Al-Mubarakiya School … and the three pioneers
This news has been read 24076 times!
I received two types of reproaches to my articles on Wednesday and Thursday, on the issue related to the background of founding the Mubarakiya School, and how I neglected the role of ‘Yusuf bin Isa Al-Qanaei’ in founding the school.
I refuse the improper reproach because I am convinced I have committed no sin but I gladly accept the other smooth reproach. I write this article which is neither an original record of history, nor a reference, but rather remains almost a general talk.
It was reported by sources that the idea of establishing the Al-Mubarakiya School was without prior coordination and three personalities were behind it, Yusef bin Isa Al-Qanaei, Sheikh Nasser Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah and Yassin Al-Tabtabaei, and the latter was the first to raise the idea during a sermon he gave in March 1910; Yusuf bin Isa was influenced by it, so he wrote an article in which he talked about the importance of science and the need for schools, so a committee was formed headed by Sheikh Nasser Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah to take care of implementing the idea and collecting donations to build the school.
The committee collected approximately thirty thousand rupees, which is equivalent to 2,300 dinars. The school needed 80,000 rupees to start building. The project would have nearly failed had it not been for the proposal to seek assistance from brothers Qassem and Abdul Rahman Al Ibrahim, who were in India, who made two donations — the first was 30,000 rupees and the second 20,000 rupees.
The families of Khaled Al-Khudair and Al-Khalid also donated two homes to build the school on their ruins. Sheikh Yusuf bin Issa bought two more homes for 4,000 rupees, so that the school could be built on an area of the four houses, in the heart of the capital. A council was formed to pay attention to spending and the members were Hamad Al-Khaled, Shamlan bin Ali and Ahmad Mohammad Al-Humaidhi.
The education was free, but a one-time enrollment fee of two rupees was charged for ‘well-off’ students, a rupee for middle-class, free for poor children – a rupee that time was equal to 75 fils.
Sheikh Al-Qadi appointed Yusuf bin Isa Al-Qanaei as the school manager and the employees’ salaries ranged from 20 to 100 rupees, and the manager was paid the highest.
The conditions of the school subsequently deteriorated with the quasi-commercial blockade imposed by Najd on Kuwait in 1923, the global recession and its climax that struck America in 1929, and the collapse of natural pearl prices, all of which led to the scarcity of the school’s resources and its closure before the government, two months later, and through the Council of Education took care of it and the school funds were transferred to the council along with its properties – shops and a fishing vessel.
Sheikh Yusuf was not an ordinary person by all the standards of his era and it is sufficient that he was overlooked as infidel by some of the Sheikhs of Najd because of his progressive views, even though he was a religious man and a Sharia judge.
His vital role in establishing and administering the Al-Mubarakiya School is unforgettable, as it was the one which transferred education from primitive to modernity and progress. He was also the first headmaster of the Ahmadiyya School (1921), and the first to request the ruler of Kuwait at the time to establish the Kuwait Municipality, and he was elected as a member in (1932).
He was also appointed as a member of the Endowment Council (1949). He was among the first to call for expansion of reading and printing books, and to teach modern sciences, and among the first to call, with a few of the enlightened ones, to provide education for women.
Among the beautiful things that attracted my attention early in the biography of Sheikh Yusuf bin Isa, and from my banking experience, he was generous, pious and chaste. Although he was a contemporary figure and worked with three of the most senior rulers of Kuwait, starting with Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah and Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem, passing through Sheikh Ahmad Al-Jaber, and with his close relation with them it was not known about him that he ever asked any of them for something for himself.
e-mail: [email protected]
By Ahmad alsarraf
This news has been read 24076 times!
