If the Middle Ages did not invent the school, it profoundly transformed it. This is what the exhibition “ Light of wisdom », currently on display at the Institut du Monde Arabe until January 2014. This exhibition illustrates the parallel developments of schools in the Eastern and Western world over nearly a thousand years.
What does a medieval school look like? ? What do we learn there, in what places and in what way ? For the exhibition “ Light of wisdom », Sandra Aube and Eric Vallet were interested in the places of construction and transmission of knowledge that are the medieval schools of the East and West. Illustrating their remarks with the numerous period manuscripts presented on this occasion, they return here to some of the major themes addressed by the exhibition: the birth of madrasas and universities as lasting places of learning, the progressive affirmation of the figure of the master, and the status of the book as a source of knowledge and transmission.
The exhibition is also accompanied by a very well illustrated catalog: Eric Vallet, Sandra Aube and Thierry Kouamé, Lights of wisdom. Medieval schools of the East and WestParis, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2013, 424p.
Sandra Aube is a doctor in the history of Islamic art and a specialist in architectural decoration and ceramics in the Iranian world at the end of the Middle Ages. She is also a lecturer in Islamic arts at the University of Paris 10 and the Catholic Institute of Paris, and a research fellow at the chair “ Dialogue of cultures » from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Eric Vallet is a lecturer in the history of medieval Islam at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a member of the Institut universitaire de France. He is a specialist in the history of Arab societies at the end of the Middle Ages, particularly in the Arabian Peninsula.
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Photography: David Bornstein
Editing: Cristelle Terroni
Technical assistance: Ariel Suhamy