Here today in Timbuktu, Mali, lies a building which was once home to one of the most respected universities in the world. The University of Sankore was not only a simple school: it was the source of knowledge where during the XV and the half of the XVI centuries people, who wanted to learn, came from all Africa, European and Near East countries, while such prestigious university as Oxford was only growing, and Harvard has not even been conceived.
The Golden Age of the African Academia
Try to imagine a situation that once meant to be in Timbuktu where books would be sold for more than gold. The University of Sankore was right in the middle of that learning hub and the university’s earthen architecture, which only mirrored that of the Kongo people was accommodating up to 25000 students and . Education is for boys here, I can tell you the scope of this education would pull down many liberal universities of today.
Religious Studies or the Religious Moment Can Mean More Than Just Religion
With the expectation that ancient African education was centered on religious scriptures, the curriculum at Sankore was quite progressive.
The students took an in-depth look in the arts of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, writers and artist. One would be impressed by the university’s approach to medicine, where scholars described operations that were to take centuries to surface in Europe.
A Different Kind of Education
Think about receiving a degree not in terms of credit hours but in terms of acquiring sufficient mastery of the chosen field to the satisfaction of scholars who devoted years, indeed decades, to the honing of their skills. The teaching learning processes at Sankore were very personal – students were therefore associated with individual scholars for years before they could be awarded certificates to train others.
Could this have been the world’s first study abroad program?
Sankore was not only for people of Ghana but of other African countries as well. That popularity attracted students from distant places such as Middle East and Mediterranean Europe. These international scholars also had assimilated their own knowledge with their perspective to innovate a new knowledge which was a multiethnic large colliding-pot of ideas not very common during that period. It is like learning culture exchange program of medieval ages where different faculties and people of different types of thinking processes used to interchange their ideas.
The Library Legacy
Sankore compiled an extensive library of manuscripts that might well be its greatest contribution to the records of history. Culturopolitically, scholars did not solely read texts but reproduced them, paraphrased them and generated more texts. These covered contemplating the skies to harmonies, letters among authorities to verses. To the present day, families in Timbuktu jealously protect these manuscripts as family herilooms, handed from one generation to another.
A Center of Innovation
What set Sankore apart from other schools was the culture of innovation that was practiced within institution. People were not satisfied to keep the centuries’ experience safe – people developed new ideas in different areas – from jurisprudence sciences to astronomy. He produced powerful mathematical ideas and treatment procedures that were far beyond anyone in the following centuries.
The Eclipse and Revival
So Sankore after rising to its golden age through education was and has been negatively affected by political instabilities in the country and colonization.
In the recent past there has been a revival of the interest on the university’s history and researchers are under a process of decentralizing its manuscripts. They remain a source of fresh information about Africa’s intellectual asset base as these documents.
Modern Lessons from an Ancient Institution
Today questions about the future of education are not only relevant, but often acute, and Sankore provides answers that can be rather unexpected.
That is why, its emphasis on mastery instead of standardized achievement, its syncretism that takes into account the viewpoints of different cultures, and its stress on generating new knowledge rather than on the preservation of received wisdom seem to be highly topical for the modern discussions of educational goals and purposes.
Sankore story also informs us that Africa has a wealth of intellectual history well rooted. It provokes the notion on viewing traditional centers of education and knowledge shedding.
Thus we are facing modern educational challenges and we turning to this ancient institution that knew the meaning of higher education three hundred years before the foundation of Harvard.
Who else might we have failed to consider as part of the history of thought?
