“My forefathers founded Al Azhar University in Cairo some 1,000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of the workings of the Creator’s physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1,000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength.”
Extract from the Commencement Address made by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 27, 1994
Al-Azhar: An Ancient Centre of Learning
Al-Azhar (The Luminous) was constructed as the central grand-mosque for Cairo by al-Qaid Jawhar al-Siqillí when he took Egypt for the Fatimid Imam-Caliph al-Mu‘izz li Dín Allah in 969 CE and founded Cairo as its capital city. It was inaugurated on 7 Ramadan 361 AH / 22 June 972 CE. Possibly so-named after Prophet Muhammad’s daughter Fatima al-Zahra, through whom the Fatimids traced their genealogy back to the Prophet.
Ismailimail 