• About
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    In 2009, Zaytuna College was founded in Berkeley, California, with a mission that called for grounding students in the Islamic scholarly tradition as well as in the cultural currents and critical ideas shaping modern society.

  • Academics
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    As a Muslim liberal arts college in the West, Zaytuna offers a curriculum that provides its students with a foundation in the intellectual heritage of two major world civilizations: the Islamic and the Western.

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  • Admissions & Aid
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    Our mission is to educate students to become morally, intellectually, and spiritually accomplished individuals ready to contribute to our contemporary world in ways that are proportionate to their gifts and to the needs of human society.

     

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  • Campus Life
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    Zaytuna’s campus is on Holy Hill and students enter the College as part of a cohort, a community of learners that travel together through the curriculum.

Zaytuna College Canon Lecture Series

About the Canon Lecture Series

The Zaytuna College Canon comprises the foundational primary texts that shape the intellectual history of the Islamic and Western traditions as well as commentaries that serve as tools to unlock those primary texts. In this series, our faculty members demonstrate why these texts have enjoyed the status conferred to them by our scholarly tradition and provide an account of how the texts have earned their place in the Zaytuna curriculum. Specifically, the series aims to address the history of a canonical text in terms of its abridgments, its architecture and composition, the debates and commentaries it generated, as well as how its author engages in salient issues of the discipline. Exclusive online access to the series lectures are available to 12000 Strong members as a special membership benefit.

A Selection of Past Canon Lectures

Sophocles and the Grammar of Human Identity | The Text: Oedipus Tyrannus

In his discourse on poetics, Aristotle famously underscores the exemplary place of Oedipus. The twenty-fou…

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Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics | al-Tusi's Nasirean Ethics

Nicomachean Ethics, the major ethical work of Aristotle, occupies a privileged position in the study of mo…

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The Intellectual Blueprint of Legal Methodology | al-Ghazālī's Al-Mustasfā

Al-Mustasfā min Ilm al-Usūl, Imam al-Ghazālī’s foundational masterpiece on usūl, occupies a privileg…

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Al-Muwatta': Legacy of the Canonized City

Medina was not only the first Muslim city-state, but it was also the center of gravity for the revelation…

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The Reliance of the Traveler: A Terminus in the Journey of Shafi'i Fiqh

Shafi’i Fiqh is characterized by the diversity of its sources. Imam Shafi’i received his initi…

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Elementary, My Dear Students... Elementary!

The Greek mathematician Euclid’s Elements set the ancient mathematical and scientific world on an in…

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On Imam al-Laqqani's The Precious Pearl of Divine Unity

The late period of Sunni theology is largely characterized by creedal texts and their commentaries. One su…

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Restore Knowledege. Restore Beauty.

Email give@zaytuna.edu or call (510) 900-3151.