© Museo Nacional de Antropología © Museo Nacional de Antropología


Name of Object:

Board

Other name of the Object (second name):

Qur'anic board

Location:

Madrid, Spain

Holding Institution:

National Museum of Anthropology

 About National Museum of Anthropology, Madrid

Holding Institution (original language):

Museo Nacional de Antropología

Date of Object:

19th century

Inventory Number:

MNA3583

Material(s) / Technique(s):

Wood; pigments, ink

Dimensions:

28 x 19 cm

Description:

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.

Citation of this web page:

"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

Related Content

 Timeline for this item


On display in


Download

As PDF (including images) As Word (text only)