Teaching Certificates

The NEST Special Collection holds 55 teacher certicates, granted by American Protestant missionaries 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)", NEST Theological Review 34:2 provides one theory on why these certificates might have been created.

On this page you will find four items.

The first item is a copy of Labiba Kurani's Teaching Certificate. This shows the diverse subjects that this unique woman was qualified to teach.

Another of the 55 teaching certificates can also be found on this page, that for Rahil Haddad. Rahil's teaching certificate represents the more typical type of teaching qualifications, which focused on a basic education of the time: Arabic Syntax & Conjugation, Calculation, Geography, Reading and Writing.

A third item is a page from a book of charts listing all of the schools, teachers and their certifications. This book was created by the American missionary Henry Harris Jessup in 1893. The page included her shows an entry for a woman listed as "Labibi Koorani" who was then teaching at Shwayfat. Coud this be the same woman as our highly qualified woman from the teaching certificate?

The last time is a pdf file of a chart listing data from the 55 teaching certificats held by NEST. This chart lists the teacher's name, the missionary who authorized the certificate, the date of certification and the subjects qualifed to teach. This chart was created by Christine B. Lindner. It is written in English but includes the Arabic subject names.