مدرسه

مدرسه is borrowed from Arabic مَدْرَسَة (madrasa, "place of study"), built from the trilateral root د ر س (d-r-s) meaning "to study, to learn." The same root produces a family of Persian words: درس (dars, lesson), دروس (durūs, lessons, plural), مدرس (modarres, teacher / instructor), تدریس (tadrīs, teaching), and درس خواندن (to study). The Arabic source word "madrasa" is also borrowed directly into English, where it specifically refers to Islamic religious schools. In Iran, مدرسه is the everyday non-religious word for school, and the religious-school sense is carried by حوزه (howze) or مدرسه علمیه (madrese-ye elmīye). The word entered Persian during the Islamic period (after the 7th century CE), along with much of Persian's intellectual and educational vocabulary. Iranian schooling traditionally followed a different structure than Western models. Until the 20th century reforms, learning happened largely in mosques, mektabs, and madrasas of the older religious sense. The modern مدرسه system was built during the late Qajar and Pahlavi reforms, layering European-style classrooms on top of older terminology.