Colonial Education Systems, Influence on Middle Eastern Educational Development

Early Systems of Education in the Middle East

Prior to the widespread adaptation of what would become a global model of schooling, elementary education for Muslims took place mainly in the maktab (pl. makatib), also known as kuttab (pl. kattatib). The Christian and Jewish communities had comparable schools for their children. A maktab was a designated space for instruction in a section of a mosque, a room in a private home, or a religiously endowed (waqf) building such as a public fountain or library. The maktab did not follow a fixed or unified curriculum. In the second to sixth years of instruction a pupil learned rudimentary writing and arithmetic, committed some or all of the Qur'an to memory, and was instructed in adab, codes of ethical conduct and moral behavior. Though boys made up the bulk of pupils in makatib, some girls received elementary instruction, usually in the home of a female teacher (shaykha or atin). Teachers mainly taught by rote reinforced by the rod. A pupil could continue his education at a madrassa, or college, which trained the Muslim scholarly class, the ‘ulama. Similar to the maktab, the madrassa was characterized by a high degree of informality and centered on the relationship between teacher (alim) and pupil rather than on the pupil's association with the institution. Despite the celebrated reputation of a number of Islamic colleges, most notably Al-Azhar in Cairo (established in 969) and Qarawiyyin in Fez (established in 859), these institutions were perceived as ill suited for the tasks of modernizing the society, the military, and the economy.

Introduction of European Systems of Education in the Middle East

As early as 1720, Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730) sent a delegation to Europe to study its education systems and establish a center for the translation of European works of history and philosophy into Turkish and Arabic. In Egypt the viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha (r. 1805–1849) dispatched the first of many student missions to Europe in 1809 and established a number of vocational schools, principally in the service of modernizing the army. By the 1860s, a period of intensified European colonial encroachment, education systems of Western colonial powers permeated the region in three ways: through a process of voluntary borrowing, through missionary and humanitarian projects, and via colonial administrative policy. Religious missions and private associations from France, Britain, Italy, Austria, Greece, England, Germany, and the United States spread throughout the region. The schools of the Church Missionary Society of Great Britain (CMS) (e. 1799), the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (e. 1810), and the French-based Alliance Israélite Universelle (e. 1860) reached tens of thousands of students. They left an indelible mark on, among other areas, girls' education; the spread of European languages, history, and philosophy; and traditions of liberal education. The earliest colleges and universities in the liberal [Page 405]tradition were established during this period. They included the Syrian Protestant College, later named the American University of Beirut (e. 1866); the Université Saint-Joseph, Beirut (e. 1875); Robert College (e. 1863, in Istanbul), which became the location for Bogazici University in 1971; and the American University in Cairo (e. 1919).

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