Arabiankielisten oppilaiden määrä on lisääntynyt ja edelleen lisääntyy Helsingin peruskouluissa. Äidinkieli on osa identiteettiä ja side omaan kieliyhteisöön. Oman äidinkielen osaamisella on todettu olevan suotuisa uuden kielen oppimiseen ja oppimistuloksiin. Uusi kieli on avain suomalaisen yhteiskunnan osallisuuteen. Laadukkaalla oman äidinkielen opetuksella on täten suotuisia vaikutuksia niin yksilö- kuin yhteiskuntatasolla. Peruskoulussa tapahtuva oman äidinkielen opetus on perusopetusta täydentävää opetusta ja siihen osallistuminen on vapaaehtoista. Tämän tutkielman tavoitteena on selvittää oppilaan oman äidinkielen eli tässä tutkimuksessa arabian kielen opettajien kokemia haasteista arabian kielen opetuksessa Helsingin kaupungin peruskouluissa. Kartoittamalla opetuksen haasteet ja tämän jälkeen etsimällä niihin ratkaisuja, voidaan edistää laadukasta arabian kielen opetusta. Tutkimus suoritetaan opettajia haastattelemalla, joten oppilaiden, kotien ja koulutuksen tuottajan näkemykset eivät tässä tutkimuksessa tule esille. Aiemmissa selvityksissä koskien oman äidinkielen opetusta on noussut esille haasteita opetuksen käytännön järjestelyihin liittyen. Arabian kielelle on ominaista kielen diglossia eli eri kielimuotojen vaihtelu eri käyttötilanteissa. Koulussa opetettu kielimuoto on standardiarabia. Kielessä on myös lukuisia eri murteita. Tämän kielimuotojen moninaisuuden voidaan olettaa aiheuttavan opetukseen haasteita. Ilmiötä voidaan tutkia vain tutkimalla juuri arabian kielen opettajien kohtaamia opetuksen haasteita. Tutkimuksen lähestymistapa on laadullinen. Aineisto kerättiin puolistrukturoidulla teemahaastattelulla haastattelemalla kahta kolmesta Helsingin kaupungin peruskoulun arabian kielen opettajasta. Haastattelu oli yksilöhaastattelu ja tehtiin arabian kielellä. Aineisto analysoitiin teemoittelun ja tyypittelyn keinoin ja tulokset voitiin jaotella kolmeen eri kategoriaan. Suurimmat haasteet liittyvät itse arabian kielen opetukseen ja opetusjärjestelyihin. Opetusryhmät ovat heterogeenisiä niin oppilaiden iän, oppimisvalmiuksien, taitotason ja kielen osaamisen suhteen. Oppitunnit järjestetään koulupäivän jälkeen ja oppilaat joutuvat usein siirtymään tunnille toiseen kouluun. Valmista opetusmateriaalia ei ole. Arabian kielelle leimallisena haasteena tuli esille kielen diglossia. Opetuskieli on standardiarabia, joka on eri kielimuoto kuin kotona puhuttu jokin arabian puhekielen murteista. Toisena kategoriana olivat työsuhteisiin liittyvät haasteet kuten työsuhteiden määräaikaisuus. Kolmantena kategoriana nousivat muut rakenteelliset haasteet, etenkin miten pätevöityä arabian kielen opettajaksi Suomessa. Esille tulleet heterogeenisten ryhmien sekä opetusjärjestelyjen aiheuttamat käytännön haasteet ovat nousseet esille jo aiemmissa selvityksissä, joten niiden uskoisi olevan jo ratkaistavissa. Ratkaistavaksi jäisi arabian kielen suhteen vielä syvät kielelliset haasteet.

The microcosm-macrocosm analogy – the idea of man as a miniature of the surrounding reality or part of it – is a prevailing theme in Rasail Ikhwan as-Safa. This study examines the analogy primarily in this encyclopaedia completed during the tenth century and compares the views presented in it to those in certain other texts from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries: Sirr al-khaliqa, some texts attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan, some Sufi writings of al-Ghazali (d. 1111), Suhrawardi (d. 1191) and Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), and al-Qazwini’s (d. 1283) Ajaib al-makhluqat. The aim is to explore the influence of microcosmism on the idea of man in these texts and to define the position of the Rasail in the development of the topic in mediaeval Islamic thought. Rudolf Allers’s classification of microcosmism is used as the main conceptual framework in this analysis. All Allers’s six varieties of the analogy receive various interpretations in the Islamic tradition. This study also proposes a threefold approach to the examination of microcosmism. Firstly, the analogy appears as a human-specific feature defining the cosmological position of the human species. In this form, microcosmism is used in all of the studied texts and often the role of the human being as an intermediate being in the universe is in focus. Secondly, attitudes towards the corporeal aspect of man are approached through the use of the analogy. In this form, the idea is closely related to the scientific worldview and sometimes the meaning given to the analogy can only be understood within the frames of a scientific theory. Thirdly, the normative aspect is included in the analogy and it is used in descriptions of epistemological and ethical ideals. Especially Sufi thinkers elaborate this form of the analogy and it is also in the key position of microcosmism in the Rasail. Microcosmism in the Rasail is a synthesis of various forms of the analogy developed earlier in the Islamic tradition and it anticipates many ideas that only become central in the later texts. Obvious thematic similarities between the texts can be found, but transmission of particular elements of microcosmism is possible to trace in only a few cases. For instance, some comparisons of the Rasail between the human body and the surrounding reality seem to be transmitted – directly or indirectly – even to the latest texts of the corpus.

This doctoral dissertation, which consists of articles published elsewhere as well as a summary of them, discusses the early Arabic historian and litterateur Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qurashī al-Madāʾinī. He was an important compiler, evaluator, and organizer of historical and literary narratives. He composed an imposing oeuvre of over two hundred works, only two of which are extant today. Al-Madāʾinī was born in al-Baṣra, but he travelled and studied in many towns of Iraq. Eventually, he settled in Baghdad where he lectured and where he died ca. 228/843 4. Al-Madāʾinī s oeuvre is understood in this dissertation in the wider framework of Arab-Islamic culture. The late second/eighth early third/ninth centuries, when al-Madāʾinī lived, were a time when the study of history and religious sciences relied to a large extent on the oral and the aural. Al-Madāʾinī, too, disseminated his works principally through lectures and study circles. His works, it seems, did not circulate widely in manuscript form; they were not books proper. Rather, they circulated as notebooks written down by his students. Because of this, mapping the importance of his students in the transmission and transmutation of his historical material is of utmost importance, and much weight is put on that question. During the lives of al-Madāʾinī s students, the Arab-Islamic culture became increasingly writerly, and the idea of a work with a final form began to win the day. Al-Madāʾinī s works, however, were still somewhat fluid and mainly not transmitted by copying, at least during his lifetime. Al-Madāʾinī s works are mostly lost but some of them can be partly reconstructed on the basis of quotations from them. However, later authors, such as al-Ṭabarī and Ibn Aʿtham, reworked their source material, including the narratives stemming ultimately from al-Madāʾinī. These later authors did not have direct access to al-Madāʾinī s material but received it in the recensions of al-Madāʾinī s students. This dissertation deals especially with the historiography of the ʿAbbāsid revolution (129 132/747 750). Al-Madāʾinī was born some years after the revolution. He composed, relying on, e.g., eye-witness and court sources, a work called Kitāb al-Dawla about the events of the revolution and the beginning of the ʿAbbāsid rule. It is an important early source on the matter, the basic form and contents of which I have endeavored to reconstruct.