হযরত আবুবক্কর (রা.) নূরানী মক্তব

Dharmanagar, the old tea trading town in the northern corner of the Indian state of Tripura whose name translates as the city of dharma, hosts a Qur'anic primary school named in honour of Abu Bakr al Siddiq, may God be pleased with him, the closest companion and first caliph of the Muslim community after the passing of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him and his family. The Bengali term maktab identifies a foundational school for young children where reading, writing and memorisation of the Qur'an are taught alongside basic ethics and prophetic biography, and the prefix nurani, meaning illuminated, refers to the widely used nurani qaida, a graded primer developed for teaching the pronunciation of Qur'anic Arabic to children of the subcontinent. Tripura itself sits within the hilly region between Assam and Bangladesh, its Muslim community rooted in centuries of trade, agriculture and intermarriage with surrounding Bengali speaking districts. The maktab occupies a small single storey structure attached to a local residence, with a corrugated tin roof, whitewashed walls, bamboo window lattices and a shaded veranda where children remove their sandals before climbing onto the woven mats spread across the floor. A pale mihrab niche on the western wall marks the qibla for the brief congregational prayers that punctuate the school day, and a bookshelf near the entrance holds copies of the Qur'an, the nurani qaida and commentaries in Bengali and Urdu. Daily lessons are taught by a local moulvi who combines the duties of teacher and imam, the children recite aloud in joyful chorus and the elder students assist the younger in memorisation. Ramadan evenings bring short tarawih and the children break their first fasts here with dates, jilapi and rooh afza. Visitors should dress modestly, remove shoes at the threshold and respect the quiet of the lessons. Nearby stand the tea gardens of Kadamtala, the historic Unakoti rock reliefs and the old British era railway bridge that leads southwards towards Agartala, each adding another dimension to a quiet educational journey of faith, tracing the patient transmission of the Qur'an from one generation of small children to the next across the rural Bengali lanes and mango orchards of Dharmanagar.