Primary (sıbyan) Schools and Student Numbers in Istanbul during the Era of Mahmut II

Abstract

Primary (Sıbyan) schools were institutions established by sultans, statesmen and wealthy people to provide basic religious education to Muslim children in the Ottoman Empire. These schools, which were an important element of Ottoman social life, were not subjected to supervision or controlled by a central unit/organization, especially since the state did not have an agenda or a policy in the field of education until the second half of the 19th century.
In this context, although there are some assumptions in the literature about the number of sibyan schools in the capital in various centuries, the exact number of sibyan schools in Istanbul is unknown, especially in the first half of the 18th and 19th century.
Despite these explanations, it is understood based particularly on the archival mate-rials of Topkapi Palace that different sultans gave their blessing to the sibyan schools in Istanbul for various reasons in almost every period. Based on these data, the study tries to establish the number of students in Muslim schools in the capital from the end of the 18th century to the end of the Mahmud II period. In addition, issues re-garding the change of the state’s view of its subjects over time are briefly mentioned through the schools.