The spread of Islam in Morocco and the first Islamic educational institutions

Almost nothing is known about the first inhabitants of Morocco, whose official name is al-Mamlakat al-Maghribiyya, one of the Maghreb countries. For this reason, the three majör Berber tribes named Masmudah, Zanata, Sanhaja are accepted as the natives of Morocco. These lands, which were the center of attention, where colonies were established by Phoenicians, Romans and Byzantine Empire, passed into the hands of Muslims during the period of Tariq ibn Ziyad, with the adoption of Islam by the Berber tribes. After the Islamic domination, respectively; The Idrisids, the Zanatas, the Almoravids, the Almohads, the Marinids, the Wattasids, the Sa'dis and later the Filalis who have survived to the present day have ruled Morocco. Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque, which is cited as the world's oldest university or the oldest continuously operating higher education institution by some sources such as UNESCO and Guinness World Records, was founded by a young woman named Fatima al-Fihri in the middle of the 9th century in Fez, Morocco in 859. Although the mosque was first named as Fatima al-Fihri, after the period of the Zanatasit started to be called Al-Qaraviyyin, which means the central mosque of the towns people. Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque, where mental sciences were taught as well as religious sciences, educated scientists such asMaymonides, Leo Africanus and Aurillac Gerbert as well as scientists such as Ibn Haldun and Ibn al-Arabi. However, in the following years, the quality of education began to decline due to reasons such as wars and disasters, and in 1912, it became an institution where only religious sciences were taught, even when it was under the French colonial rule. Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque, whose education curriculum was reorganized in the form of primary, secondary and higher education in 1931 and 1933, during the reign of Filali Sultan Muhammad V, gained a place among modern Moroccan public universities in 1963 and was renamed as Qarawiyyin University in 1965.