Q: Where is the oldest university in the world?

A: According to Guinness World Records, the oldest existing, and continually operating educational institution in the world is the University of Karueein in Fez, Morocco, which was founded in 859 AD.

Source:
www.guinnessworldrecords.com
www.eng.unibo.it

AND...

The University was founded in 859 by Fatima Al-Fihri, the daughter of a wealthy merchant named Mohammed Al-Fihri. The Al-Fihri family had migrated from Kairouan, Tunisia to Fes in the early 9th century, joining a community of other migrants from Kairouan who had settled in a western district of the city. Fatima and her sister Mariam, both of whom were well educated, inherited a large amount of money from their father. Fatima vowed to spend her entire inheritance on the construction of a mosque suitable for her community. This remarkable story is a typical example shedding some light on the role and contribution of women in Muslim civilisation. Such a role is the subject of widely held misconceptions about Islam.

The university gained the patronage of politically powerful sultans. It compiled a large selection of manuscripts that were kept at a library founded by the Marinid Sultan Abu Inan Faris in 1349. Among the most precious manuscripts currently housed in the university library are volumes from the famous Mut'ah of Malik written on gazelle parchment, the Sirat Ibn Ishaq, a copy of the Qur'an given to the university by Sultan Ahmed Al-Mansur Al-Dhahabi in 1602, and the original copy of Ibn Khaldun's book Al-'Ibar.

In addition to a place for worship, the mosque soon developed into a place for religious instruction and political discussion, gradually extending its education to a broad range of subjects, particularly the natural sciences. In 1957, King Mohammed V introduced math, physics, chemistry and foreign languages. Among the subjects taught, alongside the Qur'an and Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), are grammar, rhetoric, logic, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, history, geography and music.

The oldest university in Europe is the University of Bologna, Italy, founded in 1088. The institution began to take shape in Bologna at the end of the eleventh century, when masters of Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic began to devote themselves to the Law. In the nineteenth century a committee of historians, led by Giosue Carducci, attributed the birth of the University to the year 1088.