Islam encouraged scientific movement, called for learning, and demonstrated the virtue of scholars. Textual proofs regarding this are widely known and virtually countless, including Almighty God’s sayings: “Are those who know equal to those who do not know?” and “God will raise those who have believed among you and those who were given knowledge, by degrees.” Also, His Noble Prophet said: “Whomever God intends good for, He grants him understanding of the religion,” and “Seeking knowledge is an obligation upon every Muslim.”
Muslims translated these texts into action. Since the dawn of Islam, the Prophet (peace be upon him) initiated the fight against illiteracy when he required captives of the Battle of Badr who were skilled in reading and writing to teach Muslim boys in exchange for their freedom.
Muslim scholars strived to establish the foundations of an Islamic educational theory. Prominent figures in this arena included Al-Qabisi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Al-Ghazali, and Ibn Khaldun—for whom the subject of children’s education and its methods occupied a significant portion of his intellectual interests.
1. The Nature of Knowledge (‘Ilm) in Ibn Khaldun’s Pedagogy
Ibn Khaldun dedicated several chapters in his Muqaddimah (Introduction) to discussing education, most notably Chapter Six, titled “Sciences and Their Categories, Education and Its Methods, and All Its Aspects.” As we observe, he combined knowledge and education in this chapter, detailing every branch of science and outlining how to “teach knowledge.” Before reviewing his views on this, we first pause at his definition of knowledge and its stages.
Ibn Khaldun believes that knowledge is the mind’s acquisition of something it did not previously possess. These acquired things are not natural or inborn; rather, they are acquired gradually. Because the mind is in constant motion—reflecting on life and the Hereafter—it is compelled to acquire what it lacks, giving rise to sciences and crafts. Knowledge begins with perception (idrak), then develops into awareness (ma’rifah), which grows until it becomes structured knowledge (‘ilm).
For him, sciences fall into two distinct categories:
“A natural category for humans, to which they are guided by their own thought, and a transmitted category, which they receive from the one who established it.”
The former comprises the philosophical sciences, while the latter consists of the transmitted religious sciences (al-‘ulum al-naqliyya), which rely on reports from the Divine Lawgiver and leave no room for human reason [1].
2. The Origin and Evolution of the Craft of Teaching
Ibn Khaldun considers that “knowledge and teaching are natural to human beings,” because humans always aspire to acquire perceptions beyond their current level, turning to those who preceded them in knowledge, perception, or experience. This is the origin of education, which flourishes and grows “where urbanization expands and civilization thrives.”
The reason for this is that education is something that goes beyond basic necessities like food and drink. Once urban dwellers satisfy their basic needs, they turn “to what lies beyond subsistence—engaging the unique human trait, which is the sciences and crafts.” Anyone raised in the desert who naturally longs for knowledge will not find what satisfies that desire there; they must travel to major cities (al-amsar) and seek out famous teachers, as they are “the chain of transmission in education.”
Ibn Khaldun considers “teaching to be a craft among crafts,” meaning it is not an innate talent, but rather a habitus (malakah) that a person acquires. He notes its evolution over time, stating:
“Education at the beginning of Islam and during the two dynasties was not like this; knowledge in general was not a craft, but rather a transmission of what was heard from the Lawgiver and the teaching of religious matters to the ignorant by way of delivery” [2].
He explains this shift by pointing to the spread of Islam among various peoples and the increasing need to derive rulings from texts: “Thus, it required a system to protect it from error, and knowledge became a habitus requiring instruction, thereby becoming one of the crafts and trades.”
Proof that teaching is a craft includes “the variation in its terminology—that is, teaching methods. Every famous scholar had a unique teaching terminology specific to them, just as in all crafts. This demonstrates that such terminology is not knowledge itself; for if it were, it would be uniform among all of them.” This means Ibn Khaldun acknowledges the diversity of instructional methods, confirming there is no single “correct” method while all others are invalid.
3. Ibn Khaldun’s 3-Stage Teaching Method
Ibn Khaldun assumes that a student must possess “a readiness for what is presented to them.” Even with this readiness, a student cannot absorb knowledge all at once; instruction must proceed gradually. Knowledge becomes firmly rooted in the mind through repetition at close intervals, aided by concrete examples that bring the meaning closer. On this topic, he states:
“The capacity to absorb sciences and the readiness to understand them develop gradually. At first, the learner is incapable of understanding as a whole, except for a little—approximated globally through sensory examples. Then, their readiness steadily grows as they interact with the problems of that field and repeat them, moving from simple approximation to deeper comprehension until the habitus matures—first in readiness, then in mastery.”
Ibn Khaldun calls on teachers to limit instruction for beginners to one or two sciences at a time. His argument is “not to confuse the learner with two subjects at once, for then they will rarely master either” and will find both difficult to comprehend.
The Three Progressive Stages of Learning:
- The First Stage (Introduction & Fundamentals): Begin with the fundamentals and basic principles, gradually moving to general summaries of details and sub-topics until the overview of the field is complete. At this point, the learner acquires a basic—though limited—habitus, preparing them to understand and master the field’s core issues.
- The Second Stage (Intermediate Explanation & Analysis): The teacher revisits the subject at an intermediate level between summary and full detail. He describes this saying: “Then he returns to the discipline a second time, elevating the instruction to a higher level, providing fuller explanation and clarification beyond generalities, and mentioning existing differences of opinion and their bases until reaching the end of the discipline; thus, their habitus is refined.”
- The Third Stage (Advanced Mastery & Complex Concepts): The teacher revisits the material once more, “leaving no complex, ambiguous, or locked concept without clarifying and opening it for the learner, so they finish the discipline having fully mastered its habitus.”
Critique of Harsh Teaching & Overloading Students
This is what Ibn Khaldun describes as “useful education,” achieved through “three repetitions.” However, he notes that most teachers ignore this principle of gradual repetition from simple to complex, adopting an opposing approach that he harshly critiques:
“We have observed many teachers in this era—which we have witnessed—who are ignorant of the methods of teaching and its utility. They present complex problems of a discipline to the learner at the very start of their education, demanding that they focus their minds on solving them. They mistakenly believe this builds skill and is correct practice, burdening them with its retention while cluttering their minds with the ultimate goals of the discipline before they are ready to comprehend them.”
This was not his only criticism of teachers. He also condemned their tendency toward corporal punishment and severity, asserting that violence harms learners in three ways:
- It destroys motivation and invites laziness.
- It leads to lying and moral vices.
- It teaches deceit and trickery.
For this reason, Ibn Khaldun proposed extending the authority of the market inspector (al-muhtasib) to “restrain teachers in schools and elsewhere from inflicting excessive beatings on young students” [3].
4. Historical Educational Curricula Across the Muslim World
In various sections of the Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun addressed the prevailing educational curricula of his era, noting the approaches of various Muslim regions. He highlighted that all followers of the faith agreed on the priority of the Qur’an as “the foundation of education upon which all subsequent habitus are built.”
Nevertheless, some regions chose to supplement Qur’anic instruction with Hadith, jurisprudence (fiqh), calligraphy, writing, poetry, Arabic grammar, and arithmetic. Ibn Khaldun distinguishes between four primary educational approaches:
- The Maghrebi Approach: Focused strictly on the Qur’an alone, mixing nothing else with it until the student mastered it, after which they introduced Arabic language sciences and calligraphy.
- The Andalusian Approach: Made the Qur’an the foundation, but integrated poetry, letter-writing (murasalat), Arabic grammar rules, and paid significant attention to penmanship and writing.
- The African (Ifriqiyan/Tunisian) Approach: Generally combined the Qur’an with Hadith, teaching basic rules and principles of sciences alongside it. However, their primary emphasis remained on memorizing the Qur’an and mastering its variant recitations (qira’at), followed by writing and calligraphy.
- The Eastern (Mashreqi) Approach: Maintained focus on the Qur’an while teaching the basics of various sciences. They did not mix calligraphy with it, as penmanship had its own distinct rules and specialized teachers.
Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi’s Proposed Curriculum
Ibn Khaldun concludes by mentioning the curriculum proposed by Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi—a method Ibn Khaldun strongly favored. This approach argued that:
- Teaching Arabic language and poetry should precede the Qur’an and all other sciences without exception.
- Next should follow arithmetic.
- The Qur’an would only be taught after these foundational subjects (Arabic and arithmetic).
- Finally, students would proceed to the principles of religion (usul al-din), jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh), dialectics (jadal), and Hadith studies.
The justification for prioritizing Arabic was that language skills had degraded over time, making it essential to prioritize language so students could properly comprehend everything taught thereafter.
Conclusion
From the above, it is clear that Ibn Khaldun engaged in a deep study of education across all its dimensions, and most of his pedagogical views have been integrated into modern educational theories.
