Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to write in Arabic about communities where it is spoken and aspects of their cultures, and to link what you write to your own experience. The museum offers an observation on what people's names mean and the story of how the madrasa began. Education systems in different communities today, posters and tourist letters, your class brings. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- D3.1 in their written work in the target language, communicate information about communities where the target language is spoken, including aspects of their cultures and their contributions to the world, and make connections to personal experiences and their own and other …
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What will you write?
Before you write, decide what you want to tell your reader, what you need from the two records, and what you will add yourself and attribute to its source.
Go deeper
Al-Hamdani observed that the Arabs tended in men's names towards the thorny trees that grow in pasture, because of their roughness, sharpness, hardness and patience with scarce water. Among their men's names are Talha, Samura and Sabra 2. Among women's names, he observed, are names of tenderness and fruits, such as Bashama and Busra 2. This is the record on Arab naming of children after plants.
How do we know?
The record keeps only al-Hamdani's observation, and says that what is not recorded there needs a further source 2. On schools, Yeomans writes that madrasas began in eastern Persia as small informal establishments attached to the houses of teachers and Sufi shaykhs, and that the first state-funded one was the Nizamiyya, founded by the Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk in Baghdad in 1068 3. He sees the rise of the Fatimids as the spur for Sunnis to build madrasas; that is his view 4 3.
Think about it
Al-Hamdani explains men's names from the plants: roughness, hardness, patience with scarce water 2. Give a reason: is a name a good way to keep a quality in mind, in a plant or in a person?
Into the museum
- Arab naming of children after plants: al-Hamdani's observation as the record keeps it.
- Madrasa: what Yeomans writes about how madrasas began and reached Egypt.
Try this
Read the records on Arab naming after plants and on the madrasa. Write a paragraph on the origin and meaning of a name you know, and a two-column chart comparing the madrasa as the record describes it with your school.
4 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
5 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Arab naming of children after plants have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Names from plants. Al-Hamdani observed that the Arabs tended in men's names towards the thorny trees that grow in pasture, because of their roughness, sharpness, hardness and patience with scarce water. Among their men's names are Talha, Samura and Sabra. Among women's names are names of tenderness and fruits, such as Bashama and Busra. What are the origin and meaning of your name?
In your own words: what does Madrasa have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
From a teacher's house to the madrasa. Yeomans writes that madrasas began in eastern Persia as small informal establishments attached to the houses of teachers and Sufi shaykhs; when upholding Sunni orthodoxy became a political necessity, state-funded madrasas followed; Yeomans names the Nizamiyya, founded by the Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk in Baghdad in 1068, as the first, and in his view it became the model for later ones. How would you compare learning there with your school today in a two-column chart?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: Classical Studies and International Languages
- 2. Sifat Jazirat al-Arab of al-Hamdani (Müller ed.), p.116-117
- 3. Richard Yeomans, The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo (2006), p.56
- 4. Richard Yeomans, The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo (2006), p.55