Modernization/Westernization as depicted in the movies

This Jewel was found by Shokat.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oAV2Wv-Mf4&feature=player_embedded

2 a.m. nonsense

What was going on in the average child's head in late Ottoman schools?

If we attempt to get a picture of Ottoman education in the late 19th /early 20th centuries, we are confounded by the fact that information based primarily on official documentation represents normative views.

One way to get around this is to rely on memoirs of students.....

However, we're stumped again because:

1) Many students wrote their memoirs at later stages of life.

2) Childhood memoirs do not belong to 'ordinary children': they were exceptional.... the lucky ones.....the elite.

Somel (2001) in The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire (1839-1908) gleaned some sense of the feeling of students through his study of memoirs of ordinary students:

There was a general unhappiness of the students during their educational life, particularly at the rusdiyye (primary) and idadi (secondary) schools. Instruction by rod, memorization of fixed textbooks and the atmosphere of intellectual bondage led the students to feel pessimistic and doomed in their lives. The young generation almost sensed a general distrust and hostility of the administration toward them, which in fact complemented the attitude of distrust the minister of education held towards the instructors. These generations of youth increasingly felt hatred toward the educational system and the state administration.

Reminds me of LIFE IN HELL.....

Tidbits on Madrasahs (early modern times: 1453-1789)

Madrasah:

Is derived from the Semitic root (dars) which relates to lesson, learning, and studying.
Madrasah then literally means a place where learning or studying of the lesson happens.

The first Ottoman "Medrese" was created in Iznik in 1331.
Most Ottoman medreses followed the traditions of sunni Islam.

Ottoman Madrasahs offered different branches of study, such as calligraphic sciences, oral sciences, and intellectual sciences but they primarily served the function of an Islamic center for spiritual learning.
"The goal of all knowledge and in particular, of the spiritual sciences is knowledge of God." Halil Inalcik
"Religious learning as the only true science, whose sole aim was the understanding of God's word." Halil Inalcik


Education system:

The Ottoman education system seems followed a linear, structured, fashion with different kinds of schools attached to different kinds of levels. There were the lower madrasahs and then the specialized ones.

Curriculum:*
A) Calligraphic sciences: styles of writing
B) Oral sciences: Arabic language, grammar and syntax
C) Intellectual sciences—logic in Islamic philosophy
D) Theoretical Spiritual sciences: Islamic theology and mathematics
E) Practical Spiritual science: Islamic ethics and politics
* From Halil Inalcik


Religion, schools, and social life:

Madrasahs were built around, or near mosques, revealing the interconnectedness between institutions of learning and religion, with religion dominating much of the knowledge and teachings. The mosques to which medresahs were attached, dominated the social life in Ottoman cities.


Culture of sharing and co-learning

The Islamic world (Egypt, Persia and Turkestan) was interconnected in the early modern period (1453-1789) as scholars traveled around and abroad to other Islamic states exchanging knowledge and receive education from each other.

Uploading/embedding audio files

I struggled with embedding music following the instructions/help pages but have not been able to get it to work yet. The principle seems easy. i.e. upload the file to a file hosting/sharing site, then include the file's address in an "html" embed tag...
I am leaving the piece of code here for now and moving on to CONTENT!








So I finally got this to work! I created a "free" account on "http://www.divshare.com/", uploaded my music file, then copied the embedding code right into my post.
Can do this with images and videos as well.

Enjoy!

Passion fo Percussion

Darbuka....

The sound has never met your ears....

But the rhythm of the darbuka has been radiating in Middle Eastern air since the beginning. Also called the Goblet Drum, it was, in ancient times constructed with whatever was at hand: clay, metal or wood but now in our digital age it could be aluminum, fiberglass or copper.

Its responsive drumhead and resonance produces a distinctively crisp sound, which formed a symbiosis with a key dance form: bellydancing.

Have a listen, but don't blame us if your midsection begins to gyrate......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WzQm1HNvmI

Turkish/Armenian/Greek Music

Is there really any music that can be considered 'Ottoman'?

That empire was a disparate collection of satellites with Istanbul at its centre. Perhaps this song, a fusion of Turkish/Armenian/Greek sounds. is what it might have been like.

Played by itinerant musicians that form the Turkish/Armenian/Greek diaspora in Americ, it's certainly worth a listen.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dwTY-EYQSU

Women's Education

Women's Education in Ottoman Empire from 1700 to 1922

The Turkish education system can be divided into two periods:
1- From the acceptance of Islam up until the foundation of the Turkish public; religion and sultanate system
2- From the Turkish Republic till now; democratic and secular.




During the first period, educational institutions aimed at 20% of the population including

a) The Military Class
b) The Religious Scholars Class
c) Some merchants and artisans.



The most important achievements in primary education
- Inception of compulsory education dating from 1824
- Transition to a modern education with Reorganization (1839-Tanzimat), especially with the recommendation by circulars from 1847 and 1869 that everybody- girl or boy, in villages or towns should attend primary school. The Ministry of National Education was established in 1857.














Figure 1 Mahmud II, the road towards modernity was charted by by Sultan Selim III and Mahmud II.

- During the Second Constitutional Monarchy Period (1908) the law act made education compulsory and attempted to establish a union between education and positivism.

Women were educated in these schools:

• Primary School (Sibyan mektebi); for centuries primary school education had been conducted in the Ottoman Empire. Co-educational schools were segregated by gender in 1858.


• Women’s middle school (Inas rushdies)- 1858, Istanbul.The programme for the courses to be taught included: knowledge of religion, Ottoman grammar, punctuation and structure, Arabic and Persian grammar, domestic sciences, sewing , drawing, Ottoman history, general history and geography.


• High schools (Young women’s idadis)- The first one was opened on March 13 1880, during the period of autocracy in the Ottoman Empire. It closed two years later. The next was opened in 1911in accordance with European school system and regulations. The curriculum offered French, English, German, music and handicraft, domestic work training and Turkish.


• Women’s university (Inas Daŕ ül Fünun). The first women’s university was opened in Istanbul in 1914. Offered courses: mathematics, literature, natural sciences. In 1917 they were allowed to attend the medical, pharmaceutical and chemistry departments.
  Women’s Teacher Training College. Established in 1870 in the vicinity of Ayasofia with two teachers to train women to fill teaching positions.

Schools for minorities and the education of foreign women

Non-Muslim citizens in the Ottoman Empire were given the right to open theri own schools in 1453. they were orginzed in the form of semi-autonomous institutions which, in some ways, would replace the Sultan's authority. before the Tanzimat period, a number of minority and foreign young women's schools had been opened in the Ottoman Empire; e.g. nine French schools, the Avnavutkoy Women's American College in 1871.

Ottoman Empire Maps

The Ottoman Empire at its peak














The Decline of the Ottoman Empire

Women in Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire period in the Land of Israel around the First World War, 1900-1914










Studio portrait of models wearing tradtional clothing from Salonika, Ottoman Empire. This 1873 picture depicts (L to R): A married Jewish woman of Salonika; a Bulgarian woman of Perlèpè (Prilep); a married Muslim woman of Salonika

Turkish Language

Turkish Alphabet and Basic Expressions

http://turkeyjoblink.com/turkey/advice/info_turkey.asp

Ottoman Turkish Script

"Until 1928, as part of his effort to modernice Turkey Mustafa Kemal Atartuk, issued a decree replacing the Arabic script with a version of the Latin Alphabet."

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/turkish.htm

Ottoman Empire - An Educational Primer

• Ottoman Empire begins 1299, ends with the emergence of Kemal Ataturk which brings its

remnants into a secularized democracy

• Ottomans used ideological legitimacy, derived from Islam, to maintain a longstanding

apparatus of power through tax payments and military service

• State-organized education had the primary purpose of educating personnel for this

apparatus of power

• The educational system was neither strongly centralized nor monolithic: given the number

of disparate provinces, considerable variation and divergent educational systems existed

• Generally speaking Sibyan schools (primary level) had a moral/religious focus and were

staffed by imams and Madrasahs ( secondary level) had a combination of religious and

scientific instruction

• Graduates from the Madrasahs became civil servants, imams and teachers, although another

source of state servants came from Enderun schools, which inculated non-Muslim children

in Islam

• Rural populations could not benefit from these schools and so a religious educational

network existed there: dervish lodges, religious orders and dergah (sufi brotherhood)

Ottoman Empire: Literacy

Ottoman Turkish manuscripts Koran Page: Arabic Calligraphy



According to Donald Quataert, a distinguished Ottoman scholar, the Ottoman Empire was one of the greatest, most expensive, and long lasting empires in history. It began prior to 1300 and endured until after World War I. In his book The Ottoman Empire (1700 - 1922) (2004), he dedicates an entry called reading and literacy where he indicates:

1. The Ottoman Empire was characterized as having an oral culture.
2. Few people coulld read and write in the Ottoman Empire.

3. In 1752, Aleppo had 31 Muslim medrese schools, altogether educating hundreds of students primarily reciting the Koran and learning rudimentary arithmetic.


Koran recitation




4. Only a very few women could read: a far smaller proportion than men.
5. The literate rate of Muslims was about 2 - 3 percent at the beginning of the 1800s and 15 percent at its end.

6. Literacy increased from 2 to 15 percen at the beginning of the 1800s due to:


Muslim School

- the emergence of a state sponsored educational system

- the rise of privates school among the millets (religious communuties):

Christian Schools Jewish schools
















. Ottoman Christians
. Sephardic Jews in the city of Salonica had 50 private Jewish schools (9,000 students)

Also, Quataert emphasizes that another measure of literacy is to count the number of books and newspapers beign published. He gives the following statistics of books acquired and published in the Ottoman Empire:

1. In 1752, Aleppo's largest library had only 3,00o volumes.
2. In Istanbul annually publishing figures were:

• Before 1840, eleven books
• In 1908, 285 books by 99 printing houses

3. The circulation of the two leading Istanbul newspaper were:

• 15,000 and 12,000 copies each during Sultan Abdúlhamit II's reign (1876 - 1909)
• 60,000 and 40,000 copies each after the Young Turk Revolution

Mawlawi sufi order

The Mevlevi (Mevlevilk or Mawlawi) were the well-established sufi order in Konya in the Ottoman Empire by the followers of Jalaleddin al-Rumi).  Rumi was a 13th century Persian poet, Islamic jurist, and theologian. 
                                

 "Mevlevi dervishes whirling" in Pera by Jean-Paptiste varn Mour                                      

 They are also known as the Whirling Dervishes due to their famous practice of whirling as a form of dhikr (remembrance of God). Dervish is a common term for an initiate of the Sufi path; the whirling is part of the formal Sema ceremony.

                                                                      

"Mevlevi dervishes in 1887"

Vocal and instrumental music such as kudum, ney, and daf play an important role in the Mevlevi Sema Ceremony.

During the Ottoman era, the Mevlevi order produced a number of famous poets and musicians such as Sheikh Ghalib and Ismail Ankaravi.  The Mevlevi order spread into the Balkans, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. 

Whirling in Istanbul, Turkey 

Links

Hi all, 

I have started to add "interesting/useful" links under the Links heading.

You can do the same if you come across a relevant link.

Mina

Istanbul Technical University

I read Istanbul Technical University was the world's first (third!) technical institution established in 1773. 

It started as the Imperial Naval Engineers' School (Mühendishane-i Bahr-i Humayun), dedicated to training of ship builders and cartographers. 

Its scope broadened over the years (in 1795 to train technical military staff to modernize the Ottoman army and in 1845 to train architects).  In 1909 is bacme a pubic engineering school with training civil engineers as its focus.

Categories

Hi everyone,

If you look, you'll see that I have added a "Categories" heading on the right.  This adds the functionality of organizing posts under different categories.  Just type in the name of the category in the "Label" text box on the bottom-right corner of the post editing page. 
Here are some categories you can use (or add your own just by typing it in the same "Label" text box when editing a new post).
Communication
Literacy
Religion
Science & Technology
Women

Note that categories and labels mean the same thing in blogger.
Mina

A good online resource

Shokat,  Take a look at: http://www.questia.com/read/58745078 It is a link to this book: Justin McCarthy, " The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923,  Longdman, London, 1997  Chapter 8 (p259-282) on Turkish Society and Personal Life, discusses the following: Marriage and the family, Polygamy, Divorce, The Turkish family, Male and female, Authority in the family and the separation of the sexes, Religion and society, Rearing children, Life and death, Birth, Death, The structure of the population.

The beginning...

Chris, Pia, and Shokat,

Hi. Here is our group's google blog.  I am sending your invitations to join as "members of the group" so you will have authorship privileges.    Please respond to the email and join in so that we can get this going.

Let me know if you have any questions or have requests/suggestions on the look of the blog.

Cheers,
Mina