Students’ Etiquette towards Teachers According to Syaikh Burhanuddin Az-Zarnuji
6 Interdisciplinary Social Studies, 1(1), Oct 2021
1) Nizhamiyah Madrasah, founded by Nizham Al-Mulk (457-1106 AD), a ruler of the
Bani Saljuk government. In each city, Nidzam Al Mulk established a large Madrasah,
as in Baghdad, Balkh, Naisabur, Hearat, Asfahan, Bashrah and others;
2) Al-Nuriyah Al-Kubra Madrasah, founded by Nuruddin Mahmud Zanki (563-1167
A.D.) in Damascus; and
3) Al-Mustansyirah Madrasah was founded by the Abbasid caliph, Al-Mustansir Billah,
in Baghdad (631 H/1234 A.D). The latter school is equipped with various adequate
facilities such as a two-story building, a hall, a library with approximately 80,000 book
collections, a large yard and field, a mosque, a medical center and so on. Another
feature of the Madrasah mentioned last is that it teaches jurisprudence in four schools
(Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi'I, and Ahmad ibn Hambal).
In addition to the three Madrasah, there are still many Islamic educational institutions that
grew and developed rapidly during the life of Az-Zarnuji. With this information, it is clear that
he lived at a time when Islamic science and culture were at their peak, specifically during the
Abbasid era which was marked by the emergence of encyclopedic Islamic thinkers who were
difficult to match.
These conditions of growth and development were very favorable for the formation of Az-
Zarnuji as a scientist or scholar with extensive knowledge (Baharuddin & Wahyuni, 2010). On
this basis it is not surprising that Az-Zarnuji is a philosopher who has his own system of thought
and can be equated with figures such as Ibn Sina, Al Ghazali and so on (Nata, 2001).
However, with the increasing number of educational institutions and thinkers that emerged
at that time, on the other hand, the government and political conditions were uncertain,
especially in the Abbasid government.
These years were the beginning of the collapse of the Abbasid power which was marked
by the struggle for power in his government. So that resulted in the internal weaknesses of the
Abbasids. This is as stated by Imam Tholkhah and Ahmad Barizi in their book Opening the
Window of Education to unravel the Roots of Tradition and Interaction of Islamic Educational
Sciences that Az-Zarnuji lived during the reign and Islamic thought experienced a decline
(Barizi & Tolkhah, 2004).
The difference above is understandable, because the lifetime of Burhanuddin Az-Zarnuji
occurred at the end of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th century. That period was
the initial period of the destruction of Islam in the East, and began a period of Islamic
stagnation. But in the Western hemisphere Islam is experiencing the peak of glory, which was
ruled by the Umayyads, in Spain. Many Islamic philosophers and thinkers in various fields of
scientific disciplines were born there.
Book of Ta’limul Mutta’alim
Codification and Transliteration of the book of Ta'limul Muta'allim
We may not know for sure how many of Az-Zarnuji's works there are and can only know
Ta'limul Muta'allim that we can know and can find until now and without information on the
year of publication. In our belief, as is usually the case with great scholars who lived in the VI-
VII Hijri centuries, of course there are still many other written books. It may be that the
manuscript was lost in a museum repository before it was published or it was destroyed in the
Mongol wars that took place in the same century.