Board
Qur'anic board
Madrid, Spain
National Museum of Anthropology
About National Museum of Anthropology, Madrid
Museo Nacional de Antropología
19th century
MNA3583
Wood; pigments, ink
28 x 19 cm
Qur'anic board used in the African madrasas (schools), places where the first verses of the Qur'an are learned, under the direction of the marabout (teacher). The learning method consists of copying and reciting the different verses of the Qur'an, in a process of memorisation, which allows the students to erase them and then to write the following verses. The alluha (table of wood), the reed, and the ink are the only available pedagogic materials of the Qur'anic schools in the rural areas. The Qur'anic boards turn into documents that preserve the written personality of those who used them, the irregularity of the letter, the crooked lines, the hesitations, the corrected mistakes, the erased lines that refuse to disappear, as a register of a period of effort and domain of skills typical of the school stage.
"Board" in "Sharing History", Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://sharinghistory.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;AWE;es;2;en
Copyedited by: Anne Dowell
MWNF Working Number: SP 002
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