Islam in Historical Perspective by Alexander Knysh

Author:Alexander Knysh [Knysh, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781138193697
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

Elementary Education: The Kuttáb

The process of study at the elementary level started with what we would call “rote learning.” Children as young as five–six years old would memorize Qur’anic suras (usually in reverse order, from the shortest to the longer ones), write them down, and recite aloud before their classmates and the teacher. Offspring of caliphs, courtiers, provincial governors, and nobility would normally have private tutors, some of whom were distinguished experts on various religious disciplines. For the rest, the venue of elementary instruction was usually located in a mosque or a room adjacent to it. This room, and later on a freestanding building where children gathered for study, was known as máktab or kuttáb. It was roughly an equivalent of the Western primary or elementary school. While the principal focus in the kuttáb was on memorizing, reading, and writing passages from the Qur’an and hadíth, elements of the Arabic language were also taught to help students gain a better understanding of the meaning of the revelation, whose archaic style and vocabulary were “foreign” not just to non-Arab Muslims but also to Arabs speaking their regional vernaculars.15 Arabic calligraphy and basic religious duties were also taught. Male and female children usually studied in separate rooms. Armed with a reed pen or a piece of chalk and a wooden tablet and squatting on the floor, they would write down the material dictated by the teacher, then read it back to him individually or in chorus. The teacher would then correct their reading and writing mistakes, if any. In larger schools, the teacher was often aided by an assistant or an advanced senior student. In the very beginning, when school buildings were in short supply, lessons were occasionally given in the open air. Thus, a popular eighth-century schoolteacher from Kufa gave classes to a whopping three thousand students as he was riding on his donkey up and down the aisle formed by the rows of sitting children.

Arabic being the language of the revelation, for many centuries instruction at kuttábs was conducted almost exclusively in Arabic regardless of the mother tongue of the student body. This made it extremely difficult for non-Arab students to follow the instructor and acquire any knowledge beyond the ability to mechanically recite several sura s. Only in modern times non-Arab students began to receive instruction in their native tongues (Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Malay, and so on). As a norm, all students shared the same room regardless of their level of proficiency, and each was expected to advance at his or her own pace. Whereas practically every Muslim village and town had at least one kuttáb, its maintenance was the local community’s responsibility until the nineteenth century, when the state finally began to integrate kuttáb schools into the statewide educational system modeled on European learning institutions. Prior to that, parents were responsible for meeting maintenance costs and paying the teacher’s fees, either in money or kind. Poorer children, who had no money to pay their instructor, would occasionally contribute their labor, doing chores around his household.

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