1. B. C. Fortna (2000) Imperial Classroom: Islam, The State and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 90.
2. M. Mann (1984) ‘The Autonomous Power of the State, Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results’, Archives européennes de sociologie, XXV, 185–213.
3. S. A. Somel (2001) The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire 1839– 1908 (Leiden & Boston & Köln: Brill), pp. 43–4. In the Ottoman Empire before the Tanzimat era (1839–76) started there was no secular institutions that would serve as secondary or high schools. Muslim pupils who proved their academic skills in elementary school (sıbyan/Quran mektebi) proceeded to the *medrese and carried on their education in those religious institutions. In 1846 owing to the increasing demand of the bureaucracy for civil servants as well as the need of military schools for qualified students the Tanzimat regime started opening secondary schools called rüşdiye. The Regulation of Public Education of 1869 (see below) announced that towns larger than 500 households would be entitled to have a rüşdiye school. Accordingly expenses for the erection of school buildings and the rüşdiye teachers’ salaries would be paid out of a town’s budget for educational purposes. Graduates of the sıbyan mekteps would be accepted to the rüşdiyes without an entrance exam. Rüşdiye education would last 4 years. The Regulation of 1869 also introduced high schools to the Ottoman education system under the name of idadi. Idadis, which would last three years, were designed to gather the students from Muslim and non-Muslim communities together in the same classroom in order to indoctrinate them with the ideals of Ottomanism. Both rüşdiye and idadi schools proliferated during the Hamidian era (1876–1908). Graduates of rüşdiyes were admitted to the idadis after they successfully passed an entrance exam and paid the enrolment fee (12 Ottoman liras). During the Second Constitutional era (1908–20), the secondary education system was re-structured and idadis were constructed as quasi-vocational schools where the syllabus for the last two grades concentrated on industrial, commercial or agricultural courses. In 1909, idadis became fee charging schools and from 1910 onwards uniforms were introduced for idadi students. Expenses for the erection and maintenance of the idadi school buildings as well as the salaries of the idadi school teachers were paid out of the educational budget of the town where they were located.
4. Y. Akyüz (1997) Türk Eğitim Tarihi Başlangıçtan 1997’e, 6th edn (Istanbul: Istanbul Kültür Üniversitesi Yayınları), p. 153.
5. The regulation was part of a larger reform package that had been pressed upon the Porte by the French government, and Duruy, who had previously examined the Ottoman educational system and ascertained its deficiencies, was personally involved in constructing the regulation. See C. Y. Bilim (2002) Türkiye’de Çağdaş Eğitim Tarihi 1734–1876 (Eskişehir: Anadolu Üniversitesi Yayınları), pp. 165–6.