The village fiqi functioned as ritual word-provider rather than secular educator.

Evidence

One thing the fiqi did was to teach children in the village the art that was the source of his craft, the correct recitation and writing of the words of the Quran. For this reason he is often described as the village school teacher. His role in the village was not to ‘educate’ however, but to provide at proper moments the written and spoken word of the Quran. He was required to write charms or cures, and to recite the correct words in the correct manner at marriages and funerals, in homes, and at the tomb of the local saint, in the seeking of a husband and on the conclusion of a business deal. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 299

Categorization

• XREF: Frames the later colonial encounter where schooling displaced the fiqi’s recitational craft — relevant to the book’s argument about the reorganization of education in Egypt.