Abstract:

When analyzed history from past to present, it can be said that education is one of the most important factors that helping development of societies. Especially, it was seen that education was so important tool for great extensive empires which had proved their dominance to transform their cultural resources to next generation and and guide them. It is easier for societies to get up to date and to get adaptation for modernite with the help of education. In this context, useful findings are provided when investigating education system and education institutes of Ottoman Empire that had seen education as an important. This article explores a series of education reforms carried out in the time of Sultan Abdulhamid II. The Ottoman education system was originally based on medrese institutes run by religious endowments (waqfs). With the decline of the empire since the seventeenth-century, the institutes which were dependent financially and socially on waqfs began to corrupt. Following the first step taken by Sultan Mahmud II to improve the situation, systematic reforms came to be keenly realized under the reign of Sultan Abdulaziz. Abdulhamid II introduced the central system into the realm of education which had been in disorder at the time. He made established a lot of schools for primary, secondary and higher educations, as well as for training female and male teachers, in all parts of the state. His aim was the spread of education and its qualitative improvement, in the conviction that the educated young people who absorbed the principles of Islam would take the future of the empire. It is thought to contribute the related literature and to guide future studies in this area through presented knowledge of this study.

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