Abstract
Ijāzah, meaning permission, license, or authorization, refers to several distinct types of academic certificates within Islamic education. Given the primacy of oral traditions and importance of reliability of ḥadīth, the license of audition (ijāzah al-sama‘) was established in order to guarantee the credibility of the transmission. Ijāzah al-riwāyah served as written records of the direct audition of a text on the part of the recipient from the transmitting authority, whether a single ḥadīth report, a work by the transmitting teacher himself, or a work by a third party. Accordingly, ijāzah al-iftā’ or ijāzah al-ijtihād was developed within fiqh as a method of authorization of the qualified ‘ulamā’ to respond to the changes within Muslim societies throughout fatwās. Through ijāzah li-al-tadrīs, a scholar was entitled to teach parts of a book or an entire subject. Independent from any social and political institutions, ijāzah was executed within a disciple-master relationship and developed into a literacy genre within Islamic education.
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Arjmand, R. (2018). Ijāzah: Methods of Authorization and Assessment in Islamic Education. In: Daun, H., Arjmand, R. (eds) Handbook of Islamic Education. International Handbooks of Religion and Education, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64683-1_55
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64683-1_55
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