Learn English – About the etymology of Bachelor

I ran across this while I was browsing some Arab websites:

The Arabic Origin of ‘Baccalaureate’ and ‘Bachelor’
By: Abdul-Settar Abdul-Latif

When Oxford and Cambridge Universities were erected as two cradles of
sublime learning, the scholastic masters at the time wondered as to
the title of the degree the two centres would bestow their graduates
maintaining the latter’s rights.

Modern research points to the year
1167 as the date at which Oxford became a stadium generale (A place of
study). The research tells that studies at Oxford were suspended
nearly in 1209 and accordingly three thousand scholars dispersed, some
to Reading, some to Cambridge, some to Paris.

By the end of the
twelfth century, Cambridge was to come a town of importance, but it is
not still early in the thirteenth century that genuine history records
the presence there of a concourse of clerks. In order to be out of
their bafflement, there was no harm, the masters believed, from
borrowing from the experiences of other peoples who had earlier
established their own institutes and centres of learning. Thus Oxford
and Cambridge masters tended their faces to the universities of the
Moslems’ Orient in order to check, and learn what degree the Islamic
universities awarded their graduates.

The famous institute of learning
at the time was Al-Ma’moon’s Bait Al-Hikma (The House of Wisdom) which
later came to be known as Al-Mustensiriyah University in Abbassaid
Baghdad at the early decades of the ninth century. Bait Al-Hikma was
founded by Caliph Al-Ma’moon (Haroon Al-Rasheed’s second son) whose
tenure ranged from 813 to 833.

The research testifies that Baghdad, as
a centre of learning, preceded both Oxford and Cambridge by at least
three or four hundred years in defining the prerequisites of learning
and education. Also, the research proved that Ancient
Al-Mustensiriyah awarded any Moslem student that was graduated a
certain license legally, technically, and professionally covering him
to “restate what its holder had learnt in the university on the hand
of his referred-to Moslem scholars in order to re-teach others
elsewhere who could not afford to come to Baghdad to study, for one
reason or another”. This is the crux of what was written in the
license. But Arabic language is synoptic.

In the license was written a
brief term annexed to the holder’s name. It honoured him the legal and
professional right to behave within the limits of its privileges. The
term can be literary transcribed into English as it is pronounced in
Arabic. It is “Bihaqq al-riwayatt” " بحق الرواية ". The term
incorporates three Arabic words: ‘Bi’ stands as preposition (with);
‘haqq’ (the right) and “Al-riwayatt” (to restate the learning to
somebody else). That is to say ancient Moslem graduate was awarded
“with the right to restate the learning to somebody else”.

And this is
the true meaning of “Bachelor” or “Baccalaureate” used in almost
European languages. Now the term with its preposition “Bihaqq
Al-riwayatt” later was taken as a title of the degree itself by
European scholars, students and translators who frequented the nearest
parts of the Ancient Islamic Empire to, Christendom; these parts were
Cordova, Toledo, Castello in Spain and Sicily in Italy as well as
Malta as the main Arab centres of learning and rendition at medieval
ages.

“Bihaqq Al-riwayatt” thus was exposed to many alterations and
modification related to the different new linguistic region the term
reached and resided. The above mentioned variations of the term-
"Baccalaureate and Bachelor” are in use. This fact is unknown to many
people of well-established scholarship.

For instance, The Random House
Dictionary of the English Language sets queer etymology for these two
variations. While (Bacca + laures), according to The Random, means
“laurel berry”, (Bachelor), again according to The Random, is taken
from a vulgar Latin word spelled as (baccalaris) that descends from
(bacca), itself a variation of a Latin word for (cow=vacca). One
wonders what the connection between (dairy farm) or (cows) and (a
university degree). The story of the trip the Arabic word took to
reach Europe was the topic of an article entitled “Did the Arab Invent
the University?” published in The Times Higher Education Supplement,
No. 185 (May 2, 1975), p. 11. by R. Y. Ebied & M. J. L. Young

Is this etymology plausible, or is it debunked?