Return of the kuttabs

Nesmahar Sayed , Wednesday 15 Jan 2025

The Ministry of Endowments is reviving traditional elementary schools, or kuttabs, in locations across Egypt

Return of the kuttabs

 

In a first-of-its-kind step, the Ministry of Endowments confirmed this week that it has received 3,000 requests to establish traditional elementary schools, or kuttabs, in different governorates less than a month after Minister of Endowments Osama Al-Azhari launched an initiative to revive them.

The target is to establish 4,700 kuttabs this year, Osama Raslan, spokesman for the Ministry of Endowments, told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Raslan said that a kuttab teaches pupils to memorise the Quran while simplifying its meanings and also teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. Pupils at the kuttabs can discover talents in recitation, public speaking, religious chanting, poetry, and calligraphy, he said.

Kuttabs date back to the 18th century when they were attached to mosques before more formal schools were introduced by Egypt’s ruler Mohamed Ali in 1805. The kuttabs played an important role in spreading literacy, especially in rural Egypt.

The return of the kuttabs initiative comes as part of the presidential initiative “Bedaya: A New Beginning for Building the Human Being,” said Osama Al-Guindy, director of mosques and the kuttabs initiative.

It “reflects the ministry’s keenness to restore the pioneering role of the kuttabs in raising generations on the values of the Quran and the principles of tolerant Islam,” he said.

The schools can also promote a spirit of positive competition, Al-Guindy added, pointing out that they have an important role to play in teaching the principles of reading, writing, and arithmetic, contributing to eradicating illiteracy and strengthening future studies.

The kuttabs are designed to complement the work of the Ministry of Education, he said.

Asim Al-Sayed, a linguistics researcher, believes that the initiative is a good step forwards because many people want to see their children learn the Quran. Memorising it also helps them to practise proper pronunciation of the Arabic language.  

 “The Quranic text is a text of high perfection, which is not available in any other language,” Al-Sayed said, adding that the initiative is designed to awaken children to the beauty of the Arabic language in the birthplace of Al-Azhar, the oldest university in Egypt and one of the oldest in the world.

He cited the thousands of people who flock to Al-Azhar’s rowaq (learning circles, something like the ancient Greek Stoa), as evidence.

Half a million students aged from five to 10 years old are currently studying in Al-Azhar’s Quranic rowaq, where they memorise the entire Quran in five years according to the curriculum specified by Al-Azhar.

There are also rowaq for adults, which are attended by approximately 750,000 men and women.

The Ministry of Endowment efforts to revive the kuttabs and Al-Azhar’s rowaq were launched to confront extremist thought, Abdel-Moneim Fouad, supervisor of the Rowaq Al-Azhar told the Weekly.

He explained that there are 11,000 kuttabs under the direction of the Al-Azhar Institutes sector, launched in 2019, in addition to 1,250 rowaq throughout Egypt in which study is free.

The initiative to revive the kuttabs is a cooperative venture between the government, the private sector, and civil society organisations. The Ministry of Endowments will supervise their scientific and intellectual content in order to avoid extremist ideas while avoiding any individual interference, Raslan said.

He said the ministry would rely on graduates of the Institute for Preparing Quranic Memorisers in order to guarantee the scientific and intellectual aspect, noting that each governorate will form a committee to inspect the locations of the proposed kuttabs and that the initiative as a whole is not a way of simply reviving the past.

Iman Nafei, a professor of educational psychology at Zagazig University, noted that knowledge of the Quran improves knowledge of the Arabic language, something which may challenge some young people. She added that the teachings of Islam could also improve the behaviour of students in general.

However, critics of the initiative view it as a backward step. “Despite its success in spreading the Arabic language and eliminating illiteracy, the fear is that it will promote a single way of thinking and offer an education based on memorisation and not discussion and dialogue,” Hassan Shehata, a professor at the Faculty of Education at Ain Shams University, told the Weekly.

He called on businessmen to help to establish kindergartens in villages and hamlets across Egypt to develop the abilities of children from four to six years old in preparation for their going to primary school.


* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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