Reason for the Spread of Education

and on the earth to you” (45: 13). As a result, far from being man’s object of worship, nature began to be treated as man’s servant. Several such verses have introduced believers to an extended area of knowledge in the Quran. Accordingly, the entire universe became a vast library for contemplation. Learning no longer remained a limited sphere but was transformed into a field accessible to all. This was no simple matter. Shirk, which had prevailed throughout the world before Islam’s emergence, was another name for nature worship. In the ideology of shirk, nature, having been placed on the pedestal of worship, could never have been treated as an object of investigation. During Muslim rule, under the influence of Quranic ideology, nature generally came to be displaced from the pedestal of worship. Subsequently, the phenomena of nature became a major subject of research and investigation. Madinah became the first centre of this new culture, reaching Damascus, Cairo, and Baghdad. In Baghdad, it flourished greatly. Later, it reached Muslim Spain, with Cordova and Granada becoming its centres. Under Muslim rule, this began an age of learning; all the things of the universe became the