Premodern Islamic political power never controlled education or subject-formation, unlike modern states.

Evidence

In a system where political and executive power possessed no right over education at any of its levels and in its most expansive meaning, and lacked in addition the mechanism of raising the “state”-subject, the individual remained under the purview of “private education,” which always was dissociated from such power, and often under the direction of Shariʿa-Sufi associations as communal entities. Political organization and coercive power did not translate into the cultivation of the subject, as the modern state has made them to be. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 666

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts sharply with the modern state’s educational apparatus described in Foucault and in Hallaq’s own Impossible State argument; relevant to Understanding Media-era discussions of institutional control.
• QUESTION: What precise mechanisms did Shari’a-Sufi associations use to sustain ‘private education’ at scale, and how free was it really from patronage and power? The claim of total dissociation from political power deserves testing.