ABSTRACT
The historiography of modern Iran tends to see the newly created schools like the Dâr al-Fonun (school of polytechnic) established in 1851, as representative of modern education as opposed to traditional education, provided in madrasas or Islamic colleges.1 A careful study of the history of ‘modern’ institutions in Qâjâr Iran reveals, however, that they contained a non-negligible amount of traditional elements in terms of both knowledge and organisation. In a similar vein, the general categorisation of social groups or classes as advocates or opponents of modernisation2 does not take into account the conflicting views that members of the same social ‘category’ could have towards modern education. This question has been raised and examined from various aspects in my previous works.3 The present essay explores the extent of the influence of the traditional schooling funded by waqf endowment on medical education, a question that has not been addressed so far in any of the studies on education in modern Iran.4 It also examines modern medical education in the light of the establishment of the Qâjâr power. The Modernisation movement in nineteenth-century Iran was triggered by several humiliating military defeats by the Russians, from the advent of the Qâjârs, in 1798, to 1828 that resulted in the loss of territory. In addition to the foreign invasion, the Qâjârs were also facing the rebellion of local tribal khans, which continued at least until the middle of the century. These two major problems that concerned the political unity and territorial integrity of the country had long lasting effects on the reform movement in Iran. Firstly, the Qâjârs became primarily concerned with military modernisa-
tion that consisted mainly of the founding of a modern military school, the creation of disciplined troops and the use of modern weapons.5 Military modernisation informed the paradigm of modernity. In a telling statement, an Iranian physician, Mirzâ Nosrat-e Quchâni, writing in the second part of the nineteenth century, maintained that the relationship of traditional medicine to modern medicine was like the relationship of a ‘matchlock gun to a needle gun’.6 The trauma of military defeat and the shock the Qâjârs experienced in realising the superior technology of Europe led them to have a reductive concept of modern Western science by perceiving it in isolation from the social, economic and cultural contexts in Europe that underpinned
its development. Thus, the main function of modern schools in the second part of the century was to introduce applied sciences such as physics, chemistry and engineering for the use of the army.7
