Teaching Certificates

The NEST Special Collections holds 55 teacher certificates, granted by American Protestant missionaries and dating from 1865 to 1887. Forty-five of these certificates were given to Arab men and ten to Arab women, with varying degrees of relation to the Protestant Church. The certificates are uniform in style, differing only in the name of the person certified, the subjects the person was qualified to teach, the authorizing missionary, and the date of certification. As such, it is probable that these certificates were created at the same time, most likely 1887. The “Quick Study” article “Labiba Kurani’s Teaching Certificate (1887)” in the NEST Theological Review 34:2 presents one theory on why these certificates were created.

On this page you will find two examples of these teaching certificates and a chat providing data about the certifacts. Also included is a list of teachers and schools created in 1893 provides additional clues onto Labiba Kurani's history.