Özet:

Imams had been part of the “military-bureaucratic estate” of the Ottoman society belonging to the learned establishment in the early modern era. They were also incorporated into the centralized Ottoman administration during the 19th century until the end of the empire. As assistants to the qadis, the Ottoman administrative head of a village or town quarter, imams represented the people in the local settings. Therefore, imams had carried out both spiritual and worldly duties serving the Muslim communities. Given the broad scope of their administrative, financial, and educational functions in the Ottoman society and their roles in the security of their neighborhoods, imams had a variety of services and capabilities in the Ottoman socio-political structure. It seems that imams had to be trained according to their wide variety of functions and multiple spiritual and secular roles in the Ottoman society. However, few studies, if not poorly, examined the educational background of imams in the 19th and 20th century Ottoman empire leading to a somewhat ambiguous understanding of the educational level of the modernized Ottoman religious functionaries in the historiography. Thus, this paper investigates the educational experiences of the 19th and 20th-century Ottoman imams doing justice to their story of training, skills, qualities, and practices in shaping Ottoman religious and everyday life.

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