Maktab-e Tawhid
Maktab-e Tawhid (also Maktab-e Tawhīd) was a Shi'i seminary for women, established in Qom, Iran's clerical center in 1975, as a wing of the Haghani school.
The founding of the seminary followed similar institutions in Qom, Fasa, Shiraz and Isfahan. In Fasa, Maktab-e Fatema was opened in 1961, Maktab-e Zahra in Shiraz in 1964, Maktab-e Fatimah in Isfahan in 1965,[1] in Tehran, Zahra-i Athar was opened in 1966, and in Mashhad, Fatemeh Khamooshi (d. 2010) opened Madrase-ye ‘Elmīyya Narges in the same year.[2]
Ironically, it took a number more years until finally, a women's seminary was established in Qom. Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari added a women's section to his hawza Dar al-Tabligh, called Dar al-Zahra in 1973.[3]
Partially in order to rival the women's section of the Dar al-Tabligh school, Ayatollah Qoddusi, the director of the Haghani school, set up Maktab-e Tawhid. In its first year, the girl's madrasa had thirty students and five female teachers.[3] These included Monir Gorjih, Masumeh Golgiri, and Zohreh Sefati, who had come to Qom from Abadan earlier in the decade in search of a hawza education.
Among the male lecturers at Maktab-e Tawhid were Sheikh Nematollah Salehi Najafabadi, the author of “Shahid-e Javid,” and Morteza Haeri, the son of Sheikh Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi. Morteza Ha'eri taught akhlāq at the maktab.
After the 1979 revolution, Maktab-e Tawhid was incorporated together with other women's seminaries in Qom into the larger school, Jamiat al-Zahra.
References[edit]
- ^ See Mirjam Künkler and Roja Fazaeli, "The Life of Two Mujtahidas: Female Religious Authority in 20th Century Iran", in Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, ed. Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach (Brill Publishers, 2012), 127–160. SSRN 1884209
- ^ Keiko Sakurai, “Women’s empowerment and Iranian-style seminaries in Iran and Pakistan,” in Keiko Sakurai and Fariba Adelkhah (eds.), The Moral Economy of the Madrasa, Islam and Education Today, (Oxon & New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 32-57 ISBN 978-0-415-58988-8
- ^ a b Michael M. J. Fischer, Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003, p. 196 ISBN 0-299-18474-9