Madrasa Pedagogy

Madrasa pedagogy is the traditional model of Islamic religious education, historically centered on the halaqa, a circle of students seated around a teacher who reads and explains a text, most often the Quran, with memorization, oral recitation and a chain of certification, the ijaza, from teacher to student verifying who has mastered a given text and may in turn teach it. Formalized institutionally from the Nizamiyya madrasas of the eleventh century onward, this pedagogy remains the working model inside madrasas worldwide today, alongside modern subjects added to many curricula since the twentieth century.