Figure 1.--Here we are a little confused. The Palestinin source simply describes this as " A teacher of Arabic-Palestinian language in the village of Al-Tira in Haifa in 1940." (مدرس لغة عربية فلسطيني في قرية الطيرة المهجرة قضاء حيفا عام ١٩٤٠ ) The teache is ckearky not aoubkic school teacher because of the way he is dressed and the small number of students. And the boys are not dressed like the boys we have seen in other images of the mosqie schools. They do hve caps, but they are dfferent then we see at other mosque school images.

Mosque schools (kuttab) and private education until late in the Ottoman era was how eas how Muslim Arab boys were educted. These schools wwre small and not free so the number of children educated were very small and were only boys. Even when the Ottomans began opening public schools (late-19th century), the Mosque schools continued to operate, but still educated only a small number of children and only boys. There was obviously a focus on religion, primarily commiting the Koran to memory. Many of the boys learned to read, but not necessarily to write. We believe that Mosque schools continue to operate during the mandate. One sources suggesta that they were incorporated into the Mandate system. [Talhami, p. 364.] Some may have been, but the Mosque schools were under the authority of the Supreme Muslim Council which controlled the Islamic awqaf which included independent financial resources. Also part of the awqaf were the sharia courts, and officiadom, moaques, orpgnages and other Islamic institutions. [Farsoun and Aruri, p. 86.] We note mosque schools still operating still operating during the mandate. Perhaps the source meant that they received some government support. At any rate the numbers of boys educated at these schools were relatively small. We are not sure if the Mandate authories regulated these schools in any ways. We suspect that many boys planning to be Muslim clerics attended these schools rather than the Mandate public schools.

Sources

Farsoun, Samih K. and Naseer Aruri. Palestine and the Palestinians: A Social and Political History (Avalon Publishing: 2006), 488p.

Talhami, Ghada Hashem, "Palestinian governance: Against all odds," in Abbas K. Kadhim, ed. Governance in the Middle East and North Africa: A Handbook (Routledge: 2013), pp. 357-81.

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Last updated: 3:19 PM 11/8/2017