There is this claim that the Academic Dress (shown below) is originally derived form Avicenna's style of clothing. I wonder if it's true.
Source
Academic dress (above), Avicenna (below)
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4Robes of various sorts were part of the garb for members of the Church (that is, the Roman Catholic Church) during Europe's dark ages. And it was the Church that ran the educational institutions that eventually gave birth to modern colleges and universities in western Europe. So why postulate one particular source?– dmckee --- ex-moderator kittenMay 15, 2012 at 17:35
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2Where did you hear this claim? Can you give us a source? Otherwise, it doesn't seem notable.– FlimzyMay 15, 2012 at 18:27
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1Answers.com is not a notable claim. Google fails to find examples of the claim, let alone anything to back it up. The only significant hits are for this question, the answers.com question and the talk page of Wikipedia. I don't even see anything to indicate that Avicenna had a unique form of dress.– DJClayworthMay 15, 2012 at 19:29
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@DJClayworth I've added another sample of the claim. It's probably Arab-centric?– SklivvzMay 15, 2012 at 22:51
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A talk page on Wikipedia (which I told you about) isn't notable either.– DJClayworthMay 16, 2012 at 2:45
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1 Answer
Short answer: this is false.
Let's analyze this by looking at the claim.
- In order for this to be true, Avicenna would have to have a distinctive form of dress different from other people of the time. While this image does appear to show him in a two-layered robe and an unusual hat, other images of him show him in a much more standard robe and turban. Even other images of the same statue show that the hat looks much more like a turban. So Avicenna's dress wasn't noticeably different from other people, and his preferred headgear was a turban. Turbans were not used in either academic dress or medieval Christian religious dress.
- It is universally agreed that modern academic dress derives from Western everyday university dress, which in turn is related to clerical dress[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. The history of clerical and university garb does back at least to medieval times, probably to around the time of Avicenna. So for the Avicenna theory to be true, it would have to be true that medieval Christian religious dress was derived from the dress of a contemporary Islamic philosopher. This would seem to be extremely unlikely.
- There appears to be no evidence whatsoever for the connection to Avicenna, simply unsupported claims.
answered May 17, 2012 at 17:16
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3I am evaluating the first answer. Aside from Academic Dress not being originated from Avicenna's dress, you sir, have made big fallacies of your own in your reasoning. Actually, in order for the claim to be true, Avicenna would NOT have to have a distinctive form of dress different from other people of the time!!! This is because the clothing of all the people of Persia looked weird to Europeans of course! It is possible that they read Avicenna's Canon for centuries and they had drawings of the famous scholar wearing an "unusual dress", which might have been worn by others too! Moreover, we ac– user35134Aug 3, 2016 at 7:51
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"It is universally agreed that modern academic dress derives from Western clerical dress." Your source for this is Wikipedia, which itself cites a short page written by an unidentified individual who does not cite his sources. This is not a good enough source to back up a strong claim like "universal agreement." Aug 7, 2018 at 20:52
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1"universally" is still an overly strong statement, when we have at least one claim here (however incorrect) that it is not so. Aug 9, 2018 at 13:43
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