Education in West Africa - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Launay, Robert
Leiden
Brill
(1,656 words)
Islamic education has been an essential component of Islam in West Africa since its introduction by the fourth/tenth century. The celebrated Moroccan traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 770 or 779/1368 or 1377), who visited the empire of Mali in the eighth/fourteenth century, noted with approval the Malian emphasis on memorisation of the Qurʾān. He observed children shackled in chains until they had committed to memory the passages from the Qurʾān that their teacher had assigned. Teachers since then have refrained from such extreme measures, but classical Qurʾānic education