Madrasa

Three madrasas in Samarkand.

Madrasa or madrasa (in Arabic: مَدْرَسَة‎, romanized: madrasa; plural, مَدَارِس‎, madāris) is the name given in Arabic culture to any type of school, be it religious or secular. The specific usage in the West usually refers to an Islamic religious school.

Definition and uses of the term

In Arabic madrasa [مَدْرَسة] means school. In Arabic, the word مدرسة has the same meaning as school in Spanish, applying indistinctly to public, private, primary, secondary, Muslim or secular institutions. French has adopted this term in the form of "medersa", which also means "school". In contrast, in many Muslim countries where Arabic is not the vernacular language, madrassa (usually doubled) means "religious academy" islamic English has adopted this term, also with the meaning of "religious academy". In South Asia, Islamic primary schools are called maktab [مَكْتَبُ], which in Arabic means "office". The term madrasa also exists in several Arabic-influenced languages such as Urdu, Hindi, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Indonesian, Malay and Bosnian.

However, mádrasa in Spanish refers to an Islamic university or postgraduate school, although its use has been increasingly extended, approaching the meaning of the original language, including its application to buildings where Schools work or have worked. The word for "university" in Arabic it is جَامِعَة (yāmi'a).

Quranic madrasa

The typical Islamic religious school usually offers two types of courses: the "Hafiz" and the Ulema. The teaching hafiz consists of memorizing the Qur'an, and hafiz is consistently the title given to someone who has managed to memorize the entire holy book.

The ulama teaching covers secular knowledge, including language, tafsir, sharia, hadith, logic and Islamic history. According to the lawsuit, some madrasas also offer advanced foreign language courses, especially English, as well as science and world history.

People of all ages attend, many of them studying to be imams. The ulema diploma, for example, requires approximately twelve years of study. A significant number of huffāz or Quran memorizers emerge from madrasas.

Madrasas are in some ways reminiscent of boarding schools, where students take permanent classes and live in dormitories. One of its important functions is to admit orphans and poor children in order to provide them with education. In several Islamic countries they admit women, although they usually study separately. There are several cases of female madrasas.

In South Africa, madrasas play an important role, providing religious instruction to Muslim children who attend secular public or private schools. However, a growing number of children attend private Islamic schools that combine religious and secular education. Among Muslims of Indian origin, madrasas also provide education in Urdu, although it is still rare.

History

In the early days of Islam there were no madrasas. Its origin can be traced back to the ancient custom of meeting in mosques for discussions about religion. At that time, believers tended to seek advice and teaching from more educated people, and these informal teachers began to be called sheikhs, starting regular religion classes under the title of "majalis" .

The Qarawiyyin Madrasa (Yāmi'at al-Qarawiyyīn), in the mosque of the same name in Fez, is considered to be the oldest madrasa, founded in 859.

In the late Abbasid period, the vizier Nizam al-Mulk founded the first higher academy, historically known as the Nizamiyya in his honour, based on the informal classes of the sheikhs. Al-Mulk, who was later assassinated by the Nizaris, created a system of public madrasas in several cities.

During the era of the Fatimid Caliphate, the Mamluk dynasties, and their successors in the medieval Middle East, madrasas were founded by the ruling elite through a charitable giving policy known as waqf. madrasa was not only a status symbol but an effective way to pass on wealth to descendants. During the Mamluk period, when only freedmen could rise to power, the sons of the ruling Mamluks were unable to inherit, but guaranteed offices within the new madrasas allowed them to maintain their status. For example, the madrasa of Sultan Hassan in Cairo corresponds to this period.

Throughout the Islamic world, madrasas were founded. The seventy-five from Cairo became famous, especially the al-Azhar (X century) and the Nizamiyya. In Damascus there were fifty-one; and in Aleppo forty-four (founded between 1155 and 1260). Many were founded in Muslim Spain during the Caliphate of Córdoba, both in Córdoba itself (which around the year 1000, in the time of Hixem II, was one of the most prestigious), and in other cities, which developed later, in the time of the taifas (Seville, Toledo, Murcia, Almería, Valencia, Cádiz and the Madrasa de Granada founded by Yusuf I in 1349).

Situation in some countries

Indian

There are around 30,000 active madrasas in India. It is assumed that most of these institutions follow the Deobandi school of thought. One of the most famous is Dar al-'Ulum, located in Deoband, a small town in the state of Uttar Pradesh. In 1986, the Indian government released a project to modernize the madrasas by introducing other subjects such as science, mathematics, English and Hindi. In all cases, education is provided free of charge, and as a result, a massive enrollment of students takes place., which includes many of the Hindu or Christian religion.

Pakistan

There are some 10,000 madrasas in operation in Pakistan, with total enrollment estimated at one to two million students. According to the 1998 population census, some media estimate that only 0.3% of school-age children attend traditional madrasas. The discrepancy can possibly be explained by the incidence of orphans, immigrants or part-time students.

Despite this, enrollment in Pakistani madrasas can be considered negligible relative to the school population. One of the causes may be due to the state of conflict in the country. A 2005 study conducted by Saleem Ali of the North American Institute for Peace attempts to clarify these issues through an empirical comparison between urban and rural madrasas, the preliminary results of which are available online, and the final analysis of which was completed in 2007.

During 2002, the suspicion that several madrasas could actually become recruitment centers for fundamentalist terrorism, led the Pakistani government to regulate the obligation to register the qualification of these educational institutions.