alhazar

Updated: June 1, 2025

The Arabic-speaking world produced the great University of Cordova, which flourished a thousand years ago, and was a source of light and learning when the rest of Europe was either in twilight or darkness; in the centuries following the creation of that Spanish Moslem university, Arabic men of science, travellers, and geographers such as the noteworthy African traveller Ibn Batutu, a copy of whose book, by the way, I saw yesterday in the library of the Alhazar were teachers whose works are still to be eagerly studied; and I trust that here we shall see the revival, and more than the revival, of the conditions that made possible such contributions to the growth of civilization.

Theodore Roosevelt - African and European Addresses