Muslim student missions to Europe began only in the early 1800s, for military modernization

Evidence

The question of travel for study did not arise, since clearly there was nothing to be learnt from the benighted infidels of the outer wilderness. It was not until the early nineteenth century that the Pasha of Egypt, followed by the Sultan of Turkey and the Shah of Persia, sent the first student missions to Europe. Their main pur­ pose in sending these missions was the modernization of their armed forces, and their action could therefore be justified by the ruling of earlier jurists that it is per­ missible to learn from the enemy in order more effectively to fight him. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 703

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• Islamic states only authorized learning from Europe to better fight it. (similarity 0.90)
• Early Muslim student missions to Europe transformed their home countries (similarity 0.87)
• Medieval European scholars studied at Arab Muslim universities in Spain and Sicily. (similarity 0.82)
• Foreign-educated Muslim students became vectors of Western ideas in their home countries (similarity 0.81)
• European military instructors reframed Westerners as knowledge sources in Muslim eyes (similarity 0.81)
• Knowledge flow reversed from Islamic to Western centers by 1800. (similarity 0.81)
• Post-imperial Muslim migration to Europe followed former colonial ties (similarity 0.80)
• Muslims remember an era when Islam ruled as the Earth’s greatest civilization. (similarity 0.79)
• European thought supplied Muslim lands with revolutionary symbols and values (similarity 0.79)
• Western power and ideas devastated the Islamic world from 1800 onward (similarity 0.79)