Arabic had no word for education as a distinct social practice in 1834.

Evidence

The word education (tarbiya) in this sense was itself a new usage. In Rifa`a al-Tahtawi’s well-known work Takhlis al-ibriz, published in 1834, the first modern Arabic account of Europe, the term tarbiya does not occur, except once or twice in the word’s general sense of ‘to breed’ or ‘to produce’, as in a description of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris: ‘In the Polytechnique mathematics and physics are taught, to produce engineers (li-tarbiyat muhandisin).’ Nor is there any single word in its place, referring to the distinctive social practice of education. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 302

Categorization

• DEFINE: Tracks how tarbiya shifted from ‘breeding/cultivating’ to the modern concept of education.