The school: a hearth of knowledge

“Maktab” is an Arabic word meaning “a place of study”. “Pedagogue” is Greek for “child-leader”: in ancient Greece the person who led wealthy children to school was called this. The earliest schools arose in Egypt, Babylon, China, India and Central Asia, and in Europe in Greece and Rome; at first they often worked in temples. Teaching children in classes by age and by a timetable was introduced in the 17th century by the Czech scholar Jan Amos Comenius. In our land, after the 8th century, there were elementary schools called maktabkhonas: for boys beside mosques and for girls in women’s homes; the teacher was called domla for boys and otinoyi for girls. At the higher level there were madrasas, where besides religion they taught astronomy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, geography, history and literature. Under the patronage of the Khorezmshahs of the Mamunid dynasty a centre of learning was set up in Gurganj (Old Urgench) in 1004, and it flourished especially under the dynasty’s last ruler, Mamun ibn Mamun; later it was called the Khorezm Mamun Academy. Scholars such as Abu Rayhan Beruni and Abu Ali ibn Sina worked there. When the Khorezmshah state lost its independence in 1017, the academy stopped. It was re-established in 1997, and its 1,000th anniversary was marked in 2006.