Schooling in the Ottoman Empire

In matters of schooling, the Ottoman Empire was by no means exceptional for its time. The nineteenth century was characterized by comprehensive public school systems, independent of religion – in North America, Europe, the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and later China as well.³⁶⁰ One cannot assert, therefore, that indigenous initia-tives for a solid elementary education would not have happened without the mission schools. The mission schools merely expedited them. There was, however, an im-balance in the Ottoman Empire between Christian institutions of education, which received support from Europe and North America, and Muslim schools, which lacked qualified teachers. This was compounded by resistance from the Muslim community (ʿulama), which did not want to give up the system of Koran schools (madrasa).³⁶¹ The Ottoman government feared that it was lagging behind the Chris-tians to an even greater degree.³⁶² Nevertheless, change came slowly from Istanbul.

A public school law, notable for its promotion of secular education and reform of the Koran schools, was not introduced until 1869.³⁶³ Educational reform, as a part of the Tanzimat reforms, was supposed to demonstrate to Europe that education and culture were a priority for the empire.³⁶⁴ Unfortunately, the law was not imple-mented consistently in all provinces.³⁶⁵

Belief that education was a concern of the family and religious communities, not the state, remained dominant through the mid-nineteenth century.³⁶⁶ In the first half of the century, foreign organizations³⁶⁷ and native religious institutions opened numerous schools,³⁶⁸ which were strongly oriented towards the European

educa-360 Deguilhem, “State Civil Education in Late Ottoman Damascus,” 224.

361 Scholz, Foreign Education and Indigenous Reaction, 39.

362 Deguilhem, “State Civil Education in Late Ottoman Damascus,” 229.

363 Somel, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 83: The school laws sought to remove elementary education from the hands of religious communities, placing it instead under the oversight of the state. These laws can be seen “as a part of the Ottomanist project by trying to integrate Muslim, non-Muslim and foreign schools within a legal frame-work, and to found government schools for non-Muslim communities.”

364 Somel, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 17; Diab and Wåhlin,

“The Geography of Education in Syria in 1882,” 109: The laws proposed four types of schools:

a four-year elementary education (ibtidāʿī), a military-style school (rushdīya), as well as a preparatory school (iʿdādī) for a more advanced education or high school (sulṭānī). Compared to traditional Koran schools (kuṭṭāb and madrasa), the curricula of these new schools were much more comprehensive. An elementary education included arithmetic, history, geography, and hygiene. In high school, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, civics, Turkish, French, and other languages were taught as well.

365 Cioeta, “Islamic Benevolent Societies and Public Education in Ottoman Syria,” 42.

366 Ibid., 40.

367 For example, the Lebanon schools that were supported by the Scots (see below), the schools founded by Quakers in Brummana, many different British-Syrian schools, the boarding schools of the Kaiserswerth deaconesses, the schools of the Church of Scotland, and also schools opened by individual missionaries. See Womack and Lindner, “‘Pick up the pearls of knowl-edge,’” 130–31.

368 In his article “Education in Syria,” the journalist Shahin Makarius compiled a list of schools that had been founded in the country’s large and small cities. For Beirut, he named not only the

tional canon.³⁶⁹ Protestant missionaries founded schools not only to promote lit-eracy and to bring people closer to the Bible, but also to counteract the influence of Catholic missions, which were deemed just as inacceptable as the false faith of Eastern Christians. In many cases, a Jesuit school opened not far from an Ameri-can mission school, or vice versa. This competitive behavior was clearly advanta-geous for the Syrian population.³⁷⁰ Moreover, it gradually became apparent that the Ameri cans hoped to achieve a kind of monopoly position in education – despite the fact that the ABCFM sought to limit involvement in the field. One example of this is the “Lebanon Schools” initiative of the Syrian brothers Sulayman and Elyas al-Salibi, along with the Englishman John Lowthian. Sulayman was a graduate of the ʿAbeih seminary; he had long harbored the desire to work as a missionary among his native people.³⁷¹ The Salibi brothers and Lowthian planned to open schools, particularly in remote villages in the country’s interior, that would offer children of all faiths an education without the intent of conversion.³⁷² In structure and content, the Lebanon schools closely resembled the American mission schools.³⁷³ Favored materials included books that had been produced by the British and Foreign Bible Society and the American Mission Press – including the Bible, the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism, and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.³⁷⁴ The Lebanon schools adopted geography, grammar, and arithmetic textbooks that were typical for the time, particularly those produced by the Americans, who allowed these schools to obtain them at half price.³⁷⁵ The founders of the native schools initially hoped to receive organizational support from the American Syria Mission, which did not, however, want to assume responsibility for projects that lay outside its absolute control.³⁷⁶ After Sulayman al-Salibi completed his studies at ʿAbeih, he turned down a preaching position at Acre in order to continue on as school director in Bhuwara, to the dismay of some missionaries.³⁷⁷ The Salibi brothers established new schools particularly in areas where the missionaries were not present.³⁷⁸ By

mission schools, but also a girls’ boarding school founded by the English, the Greek Orthodox Zahrat al-Ihsan (Flower of Mercy) school, the school founded by Greek Catholic patriarchs (in Arabic: Baṭriyarkīya) in 1865, the “School of Wisdom” established by Maronite patriarchs in 1874, as well as the public military rushdīya school. See “al-Maʿarif fi Suriyya” (Education in Syria), al-Muqtataf 7 (1882/83), 389–90, cited and translated in Diab and Wåhlin, “The Geogra phy of Education in Syria in 1882,” 117. Public schools were located in Tripoli, Sidon, and Tyre, as well as in the ʿAqqar, Beqaa, and Marjaʿyun regions. See Matthews and Akrawi, Education in Arab Countries of the Near East, 407 (note 1).

369 In 1875, there was an elementary school in nearly every Christian village. See Cioeta, “Islamic Benevolent Societies and Public Education in Ottoman Syria,” 41.

370 Womack, “Lubnani, Libanais, Lebanese,” 14.

371 Abu-Husayn, “The ‘Lebanon Schools,’” 207.

372 Ibid., 205.

373 Ibid., 207.

374 Ibid., 216–17.

375 Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, 137.

376 Smith to Young (Beirut, July 21, 1855): ABC 60 (105), (HHL).

377 Abu-Husayn, “The ‘Lebanon Schools,’” 208.

378 Ibid., 214.

1867, there were already twenty-one schools.³⁷⁹ In 1854, Lowthian and the Salibi brothers opened a high school in Souq al-Gharb; its reputation soon resembled that of the seminary in ʿAbeih.³⁸⁰ Despite their differences, a fruitful cooperation – al-though not always free of criticism – emerged between the Lebanon schools and the Syria Mission.³⁸¹ After the deaths of Lowthian and Sulayman al-Salibi, and Elyas al-Salibi’s retirement from school affairs, a commission was formed in 1873 to ad-vise on the schools’ continued existence. Its participants included the Free Church of Scotland, the American missionaries, and SPC professors.³⁸² Schools without legal title to their land were closed, and two of the remaining school complexes were transferred to the Presbyterian mission in 1888 and 1900.³⁸³ It is striking that the Missionary Herald only mentioned the Salibi schools a single time.³⁸⁴ Appar-ently, even Syrian Protestant school initiatives were seen as competition. In an 1855 letter, Smith denied this suspicion, which had also been voiced by the English. He added that only the ABCFM was in the position to establish educational institutions that could stand the test of time. Smaller initiatives, like that of the Salibi brothers, might be quickly discouraged. According to Smith, the Syrian field of work was too small to be shared with other organizations.³⁸⁵ Similar disagreements arose with the indigenous schools of Mikhaʾil ʿAraman³⁸⁶ and Butrus al-Bustani,³⁸⁷ as will be discussed in the pages to come.

Particularly in the 1880s and 1890s, many public, Muslim-oriented schools in Syria began to challenge the missions’ dominance in the field of education. These schools exclusively served the Muslim population; public schools for Christians did not exist in Syria until the end of the nineteenth century.³⁸⁸ Two of only a few private Muslim school initiatives are particularly worth mentioning. At the National Islamic School in Tripoli (1845–1909), founded by Husayn al-Jisr, modern scientific

379 Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, 136.

380 Ibid., 136.

381 Abu-Husayn, “The ‘Lebanon Schools,’” 205, 210. More precise details cannot be gleaned from Eli Smith’s letters to Cuthbert Young in England. Smith did not believe that Elyas, who was in England to collect donations, could be trusted. According to Smith, rumors had been started by the Salibis that did not correspond to the truth. Simeon Calhoun, director of the seminary in ʿAbeih, declined to serve on the Lebanon Schools committee. See Smith to C. G. Young (Bham-doun, September 22, 1854), (Beirut, July 21, 1855), and (Beirut, March 4, 1856): ABC 60 (105), (HHL). Letters to the editor from an unknown American journal suggested that were problems with Sulayman in particular. See ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 6 (112).

382 Abu-Husayn, “The ‘Lebanon Schools,’” 205, 210.

383 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 1, 384: These included the buildings in Dhur al-Shweir and Souq al-Gharb. The Scots handed them over with the condition that the complexes would be used exclusively for missionary purposes.

384 MH 65 (1869), in: ROS 5, 229: “Dr. Post has preaching at his house every Sabbath, which is attended by about 40 … half of this number are the boys of the school, the teacher of which is a Christian man, and takes a good deal of pains to teach the children aright. The school belongs to the Suleebas.” See also Abu-Husayn, “The ‘Lebanon Schools,’” 206.

385 Smith to Young (Beirut, July 21, 1855): ABC 60 (105), (HHL).

386 See chapter II, section 2.2.

387 See chapter III, section 1.3.

388 Jessup, Fifty-Three Years in Syria, vol. 2, 790.

subjects were taught in addition to religion and French. Newly written and trans-lated works, including those by Cornelius Van Dyck,³⁸⁹ were used at the school.

In addition, the Islamic Society for Benevolent Purposes (Jamʿiyat al-Maqasid al-Khayriyya al-Islamiyya)³⁹⁰ was founded by Muslim reformers and intellectuals in 1878.³⁹¹ Its goal was to offer a modern education, in line with Ottoman reformist thought and conceptions of Islamic morality. The curricula of the society’s four pri-vate schools in Beirut, Sidon, and Tripoli departed sharply from traditional Muslim schools and missionary institutions.³⁹² The society also emphasized schooling for girls, which was still frowned upon by many Muslims at this time.³⁹³ In 1881, there were twenty-one modern Muslim elementary schools for boys (with approximately 2300 students), and seven schools for girls (with approximately 900 students).³⁹⁴