being the more advanced specialization programs for each of the two institutes. There will also be supplementary and accompanying programs as well as other academic activities at both institutes, the most important being conferences, compendiums, and peer-reviewed periodical journals.
One shared component of all these projects is specialization. Why is specialization and academic rigor of such critical importance?
The specializations that will be carried out at Dārul ʿArabiyya, Dārul Fuqahāʾ, Dārul Fuqarāʾ, Dārul Qurʾān, and Dārul Ḥadīth are of utmost importance. They are the central objectives of the institutes. Our primary concern is to produce true scholars in all these fields. This can only be achieved through the authentic transmission of these sciences by their masters, along with a natural gradual progression necessary to advance therein. It also requires the merging of traditional and contemporary methods, by adopting what is beneficial in the modern academy. Following this type of method at all institutes will help our Ummah fill the void that we currently experience in terms of cultural and informational change. It will also help us respond to the failures we’ve had in addressing our current needs that are ever increasing without any noticeable attempt to solve them.
We often struggle with sustainability in organizational development. How can we guarantee the sustainability of these initiatives to not only continue to be present, but rather to blossom and grow beyond what we can imagine?
The most important component in the success of any project that aims to strengthen our Ummah is for the roadmap for success to be aligned with the roadmap for progress and the roadmap for sustainability. This involves many factors that cannot be neglected, but can summarize them into two:
The first is establishing the organizational workflow of the project. This requires that the project not depend on one single person, e.g., the founder or the director. Everyone in the project must completely understand and realize the general objective of the project, its dimensions, its mission, and its vision. Anyone who works therein must complete his specified task with perfection. As for the administrators of the project, they must understand much more deeply the details of the project and the mechanisms for its progress. The intended audience of the project must reach a level in which they spread what they gained to others after them.
The second factor is to establish an endowment to support the project, by which the project will not be dependent on random donors. It must be financially independent in order to secure its sustainability. We must always remember that our Islamic civilization is characterized by its plentiful cities that were sustained by the waqf economy, not one of nation-states that depended on governmental funding.
Tell us briefly about Dārul Makhṭūṭāt and its educational initiatives.
Dārul Makhṭūṭāt, like the rest of the institutes, is a non-profit organization focused on research and education. All its programs are free for those who participate. We strive in this institute to revive and spread the culture of manuscripts, bringing attention to it in today’s media platforms in five different ways: providing information, authentication, research, education, and other related activities. We develop academic projects which serve the manuscript and its various applications, as well as introducing it to others, and supporting studies relating to it. Other related activities include conferences, lectures, exhibitions, festivals, and preparing educational activities related to the field of producing critical editions of texts and other sciences pertaining to manuscripts. We have called these educational activities the Ijāzah Program in Manuscript Sciences, and it is a program concerned with teaching all the sciences related to manuscripts over seven levels.
There is the Ijāzah in the General Sciences of the Manuscript, in which there are two levels having to do with the critical editing of manuscripts as well as more general courses in manuscript sciences. There is also the Specialized Ijāzah in the Sciences of the Manuscript, which includes the two previously mentioned levels and beyond that a series of in-depth courses in the various sciences of manuscripts. Then there is the Advanced Ijāzah in the Sciences of Manuscripts, in which there are three levels that are connected to the series of courses in each subject, as well as courses that pertain to the art of the manuscript, courses related to the administration of heritage projects and their regulations, and courses related to the culture of manuscripts.
These various levels within the Ijāzah Program touch on all fields that are related to manuscripts. We can categorize them as follows:
- Preservation (through recording, improving storage conditions, and a push for the initiation of preventative regulations)
- Indexing and codification
- Preservation efforts
- Restoration
- Authentication
- Producing critical editions
- Research
- Distribution
- Highlighting the beauty of manuscripts
- Revitalizing efforts for manuscripts, making them accessible to the public, and spreading the culture to preserve them
- Designing heritage projects
- Supervision and the administration of heritage projects
- The tools for producing critical editions
- The science of the manuscript
- Digital imaging
- The culture of the editor
- Relations of texts
- Historical methods
- Producing search engines
- The history and journey of the manuscript
What is the role that manuscripts play in the preservation and cultivation of our thought?
The manuscript is the scholarly memory-bank of our Ummah. That is why reviving the heritage of the manuscript is the principle building block for supporting the continued civilizational existence and cultural identity of this Ummah. Manuscripts are to our heritage what the heart is to the body since it gives life to the civilization of this Ummah.
This is the general idea. The more specific concern is with Islamic manuscripts. These manuscripts transmit to us a great heritage that the scholars of Islamic civilization have recorded. The heritage is diverse, including the heritage of religious sciences, humanities, natural sciences, as well as literature and the arts.
We need to extract the religious sciences and spread them thoroughly, in an appropriate and well-treated manner, whereby it clarifies for us the understanding of our scholars of the revelation of the Qurʾān and Sunnah. This is achieved by applying that understanding to tens of other sciences that branch out from it. We can then build on those understandings our own set of values and understandings: our creed, our laws, and our spiritual development. After that, we must concern ourselves with beautifying it with what is befitting of the concerns of our era.
One of the unique features that distinguishes our civilizational heritage is that it is extensive in its reach on one hand and imbued with the color of tawḥīd on the other. These two components make it possible for it to rise, to be beneficial, and to and have an impact in any era.
We are concerned with spreading this heritage through several educational series pertaining to different subject areas. For example, we give special importance in this institute to the natural sciences. There is a special series dedicated to its impact on human civilization, and upon which they have built their current glory. It is also relevant to the heritage of the study of the humanities, literature, and arts.
We have lost hundreds of thousands of manuscripts in the past, and some have even claimed that we have lost entire sciences. Is there any hope in bringing back what we have lost?
It is true that we have lost thousands of manuscripts due to many factors, the most impactful of which being deliberate destruction in the case of war, and the second of which being neglect as a result of lack of concern for preservation. Other factors include theft and trade. But we have not lost entire sciences. Knowledge in our tradition is passed down through chains of legitimacy, and this is the distinguishing trait of our Ummah. The sciences are passed down from one generation to the next, and are always being written about in new volumes for every era. If one book is lost, its contents can be found in others, and so knowledge is never lost.
As for bringing back what was lost, it depends heavily on legislation, which remains insufficient in protecting the heritage of manuscripts in the world. The manuscripts that were moved in illegitimate ways from one land to another, for example, must be returned if they were moved after 1970, based on the UNESCO agreement of 1970 that prohibits the smuggling and trade of historical artifacts and the destruction of property with cultural significance. It mandates states to return the stolen property that was taken after the date of the agreement. This must be corrected and further developed to address the needs that arose thereafter due to new and more advanced methods of criminal activity. Not to mention that the European countries have much to benefit from neglecting this, in order for the goods that they have stolen to remain in their countries.
How can we minimize the risk of losing more of our manuscript heritage?
Some of it has to do with documentation, and some of it has to do with preservation. Documentation serves to categorize, index, and digitize the manuscripts (via digital imaging).
Preservation is done through official preservation-libraries that are overseen by the national government, as well as through attempting to gather the manuscript heritage in private libraries and documenting them and preserving them in the same way.
With the continuing advancement of technology in the world, is there any opportunity for burgeoning technology to assist those who are specialized in manuscripts in their work?
There is no doubt that the spread of modern technology, such as means of communication and information technology, and its rapid development has made it incumbent upon us to benefit from it and utilize it in ways to serve and spread our civilizational heritage. This can be through redistributing the main sources of the heritage digitally (otherwise known as digitizing the heritage), including the digitization of manuscripts, producing specialized programs that facilitate finding digitized manuscripts, embedding the information of the desired manuscript into the program, and linking it to the manuscript’s images. It also includes facilitating finding manuscripts through advanced search tools, as we have done in the digital library program for Dārul Makhṭūṭāt, as well as what we have done through our digital publications through our digital publications series at the institute.
It can be said that digital distribution has sparked an important development in the realm of benefiting from information technology within the field of Arabic Heritage. This is true in several respects: archiving massive amounts of information, ease, speed, and accuracy of recall, the use of information by more than one person in more than one place at the same time. This is all in addition to the low cost and ease of distribution of cultural heritage to the society at large, especially through digital distribution on the internet.
What is the reason for choosing Istanbul as the base for this project? Does it have any principal significance in the field of Islamic manuscripts?
The choice of Istanbul for this project is not only due to the fact that we live here; rather it is due to the fact that Istanbul is one of the true Arabic manuscript capitals. It is home to about half a million manuscripts between its public and private libraries, and these manuscripts are generally in great condition – praise be to Allah – and most are easily accessible.
Will the students be able to apply the knowledge that they gain in order to serve the Islamic manuscripts available in other languages around the world as well?
Definitely. The principles of producing critical editions and distributing them are the same regardless of the manuscript’s language. They require the same building blocks. This is also true of the other sciences regarding manuscripts such as classification, indexing, codicology, preservation, restoration, etc.
Do you have any concluding thoughts?
We only wish to emphasize that we, the Dūr of Istanbul, are not repeating the efforts that have already been exhausted in the fields we seek to serve. We are, in every field, establishing projects that are novel in their thought, or in the form in which they take. Thus, we are filling voids that must be filled for the needs of this vast Ummah.
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