M. Mobin SHORISH

 

(Scanned)

A version of "Traditional Islamic Education in Central Asia Prior to

1917," appeared in Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Gilles Veinstein, and

S. Enders Wimbush edition of Passe' Turko-Tatar, Pre'sent

Sovietique, Leuven-Paris: Editions Peeters (Editions De L'

E'cole Des Hautes E'tudes En Sciences Sociales) (1986), pp.

316-343.

 

 

      The aims of traditional Islamic education were twofold. On the one hand, education was to inculcate in children the basic religious dogma and theology of Islam and, on the other, to prepare the individual for his secular calling and vocation. The qualities of a "good Muslim'' were those which could be achieved by a mixture of good secular and religious education. For Muhammed was supposed to have said "The best among you are not those who neglect this world for the other, or the other world for this. He is the one who works for both together."^[1]

 

      At the core of Islamic education was the Qur'n in which all knowledge and sciences were to have their sources. Therefore, understanding of the Qur'n as the word of God was necessary for the qualification of the good Muslim.  For this, in addition to reading and writing, adequate knowledge of the Arabic language was necessary since the Qur'an is written in Arabic.^[2]  Other aims of education were the understanding that all men were created equals by God; to have belief in the Islamic Creed or Iman (God, angels, scriptures, prophets, the Day of Judgement, and resurrection); performance of the Five Pillars of Islam which are Kalima or the confession of the Faith ("There is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is His prophet"), prayers (salt), alms giving (zakt), fasting (saum or ruzah), and the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj).  The secular aims of education were preparation for worldly vocations. This was, in essence, almost always in the form of master-apprentice relationships.

 

      Education took a form not much different from the modern education.  Private tutoring was available to some pre-school children.  However, in general, pre-school children were taught reading and writing by their parents at home.  In the tenth century education was much more diffused in Central Asia than it is now in many parts of the Muslim world. Then:

 

“[Islamic] education was universal although not entirely democratic as Mohammed had decreed it should be.  The wealthy had some educational advantages not generally available to the poor classes; but elementary education was free and open to all boys and girls of all classes, and the doors or higher educational institutions were open to all rich or poor.  Financial aid was often provided for advanced students who needed it.  It was this great liberality which the [Muslims] displayed in educating their people in the schools which was one of the most potent factors in the brilliant and rapid growth of their civilization.  Education was so universally diffused that it was said to be difficult to find a [Muslim] who could not read or write.”^[3]

 

      So most of the children who entered the maktab (lit. a place of writing) were able to at least read. There, in the maktab schools, in addition to reading and writing, children were taught elementary arithmetic, history, and geography.  These maktab schools were held mostly in mosques (masjid), though often private homes were also used.  Maktab schools could be considered to be much more secular and were usually taught or rather supervised by a well-established scholar who employed several assistants.  Some maktab, usually in large urban centers, even offered courses in grammar, poetry, physical education, manners (db), and famous proverbs.^[4]  In some maktab more than one thousand students were enrolled.^[5]

 

      The most prevalent type of education offered in the mosques or masjid was elementary.  This type of education which still exists in almost all of the Islamic countries, though in a more inferior form, was encouraged, if not initiated, by the Abbsd Khalif Hrn al-Rashd.  In almost every Islamic community there was a mosque which was used as a place of worship and education.  Baghdad was reported to have had about three thousand mosques in the ninth century while the number of mosques in Alexandria reached twelve thousand during the fourteenth century.^[6]  Whatever the number of mosques in these cities might have been, it is certain that Bukhara and Samarqand could not have been far behind them in their number of mosques during the tenth century.

 

      Most mosque schools were established to teach the reading of the Qur’n.  There were very few mosque schools in which other subjects similar to those in the maktab schools were taught.  These schools had their highest level of attendance during the late fall and winter months when agricultural activities in the fields were at a minimum.  This type of education continued in a much less profuse manner down to the Bolshevik revolution in Turkestan or the present day Soviet Central Asia.  Then, in the tenth century, as in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mosque schools, unlike the maktab schools, were taught by the resident priest (called mulla, khund, or imm in Central Asia) who, in addition to teaching, directed prayers and performed religious ceremonies at weddings, funerals, and so forth.

 

      Secondary and higher education were given in madrasah (lit. lesson giving place) which existed only in the major urban centers.  Students who had finished maklab schools and the bright ones from the mosque schools entered madrasah which sometimes were located several miles from their homes.  Sometimes there were several madrasah belonging to different denominations (such as Shi’is and Snns) in one city:

 

[...] The curriculum of Muslim higher education [...] included such legal subjects (shariyyat) as jurisprudence, exegesis, and tradition; literary studies (adabiyyat) in philology, syntax, rhetoric, prosody, composition, reading, and history; mathematics (riyadhiyyat) including geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, algebra, music, politics, ethnic, and domestic economy; rational (aqliyyat) studies in logic, dialectic, dogmatic theology, metaphysics, natural science, medicine, and chemistry; and such miscellaneous subjects were approved as surveying veterinary, agriculture, phrenology, dream interpretation, astrology and magic.”^[7]

 

      But this kind of education in madrasah, like the education which was given in maktab and mosque schools, deteriorated greatly by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Central Asia.  (Universities in Islam developed greatly during the Saljuqs several years after the fall of the Smnids in thc tenth century.  Since they are not directly concerned with Central Asia, detailed studies of Islamic universities and other sectarian and denominational institutions of higher learning are outside this study and can be read elsewhere.)^[8]

 

      In addition to these somewhat formal educational organizations, other learning institutions were common in Central Asia during the tenth century.  The simplest and least formal of these was called halqa, or "the circle.''  Here, the teacher, usually a well-known scholar, sat in a specific place and formed with the students and visitors in front of him a circle, hence the name of the organization.  Students and visitors sometimes came from far away places to join a particular circle.  The most advanced students and the most respectable visitors were seated closest to the ustd or master.  Discussions were informal, similar to modern seminars, and the students took meticulous notes.^[9]  There were also informal literary gatherings in some homes of well-known writers, scholars, and poets.  Gatherings in the court in the presence of the Amir who at times took part in the discussions were also common.  Bukhara's many bookshops, which on many occasions hired calligraphers and copyists for the "mass production'' of a particular work, offered many hours of browsing for the interested readers and customers.  The libraries were very important centers of learning for the intellectuals of the time.  The most important of these libraries was the one, which was, established by the Smnids in Bukhara. There Ibni Snstudied (997 AD) and left us a description in his autobiography: 

 

“I entered a house with many chambers: in each chamber were coffers of books, piled up one upon another.  In one chamber were Arabic books and books of poetry, in another books on law, and so on, in each chamber books on one of the sciences.  I read a list of books of ancient authors, and asked for those I needed.  I saw hooks whose very names are unknown to many people; I have never seen a collection of books either before or since.  I read these books, profited by them, and learned the relative importance of each man in his own science.”^[10]

 

      Thc Smnids lived in what has become known as the Golden Age of Islam.  By the time they were overthrown by the Qarakhnids in 999 AD, scholars in their domain were already acquainted with great scholarly works which were translated from Greek, Hebrew, and Hindi into Arabic.  Although Baghdad was the undisputed center where these translations took place, Bukhara became the center for their translation from Arabic into Dari.  Thus, these works were interpreted and their application tied into the Central Asian cultures.

 

      During the Smnids’ time, Islam had not yet become all dogma and was able to satisfy, in addition to the religious rituals, most other secular needs of man.

 

      What makes the Golden Age of Islam (eighth-twelfth centuries of which Smnids were a part) significant is the fact that it was not followed, after the Mongol catastrophe (thirteenth century), by a renaissance.  That is, men like Ibni Sn, Al-Brn, al-Khwrazm, alGhazli, and many others who primarily concerned themselves with the rational and theological science of God, were not followed by others who asked questions about the relationship of things with each other as they existed in Nature.  Because of this lack of continuity, especially in Central Asia, the Smnid period stands in sharp contrast to the centuries that followed it.

 

      The area now called Central Asia, after the fall of the Smnids witnessed contractions in the educational facilities as well as decreases in the quality of education.  The decline in all aspects of the Central Asian culture (including education) continued and reached one of its lowest points during the nineteenth century.  Education during the nineteenth century in Central Asia was almost totally concerned with the Islamic theology, which at this time was almost all dogma.  Free inquiry as a means of finding alternatives and choosing of different futures was discouraged at the individual and societal level.  Corrupt 'ulamand their mouthpiece, the mulla (the neighborhood equivalent of a priest), insisted on the acceptance of Shari'ah as they interpreted it, and ‘dt  (customary laws) which were handed down from the previous generations, as inviolable, even though many of the latter were contrary to Islam.  Taqlid, or blind imitation of a well-known sfor 'lim's (a learned person) behavior, became yet another measure of an individual's worth and ''Muslimness.”  Persecution and violence against those who could not adhere totally to the majority's system of values and beliefs were orders of the day in spite of the Qur'nic declarations to the contrary.^[11]  Mob violence against religious minority groups such as Shi'is, Jews, Christians, and some Snnintellectual-reformists (the Jaddists) was recorded on several occasions.

 

      Education now became emphasized as a means of spiritual salvation.  Far from its original purpose, as was proposed in the official Islam, it became now totally theological, superstitious, and mythical.  Much of what was taught in the elementary school (maktab) and madrasah became dysfunctional, as will be seen, in satisfying the worldly needs of the Muslim communities.  Almost all of the education in the maktab was concerned with rote memorization of a few of the shortest Qur'nic srah (specirlc segments from the Qur'n), yah (verses from the Qur'n). the Islamic Creed, and the relevant ahdith for the performance of the most common Islamic ritual, the five-time daily prayers. Almost all training for one's worldly callings was acquired by means of apprenticeship. This produced the craftsmen as well as the government bureaucrats. Most of the offices of the government bureaucracy were acquired by inheritance or otherwise were ascribed. Only those jobs in the lower part of the bureaucratic pyramid were distributed to those with competency provided they could bribe the officials or otherwise declare their total loyalty to the system.

 

      Most of the non-Muslim observers who have written on the Islamic education of Central Asia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have left us mainly descriptive (and sometimes erroneous) material on the class-rooms, pupils, and teachers.  There have been few analytical works on the instructional material, the teaching method, and the process, which this kind of education followed.  There have been, indeed, very few Muslims with experiences in the Muslim schools who have written about their so-called Islamic education.  It was only during the last decade of the nineteenth and early in the twentieth century that the traditional methods of education (maktab and madrasah) became subjects of discussion among the Central Asian Jadid (the new ones, the “modernists”) and the Qadim (the old ones, the “traditionalists”) educators.  Then (see below) it was the intention of most of the 'ulamand almost all of the mulla to prevent the establishment of any educational institution which threatened their monopoly in the education of the young.

 

      The most comprehensive account of the Muslim education was written by Sadriddin Ayn, the founder of the Tadzhik Soviet prose.  Ayni was himself a product of maktab and  madrasah.  He was also a Jadidist (reformer) by temperament and writings even though he denies it in some of his works.  He received his elementary education in the mosque (masjid) in his native village of Saktari (in the former Tuman of Ghizhdivan in the Bukhara Amaret) and attended madrasah in Bukhara city.  In almost all his works, Ayni has left us detailed descriptions and analyses of the traditional Islamic education in Central Asia prior to the Bolshevik revolution.^[12]  So it is primarily on his writings and others who have been students in these institutions (including the present writer) which the analysis and description of the Islamic education will be based.

 

      Formal Islamic educational institutions in Central Asia during the last quarter of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which Ayni writes about, were of two types, the general theological education which began in the maktab and ended at the completion of madrasah, and the vocational schools of qrikhnah and dal’ilkhnah.^[13]

 

Vocational Education

 

Qrikhnah:

 

      Qrikhnah (lit. the house of the reader) trained students in the readings of the Qur’n.  Since most of the students in such schools were totally or partially blind, they memorized the Holy Book.  The duration of such training for individual students varied according to their ability in memorizing the Book.  They all listened to the repeated recitations of a particular passage (usually a few lines at a time) which was recited aloud by another blind qri^[14] or a well qualified (in the pronunciation of the Arabic words) man who could read it from the text.

 

Upon graduation, a student of such schools was called qri (reader) or hfiz  (the one who memorize). They were called upon to complete the recitation of the Qur'n at the funerals and special prayers (trwih) during the month of Ramazn.  Generally the title of qri  was assigned to the person who could read the Qur'n correctly.  Hfiz, on the other hand, was the title of any person (almost always a male) who could recite this Holy Book from memory regardless of eyesight. A hfiz was also called the keeper and the protector of the Qur'n.  By memorizing the Qur'n, he was giving it a continuity which the written text could not provide due to its relative vulnerability to human error while recording and its destruction due to natural and man-made calamities.^[15]  Almost all qrikhnah were situated in the larger urban centers and were supported for the most part by waqf property (usually real estate bequeathed to an educational organization or a shrine of a holy person by rich donors) and some donations.

 

Dal'ilkhnah:

 

Dal'ilkhnah (the house of reasons) was a place where students memorized Arabic prayers, some ahdith, and events related to the life of the Prophet and religious leaders of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.  Some materials, especially stories dealing with the life of local saints and Sf, were memorized.  Sometimes they were memorized in the student's mother tongue, which in Bukhara city was almost always Tadzhik.  These students, after a year of study, became qassor storytellers. Their services were called upon on almost all occasions in which people congregated. These included religious and civil festivities such as ruza bayram (‘id al-fitr, celebrating the end of Ramazn), qurbn bayram (‘id al-udha, celebrating Abraham's scarification of the ram).  Nauruz (the New Year’s Day, about March 24), and even in the weddings, funerals, and the bazaar days (mostly on Mondays and/or Wednesdays).  Almost all of the students in dalikhnah and qrikhnah were adults.  Few of them could read from any text.  Almost none could write.

 

General Theological Education

 

Mak tab:

 

      In the maktab the most basic Islamic education took place.  It was the most common and prevalent form of elementary education in Central Asia.  Maktab originally was, as its name implies, a place in which pupils learned to write.  However, very rarely was writing taught in the maktabs of Central Asia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Maktab at this time resembled more to the mosque (masjid) schools of Central Asia in the tenth century.  In fact, the words maktab and masjid were used interchangeably when reference to these elementary schools was made.

 

      Physical descriptions of maktab in Central Asia and elsewhere in the Muslim world are almost similar Ayni's description of maktab was typical of most schools:

 

      “I entered the school. But it provided none of the space, light and quiet to which I was accustomed at home, where I lived in a room) with four windows. This was a narrow, close room with two doors.  The one was a normal door and was closed when it was cold outside. The other was tiny, about a yard long and two feet wide. The teacher pasted it over with paper. To make it water resilient in times of rain and snow, he covered it with fat. As dust settled on the paper, it was soon blackened, looking like a piece of cloth with which cauldrons used for cooking rice are covered in the country. It was saturated with smoke and soot. Its colour resembled that of our teacher's wrinkled face. And so very little light indeed penetrated through it. Right under the ceiling were two little windows—also about two feet wide each—but the incoming light did not fall on our tables but rather on the upper part of the wall opposite them.

 

      The school, whose entire area measured about 13 square yards, was divided into nine compartments by nine beams laid across the floor.

 

      Next to the door sat the teacher. The remaining compartments were filled by pupils, who were seated along the beams facing one another.

 

      I can still remember today how the school reminded me of our narrow little hen-house at home, where mother used to set hens on eggs...”^[16]

 

      Each maktab was usually conducted by one teacher who was called maktabdr, dahmulla, or simply mulla. The mulla (probably derived from the Arabic word mawl, master), or priest, was the man in charge of the religious rituals and ceremonies of the community in addition to his teaching tasks. His prestige and status in almost all cases depended on his reputation as a scholar. The better his reputation the larger was the community he served. Some of the mulla were men of learning almost on a par with a teacher in a well-reputed madrasah.  Usually, however, mulla were men of meager learning. Many of them were illiterates who conducted religious ceremonies and the lessons of their pupils from memory. Quite often mulla was part-time farmers or otherwise engaged in some local handicrafts to supplement their very low incomes.

 

      A mulla in a community was the surrogate father for the children inside and outside the maktab.   In addition to being a teacher and the religious man in the community, many other roles were expected from him, which were similar to those, which are now expected from the teachers of modern day schools. He was to be a model of a good Muslim for the children of the community. In addition, many that were literate acted as readers and writers of letters for some members of their congregation and as mediators for domestic and inter- or intra-communal conflicts.

 

      The community hired the mulla. His expenditures were taken care of by the community and in some very rare cases by waqf property. In general, however, a different household brought food to his room in the mosque every day. Very little cash was available to him. Most of his cash as well as his clothing was given to him by members of the community on the occasion of the religious festivities, the harvest time, or at the end of a student's particular assignment. Most gifts were given to the mulla at the time when the student started the reading of the Qur'n.^[17]

 

      Another person who, at the absence of the mulla, taught the children of the community was the znchi (mu’azzn, the one who calls the faithful to prayer). Not all villages could afford to pay for such an occupation, however. Many individual members of the community could perform his task of calling people to prayer. In larger mosques where there were many more than the usual five to ten students common in many villages, the znchi was hired as a permanent assistant to the mulla. Quite often znchi was himself no more than a student at the madrasah level. Since he could not afford to attend the madrasah in the city, he used his assistantship as means of acquiring further education from the mulla.

Occasionally women who could teach were asked to be teachers. A woman teacher was called tn (bbtn or bkhalfah). She was almost always a housewife and quite often the wife of the local mulla. The majority of her students, unlike the student body in the mosque, were girls. Also unlike the mosque, a school which was conducted in a private house, such as tn's, was never called maktab. Ayni studied in one of these tn’s schools, which he found to be more to his liking than the one conducted in the mosque of his village:

 

“The bbkhalfa ordered me to read the abjad from the middle, that is, from where I had got to at my first school. Her method of teaching struck me as different from my former teacher's. She indicated various letters with a little pointer she was holding in her hand and asked us to read them aloud. But she did not bother to inquire whether we understood or not.

The teacher asked us questions all the time, calling upon her pupils one by one, and so our days at school slipped by [...]

     The girls used to come to the school after breakfast. At noon we had a break for lunch but none of us went home for it. We ate bread, which we had brought with us to the school. Each pupil gave half of her bread to the teacher.

Having forgotten to bring my bread the first day, I was given some by the bbkhalfa, who said to me:

'I'll entertain you today but do not forget to bring me more tomorrow so you can give me a bigger slice.'

After lunch the girls cleaned the room and the courtyard. From time to time they had to wash the teacher's linen. She even forced me to help with the washing.

'When you are a grown-up man and come to Bukhara to study at the madrasa, it will come you handy.'

The bbkhalfa, too, had a long cane leaning against the wall behind her back. But I never saw her strike anyone with it. When a girl was unable to answer her question, she merely flapped her face with the broad sleeve of her khalat, which, of course, only caused a slight stir of the air.

The pupils, all of whom were girls except myself, did not indulge in rough games and fights. Whenever they were able to snatch a few minutes off their cleaning and washing chores, they played with dolls, 'cooked' meals for them in fragments of broken pots and arranged sumptuous feasts for them.

They even made a figure of a man for me. When they played at a wedding, my figure invariably assumed the part of the bridegroom. And, being the only representative of the male sex, my mannie was married off to as many as ten or twenty brides at a time. To tell you the truth, I liked the game very much indeed...”^[18]

 

      Unfortunately, this relative happy atmosphere did not exist in the regular maktab nor did mulla's cane remain unused during the school day. In a maktab rewards were very rare, but punishment was always ready and immediate. Corporal punishment was thought of by teachers as a means by which discipline could be maintained in the maktab; it was felt that occasional punishment would increase the memorization rate of assigned lessons by the students. In the maktab, corporal punishment was looked upon as a means of inculcating correct behavior and habits. Mainly due to the fear of corporal punishment, intra-group aggression and other components of what Jules Henry called the “witch-hunt-syndrome”^[19] prevailed in almost all of the maktab. The most common means of punishment was the employment of switches on the students’ bared feet. This was done by means of the fallaq (falak). Fallaq was a stick about two inches in diameter and about a yard in length. A strip of leather or a piece of rope was inserted into two holes drilled about a foot apart from the mid-section of the stick. Other pupils held down the victim, and, then with his feet raised, the leather strip was inserted over his feet. Then both ends of the stick, one held by the khallfa (usually the most advanced student) and the other by another pupil, were turned which made the strip wrap around it. In so doing, the leather strip tightened around the ankles of the child making it impossible for him to remove his feet from the fallaq. Ayni illustrates this most agonizing and humiliating feature of this type of education in his maktabi kuhna. His description also sheds some light on the intra-group aggression and other attitudes, which contributed to the development of the witch-hunt-syndrome.'' According to Ayni, one day a mulla caught some children fighting.  Khalifah gave him names of ten or twelve students who were accused of disorderly behavior:

 

“The teacher called, one after another, upon the twelve boys, whose names had been given him by the khalfa.  When he made a mistake, the khalfa said: 

‘Not this one, sir, it's the one over there.'

‘Shut the door,' commanded the teacher.

The khalfa obediently shut the door, bolted it and secured it by a chain.

Take the fallaq down.' said the teacher.

The khalfa took down a slightly bent stick from the wall behind the teacher's back. There was a rope attached to both ends of the stick.  This was the first time I saw how a fallaq was used.

'Ahmad, will you be a naughty boy again?’ shouted the teacher.

Take pity on me, sir, excuse me, please! I did not do it, it was Muhammad,’ wailed the boy.

But the teacher paid no attention to his pleading and ordered the boys who were standing around to knock the guilty one down on thc floor.

This having been done, the boys did not wait for further orders, slipped the fallaq up the boy's legs and turned it round so that the rope tightened round Ahmad's legs, nearly breaking the bones.

‘Oh, I'm dying, my legs!’ cried the victim.

The rest of the class stopped reading and, very much afraid, listened to the boy's moaning. But the teacher passed the lip of a long cane over their heads, reminding them that it was their duty to go on reading aloud. He then selected one of the canes, which stood against the wall behind his back, handed it to the khalfa and added:

‘Now, you cane him well.’

The khalfa started caning the boy's bare feet.

Ahmad's moaning became unbearable, merging with the noise made by the pupils reading aloud. A passer-by in the street outside the school could not have distinguished the boy's cries from the noise made by the class. Everybody would have thought that the boys were simply reading very loudly indeed.

The khalfa caned the boy's feet until the can reddened with blood.

When the teacher saw the blood he said to the khalfa:

‘That'll be enough!”

The khalfa then stopped beating the boy. The fallaq was removed from the boy's legs. The boy immediately took a threatening stance in front of the khalifa.

‘Muhammed's turn now!’ announced the teacher. As before, the boy was knocked down on the floor, the fallaq was applied to his legs. And again the khalfa  canned the boy's soles until they were covered with blood. In this way all the offenders were punished.

After their plight was over, the teacher gave the khalfa a stern look in the face and said:

‘I know that you are responsible for all the mischief.’ Then addressing the beaten-up boys, who could barely stand on their feet, he commanded:

Down with him!'

And as if the boys had been waiting for this command, they threw themselves upon the khalfa , pulled him down and applied the fallaq to his legs. The khalfa  complained:

'Go easy on my feet, they're sore.'

Nobody paid the least attention to him.

The teacher selected a fresh cane, put it into one boy's hand and ordered him to cane the khalfa ‘s feet.

Meanwhile the rest of the boys were tightening the rope around the khalfa ‘s legs.

‘Strike me as you will, but do not tighten the fallaq so much !'

Yet this made the boys even more vengeful. They kept turning the fallaq round and round to tighten the rope.

After the boy struck several blows at the khalfa ‘s soles, the master pointed to another pupil and said:

‘It's your turn now. Beat him well, so he doesn't owe you anything until Resurrection!’

The new boy took hold of the cane and beat the khalfa ‘s feet with even greater vigour.

And so, taking turns, the boys got back what was owed them by the khalfa . 

‘That’ll do,’ announced the teacher at last.

The boy, who was just then wielding the cane, stopped caning the khalfa ‘s  feet. But the others would not let hold of the victim. The teacher turned to them with the words:

‘Haven't you had your vengeance?’

‘Salt.’ said a boy.

‘All right, let it be salt,’ said the teacher. ‘But I haven't got any. Has anybody some salt?’

All the boys who had been punished a short while before started rummaging their pockets. At last two of them found some salt tied up in pieces of cloth.

‘Pour the salt,’ ordered the teacher.

And then the salt was rubbed into the wounds on the khalfa ‘s soles. He yelled like a beast ...”.^[20]

 

The curricula of maklab remained almost the same at least since the end of the Shaybnis in the sixteenth century. Texts such as haftak (one-seventh of the Qur'n) and siparah (the last and the thirtieth chapter of the Qur'n) were read and memorized by the pupils. These materials were arranged in a manner that memorization of a very small segment of them could have satisfied most of the meditation needs of the individual Muslim, including the five daily prayers (namz).

 

Most students dropped out after finishing any one of the two texts. Quite often, completion of sprah, the smaller one of the two ended elementary education for most of the pupils. Some students finished the Qur'n, which came after the termination of haftyak and sprah,. Very few students, only those who came from wealthier families, started on chilhadth (forty hadlth) after the termination of the Qur'n. Unlike the Qur'n, but similar to spprah, chilhadth had to be memorized. Some students, after the completion of the Qur'n. started reading material in their own language. The most widely used text was a collection of prose and poetry on Islamic ethic and morality by famous poets and writers. The text was called chahrkitb (four books) due to its four different sections. The end of this text signified the end of the formal Islamic education for all but a very few students.

 

      Children of all ages (5-ll years or older) were taught in the same room regardless of their ability and the level of their studies. Most of the children could not read in their own language and did not understand what they could read in Arabic after spending four to five years in the maktab or mosque schools. Writing was almost never taught in maktab so that practically no one was able to write. This explains why there was so much illiteracy in spite of the relative profusion of the maktab in Central Asia:

 

“ln 1900, it was estimated that in Turkestan alone, without counting the Khanates of Bukhara and Khiva, there were 1,503 congregational mosques (masjid jmi) and 11,230 parish mosques with a total of 12,499 imams to minister to 6,000,000 persons, that is one mosque for every 471 believers."^[21]

 

Nevertheless, almost all who wrote about the education of Central Asia in this period were surprised at the high numbers of mosques (maktab) and the very low level of literacy among the population:

 

“V. P. Nalivkin, an ethnographer who wrote in 1891 that [...] ‘together with a large number of schools there is a good deal of illiteracy among the population [...]’ and Virskii who described (in 1895) the situation in a district near Samarkand in the following words: ‘Although the district had 32 basic (primary) schools, the district chief can only read (but not write), while the other local government officials are completely illiterate [...] It proved impossible to find eleven people able to read and write among the population of the district.’”^[22]

 

It is suggested here that the low level of literacy among the population was not only due to the method and material of instruction but also to the absence of a supportive environment to reinforce its expansion and profusion. There was simply not much demand for literacy, and those who were literate made sure to keep the monopoly of this skill to themselves. In the following paragraphs a more detailed analysis of the earliest period of this educational process is given.

 

      During the first few days of the school, the young children were taught the Arabic alphabet. After memorization of the alphabet and its mastery so that the pupils could recognize individual letters either by themselves or in their usual places in the alphabet, the child was introduced to the three symbols:  “^—” and “” and “_”.  These signify Arabic vowel points for “a”, “u”, and “i”, respectively. For the purpose of correct pronunciation, these vowel points were placed above or below different letters making a particular word. Correct pronunciation of words was very important because the child was dealing almost from the beginning with sacred words, some signifying the names of God. It took some students almost a year to reach the stage just described. The slow development was in part due to memorization of great quantities of mostly nonsensical words. After the memorization of the thirty Arabic letters in the Central Asian alphabet, the student had to memorize each of those letters with each of the three vowel points. This meant the memorization and pronunciation of ninety, mostly new and different, symbols. Then each of the thirty letters was listed three times in alphabetical order and the three vowel points distributed among them. For example, the letter B was listed three times, each time with a different vowel point in the following manner: Ba, Bi, Bu. This exercise, which was the adding up of the three previous exercises, if learned and properly memorized, meant the learning of an additional ninety symbols. The next three exercises required the memorization and pronunciation of the thirty letters, this time each with two of the same vowel points. For example, each letter of the alphabet was printed in the primer (sometimes reproduced in the same volume with sprah) with two of the vowel points, i.e. Baa, Caa, Daa, etc. The same process was used with the remainder of the two vowel points. That is, each of the thirty Arabic letters were listed list with two “ii vowel points and then with two “uu” vowel points. For example, Bii, Cii, etc., Buu, Cuu, etc. Memorization of these symbols meant addition of another ninety symbols. The next exercise was the adding up of the last three exercises in the following manner: Baa, Bii, Buu; Caa, Cii, Cuu, etc. The next four exercises repeated the process outlined for the two vowel points, this time with all of the three vowel points. The first of these four had Baaa, Caaa, etc., the next had Biii, Ciii, etc., the next had Buuu, Cuuu, etc., and the last had Baaa, Biii, Buuu, Caaa, Ciii, Cuuu, etc. By the introduction of double vowel points in the exercises, the process colloquially called zabnshakanak (tongue-breaking) began. Several other combinations (at least twenty-six) were used. The purpose of these new combinations had little to do with learning (most of the words which were created by zabnshakanak  were nonsense) new materials, or even memorization (at this stage the pupil was supposed to know the alphabet and the function of the proper vowel points and diphthongs); it was only to facilitate the pronunciation of some of the Arabic words which the child would be facing in the future.

 

      Because of this tedious process, created primarily to facilitate correct pronunciation of Arabic words contained in the Qur'n, pupils were not able to read anything printed in their own language after four to five years (sometimes after ten years) in the maktab. This was, of course, due to the fact that none of the vowel points to which the pupil was accustomed were ever placed on letters making a word in any other written document except the Qur'n. In the languages written in the Arabic alphabet, the pronunciation of a word had to be often “guessed” from the message of the sentence of which it was a part. Whatever the child had memorized in Arabic was nonsense to him. Thus, he forgot most of what he had memorized soon after. At that time, the sole purpose of elementary education in Central Asia was memorization (without understanding) of a few passages from the Qur'n which were required for the performance of daily prayers and other religious and traditional activities. Soon after graduation pupils who finished the maktab were almost as illiterate as those who did not attend the maktab at all. It would have been more fruitful to teach children in their mother tongue literacy and introduce Arabic as a second language. In this manner children not only would have learned to read Arabic better but also understood what they were reading.

 

Madrasah:

 

      In Central Asia, madrasah were different from maktab not only in the higher level of education which they offered but in their relative isolation from the community in which they were situated. Madrasah were much more formal organizations than maktab.  A madrasah was not an extension of the family which the maktab tended to be. Madrasah was occupied by teachers and students who quite often had their roots elsewhere, sometimes even in foreign countries. In addition, madrasah differed from the maktab in its sources of support. A madrasah was almost always supported by waqf property endowed by individuals.

 

      Most madrasah had rooms (hujra) for their students within their walls while there was no such thing as a boarding maktab. Most important, however, was "the tradition of learning which the mudarris (the one who gives lessons) was committed to maintain — a calling considered higher than that of the clergy,”^[23] i.e. the mulla in the mosque.

 

      The development and expansion of madrasah was briefly discussed earlier. In the centuries since the end of the Golden Age of Islam (eighth-twelfth centuries), madrasah, like the maktab, went through great changes. In the first place, the composition of its clientele changed markedly. During the period under discussion, almost all of the madrasah students came from the higher social and economic strata. Unlike the Smnid period (tenth century), for example, there were few governmental subsidies for the poor but bright students. Very few subsidies by wealthy individuals were offered to these needy students. 

 

      Most of the madrasah in the tenth and eleventh centuries were places of instruction, as the name implied. In the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, only a minority of madrasah in Central Asia were engaged in instruction:

 

“Thus, for instance, in the town of Bukhara, which had about 185 madrasah at the beginning of the 20th century, only about 22 provided instruction, the rest providing accommodation only, on the analogy of student hostels as we know them today.”^[24]

 

In the twentieth-century Bukhara, madrasah were founded mainly by individual merchants and landowners, unlike those of the tenth and eleventh centuries, which were mainly established by different Islamic denominations. A madrasah was mostly financed by waqf property, which could take the form of agricultural lands, shops, or even caravanserais. Table I (see p. 342) is interesting in its disclosure of sources of revenue for maktab, and madrusah financing and the number of teachers and students in these educational institutions in the Zarafshn province in 1874. At this time all of this province was under the Russian domination. The fall in the number of sludents during the summer months is due, in general, to the school year lasting from late September to the middle of March. During the rest of the year, most of the teachers and students were working in the fields. An additional point about this table is that the number of teachers for madrasah seems to be, at least for some mudrasah in Samarqand City, grossly underestimated. Many of the larger madrasah employed more than a dozen professors. It is quite possible that these larger madrasah in Samarqand were either inoperative or reduced their activities due to direct policy of discouragement and the confiscation of their waqf properties by the Russian colonizers, who entered the Central Asian oases in the middle of the nineteenth century.

 

      Prior to the Russian occupation of the area each madrasah had a waqfnmah (charter of the waqf) in which specification of expenditures of the waqf revenue was enumerated by the donor. The expenditures included salaries for mutavallwhich amounted to about 10% and those of mudarrisn (pl. of mudarris) and their assistants, which together reached as much as 30%, of the waqf revenue. The assistants were called mu’id and/or mukarrr (repeaters) by virtue of their repeating lessons of the day to the less able and sometimes younger students. To the students went close to 50% of the tolal waqf  revenue. Students, who were called mullbacha (young mulla), shgird (apprentice), tlib al- ‘ilm (seeker of knowledge) or simply tlib (seeker), supplemented their income from waqf by what they received from their families. The rest of the waqf money was spent in the payment of the caretaker's salary (sometimes the mutavallperformed this job in smaller. places), wages of znchi, and maintenance of the structure itself.^[25]

 

      Additional funds (usually from the government) were available to be distributed among those students whose annual income was below a certain level. In Bukhara city this floor was below one thousand tanga one tanga was able to purchase close to 15 kilograms of wheat in the 1870's). Students had to pass an examination to qualify for the additional funds. Essentially, the examinations, which were mainly prepared by mudarrisn, tested the students in their knowledge of the Islamic Creed, the Five Pillars of Islam, and the Arabic language. On the average, about 120,000 tanga were distributed among the one thousand of the qualified talb annually.^[26] The share of each student was called dahyak or one-tenth.^[27] Dahyak was given during the last five years of a student's education in a madrasah and for the next two or three years after his graduation. This was given in an annual ceremony (every March) held on the grounds of the Amir's castle. This was one of the more important public ceremonies held each year in Bukhara.^[28]

 

      Professors supplemented their income by other means. Some were landlords who received income from their lands in the rural areas and/or from rent of their shops or houses in the cities. Others worked part-time in the office of (the chief judge), and still others received income by writing poetry in the Court, copying books, and private tutoring. Theoretically, professors were not supposed to charge their students tuition. No word of God (which the professors were supposed tt leach) was to be sold. Actually, however, teachers received incomes in the form of gifts from the parents of their students or the students themselves. Just like the pupils in maktab, the madrasah students gave gifts to their professors at the end of the study period, at the start of the new year, and other religious and civic activities. In addition, the hujra (cell) (which was supposed to be free for the use of the tlib) often was extremely difficult to get; and then only after the payment of a very large sum to the administrators of the madrasah.

 

      Two very important features of the Islamic madrasah remained practically unchanged since the development of these learning institutions in the beginning of the tenth century. First, there was the physical structure of madrasah, which was basically the same as most of the congregational mosques in most of the Muslim countries. The second feature was the unchanging content of the curriculum.

 

      Some textbooks which were used during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Bukhara were first authorized during the twelfth century or earlier. Very few texts were less than three centuries old. The major difference in the content of the curriculum of madrasah of the nineteenth century and that of the tenth and eleventh centuries was that in the nineteenth century there was little or nothing taught about worldly subjects in the fields of literature, science, and the arts. The curriculum of the nineteenth century concerned itself almost entirely with theological subjects.

 

In general, education in madrasah was divided into three periods. The first period, the adn, took a minimum of three years and sometimes took up to ten years for completion. During this period, the first books which the students studied were Bidn (Know!), which explained Arabic grammar in Tadzhik, and Nisb al-subiyn (The portion of young), which was an arrangement of Arabic words and their equivalent in Tadzhik in poetry form.  Memorization of these two books was required in the madrasah.  The Islamic catechism was taught in Av’ili’ilm (The beginning of science), and Arabic etymology was taught in Mu’izz, (name of the author of the book).  After the student mastered these two books, he was taught Arabic syntax from ‘Avmil (lit. workers) and a detailed commentary on it from Sharhmull.  Learning of logic was taught from a thirteenth-century book called Shamsyah and a commentary on this text (Hshia’Qutbby MullQutb) was also studied.  The adnperiod ended after the mastery of a religious document called ‘Aq’idNasaf, or The beliefs of Nasaf.

 

The middle period, or ausat, started with the reading of Tanzb, a text on scholastic philosophy. This was followed by the study of natural science and metaphysics contained in a text called Hikmat al-ayn and a study of religious treaties in a book called MullJall (the author's name). Generally, mastery (memorization) of these three books ended the middle period. During the last period, which was called ‘al, the course of study was divided into two branches: Mas’ala (lit. Problem) and Mushkilt (lit. The difficulties). The first branch dealt with Islamic law and other legal aspects, while the latter dealt with general theological study. For a career as a mudarris or a qz, mastery of both branches was necessary. But most of the students took only one branch of the program. Those who chose general theology, for example, after finishing the Mushkilt text, started reading the Tavzih (interpretation of the Qur'n), Ahdith (Muhammed's sayings and traditions), and Mushkati Sharf and Tafsrqz, two commentaries on the Qur'n. By the middle of the nineteenth century, about 130 different texts were used in the Central Asian madrasah.^[29]

 

The length of the school year in a madrasah rarely exceeded that of the maktab. Generally it began in the middle of September and ended by the middle of March. Teaching days in madrasah, unlike those of maktab, were no more than four days a week. It started on Saturday and ended on Tuesday afternoon. The rest of the week was spent memorizing some lessons and by going over the others with friends or just relaxing.

 

      The place of madrasah in the Central Asian society was similar to that which was enjoyed by the medieval universities in Europe. The madrasah, however, was invariably also a mosque, a holy place, a substitute for Ka'ba the house of God. Some mudarrisn were looked upon not only as teachers (which carried with it a high degree of respect in the community)^[30] but also as good men and good Muslims. Some mudarrisn often belonged to a local sfi halqa (ring) which was in the chain of a particular sftarqah (path) or order. Such a mudarris, often, was (as many believed) capable of employing both kinds of knowledge at his disposal for the discovery of the Truth. He was teaching the indirect knowledge ('ilm) in madrasah and getting advantage of ma'rifat (direct knowledge acquired only through meditation and other methods used by the sufi of a particular tarqah — in this case most probably Naqshbandah). It was proper for such a professor to be a member of the rhnyn (pl. of rhn— from rh: soul, spirit), the ecclesiastical “class” of Central Asia.^[31] The character of his chief office (the one which he occupied in madrasah) and the multiplicity of roles which he occupied in public almost always made him immune from criticism and attacks from the masses and the government. He was vulnerable, however, when the criticism was directed toward him from within the ecclesiastical group — his peers. This situation, however, changed (see below) during the Jadd and the Russian educational innovations, especially during the last decade of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth century. Then, the rhnyn became divided into the conservative qadm (lit. ancients) and the jadd (lit. new ones). The former were allied to the Amir; and the latter were composed of the Central Asian small middle class merchants and intellectuals, some of whom sympathetic to the ideas of nationalism and the Bolsheviks.

 

      The teaching method changed very little since the early days of the madrasah. On school days the professor came to one of the classrooms (darskhnah) and students stood respectfully on his entering the room. After the acceptance of the students' greeting, he sat in his specific place and motioned the students to sit down. They all knelt in front of him with their texts before them. Then the most senior student (qri) read the lesson for the day, and mudarris corrected him on pronunciation when necessary. Mudarris' commentary followed the reading by qari. Then by the utterance of the phrase “Allh va akbar” (God is great), he ended the session.

 

      Some students worked very hard in their subjects, according to Ayni, and tried to understand them. Others spent most of their time memorizing without the benefit of understanding. Only about two madrasah were famous enough to have students from the neighboring countries of Afghanistan and the Indian sub-continent, and some other Muslim countries. Some of the professors in these two madrasahs were leaders in their fields in the Muslim world. Nevertheless, most of what was taught in madrasah was useless in coping with the encroachment of modern technology and science; and in almost all of them, learning was at a very low level.

 

      Ayni, who was a professor in one of Bukhara's madrasah prior to the Bolshevik revolution, has written quite often about the quality of education in madrasah.  The following, from his Memoirs (Yddshth), illustrates this, in one of the better madrasahs of Bukhara:

 

“When the author of these lines was still a student, the term ‘logic’ existed in the madrasa — that much can be stated quite safely — but all discussions about the meaning of that term were entirely illogical.

      Although a whole year had been reserved for reading Hashiai Qutbi, it was spent in sterile discussions about a single word in Shamsia, the textbook of logic.  At the beginning of his treatise the author wrote in Arabic I have made up this book of an Introduction, three Chapters, and a Postscript.’  He adds: ‘There are three Chapters.’

     In the above sentences the author used the word ‘three’ twice. Obviously one of these uses was superfluous. And so we spent the whole school year in debates as to whether the word 'three' was superfluous in the first or the second sentence. To resolve the problem we wasted our time reading the commentary and arguing with our teacher. At the end of the school year we arrived at the conclusion that the author of Shamsia (Najmiddin Umari Qazvini, who lived in the 13th century) had been a well-educated man and could not have made a mistake. It was obvious that the mistake had been made by his pen.”^[32]

 

      Graduates of these higher educational institutions generally occupied teaching posts in maktab and madrasah. Some became judges in the provincial courts, and others became muftin the larger urban centers. The poets, writers, musicians, clerks, and sfi learned their trades and earned these titles almost always through apprenticeship. There was no explicit text or program for the training in the above-mentioned occupations in the madrasah.

 

      There have never been accurate figures on the numbers of madrasah in Central Asia. Figures vary considerably from one period to another and from writer to writer.^[33] At the end of the nineteenth century, the Amaret of Bukhara probably had close to 200 madrasah, of which about 25 to 30 offered instruction. In the area occupied by the Russians, the numbers were close to 313 by 1900. Any madrasah which existed in the area now inside Tadzhik SSR most probably was located only in the city of Khujand (Leninabad). Even here figures are in conflict regarding the number of madrasah and other higher learning institutions. Colonel Kostenko, who was in the General Staff of the Turkestan governor-general between 1868-1880, recorded twenty-four madrasah in Khujand with a total student body of about 530.^[34] The more recent writers, notably Ayni, dispute these figures.^[35]

 

      The traditional Islamic education as was practiced in Central Asia was not conducive to the economic growth of the area. It was primarily to satisfy the religious and ritualistic needs of the populace and also to bolster the legitimacy of the status quo.  The madrasah could not initiate programs for social change nor for the development of a curriculum for the teaching of more secular subjects. The traditional education was utterly dysfunctional for the type of economic and social development, which was needed to withstand the onslaught of Russian colonization of the area. Since this type of education was prevalent in most Islamic countries at the time (and still exists in some) their succumbing to forces of imperialism and colonization was not surprising. Present day Islamic educators are trying to articulate an education system which is Islamic in content and devoid of ambiguities in the development of the Homo islamicus, a devoted Muslim who is also dedicated, by necessity, to the development of social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of not only the Ummah (the Islamic community) but also the larger community of human beings.^[36]

                                                                                                                                    M.M.S.

 

 

TABLE I

 

Native Muslim educational statistics for Zeravshan province, Turkistan (1874)

 

Administrative area	Mak-tab	Madrasah	Teach-ers	Pupils   Winter	in                  Summer	Sources of school support	Annual Income (in rubles) or kind)	Use of income
1    Samarkand district
a. Samarkand city
(1)	61	—	61	722	214	City funds	369.60r	Teachers salaries
(2)	—	19	19	546	302	Waqf funds	300.21r	Idem
b. Shavdar ward	55	—	55	612	284	Commu­nal funds	243.30r	Idem
c. Aforinkend ward	99	—	99	1,106	420	Commu­nal funds	—	Idem
d. Aforinkend town	—	1	1	36	20	Waqf funds	97r	Idem, and for pupil support
e. lani-Kurgan	54	—	54	539	245	Commu­nal funds	1,805r	Pupil support
f. lani-Kurgan town	—	1	1	12	—	Waqf funds	ca. 4r	Teachers salaries
g. Shiraz ward	62	—	62	372	96	Commu­nal funds	320 kg grain/ school	Idem, and for pupil support
h. Chilek ward	25	—	25	331	124	Commu­nal funds	64.80r, and 24-28 kg wheat	Teachers funds
i. Chilek town	—	1	1	4	8	Pupils fees	20-40r	Idem
j. Angar ward	98	—	98	725	234	Commu­nal funds	16-19 kg wheatisschool	Idem
k. Angar town	—	1	1	22	—	Waqf funds	300r, and 2.080 kg grain/ school	Support of those living  at madrasah
Sub-total	572	23	477	5,207	1,266		ca. 3,210r plus payment in kind