Hassan Roshdiyyeh

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Roshdiye school's building in Tabriz, Artesh Ave.
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Roshdiye school's building in Tabriz, Artesh Ave.

Haji Mirza Hassan Tabrizi (میرزا حسن تبریزی; July 5, 1851December 10, 1944), famously known as Hassan Roshdiyyeh (حسن رشدیه), was an Iranian Azeri cleric, teacher, politician, and journalist, introducing some methods of modern teaching methods in Iran, specially methods about teaching the alphabet, which are still used to some degree in primary schools of Iran.

Born in Tabriz and studying as a Shia cleric there, Roshdiyyeh abandoned his plans of going to Najaf to study in religious schools after reading an article about the hardships of education in the Persian language from the newspaper Akhtar. He left for Beirut in 1880 and studied for two years in its Daar ul-Mu'allimeen (teacher school), and then continued with visiting Istanbul and Egypt. In 1883, he left for Yerevan and founded the first modern school for Muslims there. In his new method of teaching, Roshdiyyeh used the concept of sounds instead of alphabet letters to teach Persian and Azerbaijani languages (which use the Arabic script). During his four years of managing his school in Yerevan, Roshdiyyeh wrote Vatan Dili (The Language of the Homeland) in Azerbaijani, which was taught in several schools of caucasia as a primer until the October Revolution.

It was during his stay in Yerevan that Roshdiyyeh met Nasser-al-Din Shah, who took him to Nakhichevan. Roshdiyyeh later return to his birthplace in Tabriz, where he established the first primary schools in Persia in 1886 or 1887. While Ahmad Kasravi has claimed in his book that the primary school were established with the help of Amin od-Dowle, the then prime minister, this cannot be confirmed by the records of Fakhreddin Roshdiyyeh, Mirza Hassan's son.

The schools were highly rejected by the more conservative Tabrizis, specially clerics, alleging that Roshdiyyeh is trying to make the students quit Islam, mentioning the school ring and its similarity to church bells. This resulted in mobs destroying some of his schools (which resulted in a few students being killed or injured), unsuccessful assassination attempts using guns, and later a fatwa against the modern schools, which finally resulted in him fleeing Tabriz.

In Tehran, and during the reign of Mozzafar-al-Din Shah and the prime ministership of Amin od-Dowle, Roshdiyyeh started the Roshdiyyeh School with the help of the government. He was a member of the political Ma'āref Association and active for the fight for freedoms and constitution during the Persian Constitutional Revolution, leading to him being exiled or fleeing Persia a few times.

Afer a final return to Persia, Roshdiyyeh established a new school and a magazine in 1904, both called Maktab. He finally quit his political and educational activities in 1927 and moved to Qom, where he died in 1944 and is buried.

Roshdiyyeh is claimed to be the first Persian to write poems for children. He also had plans for education of the blind people and had helped establishing girl schools in Persia. He has several books and articles in Persian and Azerbaijani. He was called Roshdiyyeh after the name of primary schools in the then Ottoman empire, roshdiyye, because he had established the first such schools in Iran.

Roshdiyyeh is mentioned in a famous poem of Nima Youshij, yād-e ba’zi nafarāt (The Memory of Some People).

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