There is No Place Like al-Dār

A Dār is a space that offers various courses and programmes that teach the Quran, the Hadith and the different branches of Islamic knowledge that derive from, and are in conversation with, both. The question this article intends to explore is: what is the Dār? It does so by looking at the temporal and geographic context the Dār exists in, and how it is situated historically, as well as its everyday rhythms. The vignettes presented throughout the article provide insight into the ways in which a space of knowledge can exist, teasing the bounds of structure, order and rigidity, allowing us to explore potential imaginaries to the ways we have experienced, and the ways we imagine, Islamic spaces of knowledge to be.