(The original Turkish version of this article was published by the Platform: Current Muslim Affairs on January 28, 2026)
In our society, madrasas are often compared to universities and are commonly described as “our universities.” While his generalization may seem acceptable insofar as both are institutions of higher learning—and while the term “university” can be used generically to denote higher education institutions—closer attention to the history, structure, and functioning of universities quickly reveals that the two are not the same.
The university, whose earliest examples emerged in Bologna and Paris in the twelfth century, is a medieval institution. During the same period, the Islamic world possessed a variety of higher educational institutions where advanced learning was conducted; yet none of these institutions were universities in the historical or institutional sense.
Researchers who have studied this subject extensively agree that between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, there were substantial differences between madrasas and universities, and that the two were neither equivalents nor counterparts. These differences also explain why madrasas were unable to develop in the same way as universities.
The differences between Ottoman madrasas and medieval universities stem from political, religious, and social factors. These elements shaped the institutional structures and intellectual content of universities, leading them to develop along different trajectories. The distinctions between these two institutions—each emerging in different historical and civilizational environments—can be examined under four headings: political, religious, social, and educational.
Political Causes of the Difference
While the Ottoman Empire was characterized by political unity, Europe consisted of nearly fifty kingdoms and city-states. This political landscape naturally influenced the structure and development of institutions. Universities developed differently across Italy, Germany, France, Great Britain, and other European regions, whereas the Ottoman political unity and centralized administration resulted in a standardized and uniform educational system.
In the Ottoman system, the sultan represented the sole political authority. In contrast, Western Europe was governed by a complex balance of power involving emperors, kings, local rulers, and—often more powerful than all of them—the Church. The competition and tension among these authorities acted as a driving force in the development of universities. No comparable tension existed in the Ottoman system, where a centralized and absolute authority prevailed.
Another significant difference lies in the fact that Turkish-Islamic states established and supported madrasas under direct political control, with the aim of disseminating a specific religious-political doctrine. The state and society did not permit the emergence of independent individual or corporate civil power structures in opposition to the state. In contrast, sectarian competition and struggles between local and central authorities in the West gave rise to diverse institutional entities and centers of power. The growth of commercial life alongside urbanization, the accumulation of financial capital, and the discovery of new continents and lands provided Western Europe with new horizons, visions, and missions—creating opportunities for unprecedented institutional innovation.
Another major distinction between the Islamic world and Western Europe concerns religious pluralism in governance. In the Islamic world, non-Muslims could attain high positions within the state apparatus. In Western Europe, by contrast, not only Muslims and Jews but even non-Catholic Christians were categorically excluded from positions of power. Non-Christians were perceived as threats and were marginalized or expelled—an experience unfamiliar to the Islamic world.
Hostility in Western Europe was not limited to non-Christians; it was often directed at fellow Christians as well. Crusades were launched against the Cathars, thousands of whom were burned alive in public squares. The massacres carried out to suppress Protestant movements in the sixteenth century, followed by prolonged sectarian wars, continued until the early eighteenth century and resulted in the deaths of millions.
While Western European societies had lived on the same territories for centuries, Turks were continually settling new lands. The madrasa played a crucial role in establishing Ottoman administration and social order in newly conquered territories.
In the Ottoman system, members of the ulema were integrated into the state bureaucracy. University professors in Western Europe, however, did not perform such functions. Moreover, since the ulema were state officials, the conditions necessary for forming independent professional organizations never emerged.
Religious Causes of the Difference
Another crucial factor arises from differences between Christianity and Islam. The existence of a clergy class, the doctrine of original sin, and the Pope’s claim to absolute religious authority—along with his efforts to preserve it—created an atmosphere of fear and repression in Europe. Resistance to this environment became a driving force behind the development of universities. Madrasas in the Islamic world, by contrast, lacked such motivating pressures.
Major sectarian divisions, religious wars, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and secularization movements all shaped the development of universities in the West. No comparable struggle occurred in the Ottoman lands. Ottoman madrasas were founded upon Hanafi jurisprudence, and conflicts resembling Western sectarian struggles never arose. It should also be noted that “sect” in the Western context often implied the emergence of a new religion, making it fundamentally different from sectarian diversity in Islam.
Another significant difference concerns language. University education initially conducted in Latin gradually shifted toward vernacular languages as Western European principalities underwent nation-building processes in the modern era. Sacred texts were translated into local languages, and higher education in national languages was actively promoted. In contrast, madrasas consistently used Arabic as their instructional language from their inception. Despite the vast geographical expanse—from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Volga, from the Balkans to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent—and the multitude of spoken languages, Arabic remained the language of instruction. A madrasa scholar from Baghdad, Cairo, or Damascus in the twelfth century would have encountered little intellectual unfamiliarity if transported to North Africa or Transoxiana in the nineteenth century. While texts were in Arabic, lessons were discussed in Turkish in Ottoman madrasas, which eliminated the perceived need for translations into local languages.
Social Causes of the Difference
First and foremost, history and time did not unfold in the same way in Western Europe and the Islamic world. The Middle Ages is a periodization specific to Western European history, shaped by its own internal dynamics. Islamic and Turkish history followed different trajectories, influenced by distinct forces. Therefore, meaningful comparison should focus not on centuries but on the developmental processes of institutions.
In sixth- and seventh-century Europe, only clergy members knew Latin, whereas in the Islamic world there was scarcely a caliph who did not write or appreciate poetry. By the ninth and tenth centuries, a “book revolution” had occurred in the Islamic world, and literacy rates in cities such as Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo reached double digits by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—an achievement unmatched in Western Europe at the time.
In the West, there was a direct relationship between the development of cities and the rise of universities. At that time, no Western European city could compare to those of the Islamic world. Urban growth nurtured intellectual and cultural life, but it took several centuries for Western European cities to approach the scale and vitality of their Islamic counterparts. This development eventually produced a secular modernity and a social structure independent of the Church. Since there was no Church in Ottoman society capable of triggering secularization, a similar transformation did not occur.
Urbanization in the West led to the emergence of new institutions and social classes. The growth and wealth of cities gave rise to the bourgeoisie, which in turn strengthened civil society organizations and empowered newly formed city councils. These developments fostered legal personhood and institutional autonomy in the West. In the Ottoman context, where aristocratic and bourgeois classes did not exist, no comparable process unfolded.
The rise of universities was closely linked to the emergence of the bourgeoisie. Universities enabled the bourgeoisie to perceive themselves as aristocrats and also trained the personnel needed for commercial and administrative activities. Such a dynamic did not emerge in the Islamic world or in the Ottoman Empire.
While Western history progressed through the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, secularism, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of capitalism—all of which influenced universities—Ottoman history remained relatively static by comparison. Although the Ottomans possessed certain internal dynamics, these did not produce transformations on the same scale.
In Western Europe, townspeople viewed university students as sources of income, while students organized to defend themselves against exploitation—phenomena entirely absent from the Ottoman context.
Educational Causes of the Difference
Another key factor influencing institutional development was the absence in the Islamic world of an ancient cultural heritage that needed preservation and revitalization. Muslim scholars and philosophers had access to ancient Greek works and selectively adopted them, contributing significantly to the formation and development of Islamic philosophy.
Professional knowledge transmission through guilds (ahi organizations) and bureaucratic training within state offices eliminated the perceived need for vocational schools.
The invention of the printing press was another decisive factor. Rapidly spreading across Europe, printed books played a vital role in the production and dissemination of knowledge. This circulation nurtured intellectual curiosity, skepticism, and rationality—qualities essential to academic life.
In Europe, the Church played a central role in the patronage and education of arts such as music and painting. In Ottoman society, this role was partially assumed by the palace and Sufi lodges, but no institutionalized art academies comparable to those in Europe existed.
While natural sciences emerged in seventeenth-century Europe, the Age of Reason unfolded in the eighteenth century, and social sciences developed in the nineteenth, Ottoman education continued along its own path, attempting to follow and transmit Western developments. In doing so, the Ottomans gradually sidelined madrasas and began establishing new educational institutions.
It should be remembered that European universities retained nearly identical curricula from their founding until the nineteenth century. The difference between medieval universities and Humboldtian universities is profound; the latter represent an entirely new institutional model. American universities differ from Humboldtian ones as well, though to a lesser degree. Comparing madrasas with second -or third- generation universities is therefore fundamentally unjust.
Madrasas and universities are two fundamentally different institutions of higher education. From the late eighteenth century onward, universities evolved and adapted to change, whereas madrasas failed to do so and gradually receded into history. The Ottomans—historically, politically, philosophically, religiously, economically, and culturally distinct from Western Europe—sought to keep pace by establishing new higher education institutions. Before doing so, they attempted certain reforms within the madrasa system but ultimately concluded that incremental changes were insufficient and opted to found new schools instead.
Turkish society developed two opposing views regarding madrasas, rooted in its inherited beliefs, which prevented full benefit from the madrasa experience.
Today, Turkiye has more than two hundred universities. However, it is difficult to claim that most possess the essential qualities of a true university. Simply imitating American and Western European universities and transplanting them wholesale into our context will not ensure future sustainability. Instead, we must develop a model unique to our society—one that also draws upon the madrasa experience. I strongly emphasize that Turkish higher education possesses the intellectual resources and experience necessary to accomplish this.
* This article is based on İsmail Güleç’s work Medrese Üniversite midir? Karşılaştırmalı Bir Okuma (Istanbul: Vadi Publications, 2024).
** Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Platform: Current Muslim Affairs’ editorial policy.
