Posted by “My prayer is that the university we are now building will enable many generations of the students to acquire both knowledge and the essential spiritual wisdom needed to balance that knowledge and enable their lives to attain the highest fulfillment.”
Mawlana Hazar Imam, Karachi, Pakistan
16 March1983
Mawlana Hazar Imam had announced the construction of a hospital, medical college, and school of nursing in December 1964, laying the foundation in 1971. The Aga Khan Medical College commenced operation in 1983 as an academic unit of the Faculty of Health Sciences, alongside the School of Nursing and Midwifery.
On 16 March 1983, the Aga Khan Medical College received its Charter as Pakistan’s first private international university. In his address, Mawlana Hazar Imam expressed his vision for the university:
“The Charter which His Excellency the President has been gracious enough to grant the new Aga Khan University creates the first University inspired by my family since Al-Azhar was founded in the Fatimid dynasty’s capital of Cairo in 970, a thousand years before we laid the foundation stone of the Aga Khan Medical College on this site in 1971. I can indeed hardly express the depth of my pleasure at receiving the Charter which dignifies that college with the status of a university.”
“Although this university is new, it will draw inspiration from the great traditions of Islamic civilization and learning…By the art of translation, learning was assimilated from other civilizations. It was then advanced and furthered in new directions by scholarship in such institutions as the Dar-al-Ilm — the House of Science, which during the ninth and tenth centuries spread to many cities, through colleges like those of Al Azhar in Cairo, Qarawiyin at Fez in Morocco, Zaytuna in Tunis and the eminent Spanish centre of Cordoba, founded between 929 and 961…
It is no exaggeration to say that the original Christian universities of Latin West, at Paris, Bologna and Oxford, indeed the whole European renaissance, received a vital influx of new knowledge from Islam … Making wisdom available from one country to another is truly the finest tradition of Islamic learning.
In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible.
…the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity…let us pray that we shall develop a guiding light, a light to be added to those many others which seek to illuminate the path to a better life for the peoples of the ummah and of the Third World.”
Speech
Today, AKU has campuses in Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Afghanistan, and the UK. It operates teaching hospitals in Karachi and Nairobi, Schools of Nursing and Midwifery, Medical Colleges, Institutes for Educational Development, the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, the Graduate School of Media and Communications, the East Africa Institute, and the Institute for Human Development. AKU also runs an Examination Board and manages the French Medical Institute for Children in Kabul, Afghanistan.
In 2015, the President of the United Republic of Tanzania granted the Aga Khan University its charter under Tanzanian law, marking the first time such recognition has been given to a foreign-based institution of higher learning.
The Seal of Aga Khan University
(re-printed from AKU’s website)
The circular form of the seal with its different levels of imagery contained in concentric circles has its visual roots in the rosettes of early Islamic periods. The circle also symbolises the world and reflects the internationality of Aga Khan University.
At the centre of the seal is a star, or sun. Light is a universal symbol for the enlightenment that education provides. The light emanating from the star is also symbolic of Nur (Divine Light). The star incorporates 49 points to commemorate the University’s founding by Mawlana Hazar Imam, the 49th Imam of the Ismaili Muslims.
The outer ring embodies an excerpt from the Qur’anic Ayat (3:103) rendered in classic Thuluth script:
And hold fast,
All together, by the rope
Which God (stretches out for you),
And be not divided among yourselves,
And remember with gratitude
God’s favour on you:
For ye were enemies
And He joined your hearts
In love, so that by His grace
Ye became brethren
Sources:
Ismaili Forum, March 1986
Hidayat, October 1985
History of AKU
Nimira's Blog 