The term madrasa derives from the Arabic root darasa, which means ‘to study,’ and is related to the term for lesson, dars. Technically, a madrasa is an institution where lessons are imparted or, in other words, a school. In the Arabic-speaking world, the term applies to all sorts of schools, including both those that teach only the traditional Islamic subjects as well as those that are completely secularised and have no provision for religious education. In much of the non-Arabic speaking parts of Asia, however, the word is generally understood in a more restricted sense – as a school geared essentially to providing students with what is understood as Islamic education, although the ways in which this is conceived and its scope are widely divergent.

Madrasas, as understood in this sense – as schools for the imparting of Islamic knowledge – have for centuries served the crucial function of training Muslim religious specialists or ulama, besides imparting basic Islamic education to Muslim children who need not necessarily continue their training to become professional religious experts. They are instrumental in sustaining, preserving, promoting and transmitting the Islamic tradition over the generations. They are not a homogenous phenomenon, however, contrary to what the media generally presents them as. They differ widely in terms of curricula, teaching methods and approaches to the challenges of modernity, which makes any generalisations about them hazardous and untenable. They also differ in terms of the levels of religious education that they provide their students, from the small maktab or kuttab attached to a mosque and catering to small children, providing them with skills to read and recite the Quran and perform basic Islamic rituals, to university-size jamiᒼas and Dar al-ᒼulums.

Despite the central importance that madrasas play in the lives of Muslim communities around the world, relatively little academic attention has been paid to them. Advocates of the ‘modernisation’ thesis had assumed that along with the economic and social ‘development’ of Muslim societies, which they saw as following the path adopted by Western countries, the influence of religion, including of the madrasas, would decline significantly, relegating the madrasas to the status of relics from a by-gone age.