Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
108:The Tanzeemat of the Ottoman Empire – Part 4
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
The tanzeemat sought to redress within a single generation the neglect of a thousand years. With a technologically advanced Europe breathing down their necks, they set out to reform the education system, its orientation, its content and its output. The initial momentum was provided by the initiatives taken earlier by Sultan Mahmud II (d. 1839), who had established a system of middle schools, called the Rushdiye schools, wherein arithmetic and physics were taught along with the traditional disciplines. Such schools had been established in the principal cities of the empire including Istanbul, Solonika, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Sarajevo and Erzurum. In 1846, a Council of Public Education was established within the Department of Trade but it would take another 20 years before a Ministry of Public Education was set up. Instruction in the public schools was enlarged to include science and mathematics in addition to Ottoman history, geography and the traditional religious subjects. Non-Muslim students received instruction in their own religious disciplines. To coordinate the work of various directorates in education, a Council of Education was set up by the Public Education Act of 1869. Each province also had an education director whose responsibilities included the supervision of schools, buildings, books, syllabus, examinations and teachers’ salaries.
Secular education received a major boost as a result of the Crimean War (1853-1856). Education was made compulsory for all children up to the age of twelve. In 1869, French specialists were brought in as advisors to the Ministry of Public Education. Following their recommendations, a three-tier system of education involving primary, middle and secondary schools was set up wherein mathematics, physics, natural sciences, history, Turkish, Farsi and Arabic languages as well as the local language were taught. At the higher levels, technical institutes were established. These included the War College, Civil Service College, Army and Navy engineering schools, the School of Medicine and the Military Academy. In each institute, besides specialized instruction in a specific field, the humanities and social sciences were also taught.
The evolution of an educational system more responsive to the needs of the empire was slow, in part because of the opposition of the religious establishment. Some of the ulema looked askance at the new education because it meant a decrease in their power. To mollify them, the old madrasahs were continued in parallel with the Rushdiye schools. In addition, there was a lack of trained teachers and textbooks as well as persistent difficulties with the non-Muslim minorities who remained recalcitrant and preferred to stay in their own millet schools. Acceptance of the new education was slow among the Muslims who associated a secular education with the West. As late as 1895, there were far more students in the traditional madrasahs than in the Rushdiye schools. Women’s education lagged far behind that of men. In 1895, whereas 90% of the men had received some schooling, only 30% of the women had done so. To redress this imbalance, a separate higher school for women was founded in Istanbul (1870) but admission remained low. In addition, the tanzeemat established schools for orphans and an industrial institute for poor children where they could receive training in a useful trade. There were also a number of foreign schools set up by missionaries, such as the American Robert College (1863). Their orientation was decidedly anti-Ottoman and anti-Muslim and their presence exacerbated the religious tensions in the empire. It was not until the reign of Sultan Abdul Hameed (1876-1909) that the foreign institutions were brought under the supervision of the state. The funding for the educational reforms came partly from the local communities and partly from the government. The local communities paid for buildings and books for the primary schools; the state helped with guidance on syllabus, oversight and examinations. At the secondary school and higher levels, the provinces and the central government shared the expenditures.
To further higher learning, Grand Vizier Mustafa Rashid Pasha established a Council of Knowledge in 1851. The Council arranged public lectures by eminent scholars and encouraged the translation of books from French, German and English into Turkish. In 1862, Grand Vizier Ali Pasha set up the Ottoman Society of Science, which published a Journal of Science and worked on conceptual issues relating to the development of a civil code to replace the Shariah. The University of Istanbul was established in 1870 with faculties of engineering, science, medicine, philosophy, law and religious studies. But it was closed in 1872 because of a lack of funding and was not reopened until 1900. It was during the same period that Sir Syed Ahmed Khan initiated the Aligarh movement in India and established Aligarh College (1875).
Thus, it was a thousand years after Muslims established the first university at Al Azhar (969), the university system returned to Muslim lands via Europe. Those who had learned from the Muslims now had become their teachers and Islamic civilization, which had lit the torch of learning in Europe, was now borrowing back that light.
The establishment of a secular university increased the cleavage between the secularists and the ulema. Grand Viziers Ali and Fuad, as well as some Ottoman intellectuals in the empire, were keenly aware of the dangers in the developing antagonisms and worked to reduce them. Fuad established the Society for Islamic Studies in 1870, which offered extension courses in Islamic sciences as well as lectures on Shariah and Fiqh. Writers such as Ahmed Cevdat who had received their earlier training in a madrasah and had a keen respect for traditional education, attempted to bridge the gap. But such attempts were unsuccessful; the traditionalists lost the race, and the secularists co-opted the future of the empire.
Lack of sufficient funding precluded a far-reaching overhaul of the educational system. The empire was hard pressed for cash during much of the period of the tanzeemat, a situation that became acute as the Ottomans contracted huge debts to international bankers as a result of the Crimean War. In addition to the funds required for educational and administrative reforms, the modernizing of the armed forces and the huge bureaucracy required to administer the tanzeemat consumed additional resources.
The tax collection system, as a result, had to be streamlined and new sources of revenue had to be found. Taxes on land and sheep, jizya, payments from tributary states and commercial levies were the principal sources of tax revenue in the old system. A tenth of the agricultural produce was collected as tax. Tax on sheep was proportional to the number of animals. Jizya was an obligatory tax on non-Muslim able-bodied men between the ages of 17 and 40, in return for which they were excused from serving in the armed forces. The residents of Istanbul and the principal cities were exempt from the agricultural tax and paid only the sales tax on consumer items so that the principal burden of taxation fell on the farmers. There were import and export duties; however, through the Capitulatory Agreements with the European powers, many of the items imported by foreign merchants were taxed at a preferential rate or not taxed at all. The Capitulations put the Ottoman merchants at a disadvantage and prevented the emergence of local industry that could compete with that of Europe.
Tax collection was inefficient. Local fiefs administered the agricultural and sheep taxes and pocketed some of the proceeds before forwarding the balance to the treasury. Many of the villages were no more than serfdoms where one or two families owned all the land. Tax collection in the cities was supervised by the trade guilds. Religious foundations, mosques and churches were exempt from taxation in return for which they were required to run the maktabs and maintain local roads and bridges. There were no checks and balances; responsibility and accountability were ill defined and the indirect tax collection system was abused at various levels.
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