Identifier: russiancentralas02lans (find matches)
Title: Russian Central Asia : including Kuldja, Bokhara, Khiva and Merv
Year: 1885 (1880s)
Authors: Lansdell, Henry, 1841-1919 Lansdell, Henry, 1841-1919, inscriber. ins
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Publisher: London : Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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e of thestudents like so well their cell, in which somehow orother they can generally get a piece of bread—from thefoundation, by begging, or a little work—that they donot care to leave, t Of sciences based on facts, of the * The composition of a college consists of the direction, the teachers,and the students. The mutawalilook. after the property of the college.The teachers are called mudarises, meaning readers or teachers, andthe students shagirds, or disciples. The last may be of any age from15 upwards. No special forms, and no standard of knowledge, arenecessary for admission. f Students are grouped, though not sharply, in three courses. Inthe lower course they are taught grammar and rhetoric ; in the middle,dialectics and metaphysics ; and in the upper, jurisprudence, which alsocomprises the adoration of God. The student is free to choose, andthe majority take jurisprudence, few going through the complete curri-culum of study. The method of instruction is to commit to memory,
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292 RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA. methods of working induction, of physics, chemistry,history, geography, the Muhammadan student hearsnot the name, nor of modern languages, unless it beUzbeg and Tajik.# All roads leading out of the circle of knowledgebounded by religion are cut off from the Muhammadanstudent. He must know, Kostenko says, only that whichthe authors of the works he studies knew from 500to 1,000 years ago. He is taught to disbelieve inascertained science, the rotation of the planets, thelaws which govern physical phenomena, in the forcesof nature, in historical facts, in a criticism which would and then receive comments thereon. A man who can say the Koranfrom end to end, or, beginning at any part, can go on repeating it, isdeemed a scholar, though he may be utterly unable to translate achapter, and know nothing of Arabic. Many, indeed, study nothingbut the Koran for 8 or 9 years. * I could not hear of such a thing in Bokhara or Khiva as an Uzbeggrammar or dictionary, though the

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