Elementary Education and Motivation in Islam: Perspectives of Med ...

see a mumayyiz (one who has attained tamyz) who is younger than seven years old and an intellectually mature person (mukallaf) who has exceeded fifteen years of age but has not yet attained puberty. Therefore, intellectual maturity, though more difficult to define, should be a major consideration in determining the start of tamyz and taklf. In this book, the general cases for tamyz and taklf are more than sufficient for the purpose of studying medieval Muslim ta'db.

Adolescence (Murhaqa)

Adolescence (murhaqa) in classical Arabo-Islamic terminology was considered a part of childhood. Linguistically, it refers to a child who is ‘near to attaining puberty’; it also has a close relationship with the verb r-h-q and its verbal noun, rahaq, which implies ‘the doing of forbidden things’ and being ‘quick to do evil’.⁹¹ According to Muslim jurists and affirmed by scholars of Arabic such as al-Fayrzbd (729/1329–818/1415), adolescence is between the age of ten and the attainment of puberty.⁹²

For comparative purposes, however, Ibn Sn did not see adolescence as a part of childhood; rather, he saw it as a transition point between childhood and adulthood, listing it under the overarching umbrella of ‘youth’ (which lasts until thirty years old). According to Ibn Sn, youth comprises five divisions: (1) infancy, the period before walking; (2) toddlerhood, the period of formation of the teeth; (3) childhood, when the body shows psychomotor strength and the teeth are fully out; (4) juvenile, the period up to the development of hair on the face and pubes; and (5) adolescence, the period up to the limit of physical growth, or the beginning of adult life.⁹³

In modern psychological and sociological studies, adolescence has been defined to reflect the perceptions and expectations of individual societies. Apart from the transition from childhood to adulthood, adolescence is now used to refer to the specific physiological and psychological characteristics that develop between the attainment of puberty and adulthood.⁹⁴ Because of the variant definitions of adolescence as a result of differing cultural, legal, and religious norms, I have used one that corresponds to the historical and socioreligious context being studied.