After the proclamation of the Tanzimat Edict, Ottoman education entered a period of thorough renewal. One of its most concrete products in the provinces was the rüştiye, a school that created a new step between the primary sıbyan mektebi and higher learning. Amasya had been regarded for centuries as one of Anatolia's centers of learning because of its madrasas; that the rüştiye opened here, and according to some of the sources on the site of a madrasa, makes it a typical example of a transitional period in which the old and the new stood side by side.

Documented information on the rüştiyes of Amasya is limited, and the sources do not always agree on dates or on the name of the madrasa that was demolished. Points on which the sources conflict or remain uncertain are noted where they arise.

The Gap Between Primary School and Madrasa

Until the early nineteenth century the education of an Ottoman child consisted of two extremes. Children of five or six learned to read the Qur'an, basic religious knowledge and the four arithmetic operations at the neighborhood sıbyan school beside the mosque, and those who wished to go further attended a madrasa. Sıbyan schools had no central organization and no common curriculum; they were run on the income of pious endowments according to the conditions each founder had set, and most of their teachers were men trained in madrasas. They lacked equipment, and worldly and experimental knowledge was, with few exceptions, not taught.

The absence of an intermediate stage had also drawn the attention of observers at the time. In his work published in 1850, Ubicini wrote that one of the most dangerous defects of the old system was the lack of secondary education: children had to go on to higher study as soon as they left school, and those who did not see it through to the end forgot what they had learned after a few years of reading and returned to where they had started. Years later the Minister of Education Emrullah Efendi would summarize the aim of the rüştiyes as easing the transition of those who had finished primary schooling to higher education, increasing their knowledge and experience, and filling a gap that was acknowledged to exist.

The first step toward a solution was taken under Mahmud II. After abolishing the Janissary corps in 1826, the sultan had come to see that the need for trained officials and officers could not be met by the old institutions, and in 1838 the need for civil schools alongside the military ones came before the government. The opening of the rüştiyes grew out of this initiative: the Mekâtib-i Rüşdiye Nezâreti (Ministry of Rüştiye Schools) was established in 1839, followed by the Mekâtib-i Umûmiye Nezâreti in 1846 and, in 1857, by the Maârif-i Umûmiye Nezâreti, regarded as the first ministry-level educational organization. The Maârif-i Umûmiye Nizamnâmesi (General Education Regulation) of 1869 became the basic text defining the principles of schooling and of instruction in the rüştiyes. Because the reformers chose to build a civil bureaucracy outside the ulema rather than confront the madrasas openly, the rüştiyes did not close the madrasa; they opened a new path beside it as an alternative.

The spread of the rüştiyes was not easy. Finding school buildings, teaching equipment and qualified teachers caused great difficulty, and leaving the cost of opening each school to the provinces slowed progress. The need for teachers later required teacher-training schools such as the Dârülmuallimîn and the Dârülmuallimât. How firmly the rüştiye took root in Amasya must be read within this general framework.

The Madrasa Tradition in Amasya

Amasya's educational tradition goes back to the Danishmendid and Seljuk periods. The Halifet Gazi Madrasa was built between 1222 and 1228, and its first professor was Kadı Burhâneddin. The Dârüşşifa Madrasa, founded in 1309 under the Ilkhanids, offered practical medical training, and Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin served there for about fourteen years. The Alaca Yahyâ Bey Madrasa was built by Şadgeldi Paşa in 1373, with Sadreddin Artuk Türkmânî appointed as its first professor. In the Ottoman period the number of madrasas grew with foundations such as those of Yörgüç Paşa and Bayezid Paşa, the Bayezid II Complex and the Büyük Ağa; the number of learned institutions reached its peak between 1398 and 1592.

After Amasya was attached to the province of Sivas, having been a paşa sanjak, this brilliant period slowed down; the decline continued from 1800, and many of the institutions of learning and charity fell into ruin. Even so, the city had not entirely lost its character as a cultural center. The traveler G. Perrot, who toured Anatolia in 1861, described Amasya as the "Oxford of Anatolia" and wrote that nearly two thousand students were studying in its madrasas. Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi, who wrote a work on the city at the beginning of the nineteenth century, likewise calls it a city of students. The rüştiyes settled into the middle of this accumulation.

In population, too, the city was not small. In the nineteenth century the population was about twenty-five to thirty thousand, and the number of neighborhoods was about thirty-six. At the end of the century the sanjak of Amasya, attached to the province of Sivas, consisted of the districts of the center, Merzifon, Vezirköprü, Osmancık, Gümüşhacıköy, Ladik, Havza and Mecidözü.

Ziyâ Paşa and the Amasya Reform

The turning point in Amasya's modern school history is the governorship of Ziyâ Paşa, the poet and statesman who was among the leading figures of the Young Ottomans. Appointed mutasarrıf of Amasya after Grand Vizier Âlî Paşa persisted in his determination to remove him from Istanbul, Ziyâ Paşa stayed there for about two years. Halil İnalcık's review of Kenan Akyüz's document-based study places the governorship in 1863-1865; the biography in the Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives the length of his stay as two years and places his transfer to Canik in 1865. The date of appointment is not certain in the sources, while the date of departure agrees on 1865.

In these two years Ziyâ Paşa launched an unprecedented building program. In the center of Amasya and its five districts he had six government mansions, six schools, one idadi, six clock towers, a prison building, a bedesten and shops built, and had new roads opened in the city center. These activities are known as the Amasya Reform. In his review of Akyüz's book, Halil İnalcık lists among these works a bridge, a market, a bedesten, a government mansion, six primary schools, an idadi, a prison and roads, and relays the judgment that Ziyâ Paşa's achievements deserve to be received with appreciation.

The money for these works did not come from the central treasury. The funds needed for the Tanzimat administration's public works in the provinces were raised through local levies, and Ziyâ Paşa resorted to the same method, placing financial burdens on local notables and the ulema and extending the levies to the general population. According to the documents summarized by İnalcık, those who resisted were led by Lûtfullah, who had served as mufti of Zile for many years, and Hacı Hasan Ağa of the Zile notables. The Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives the mufti's name as Feyzullah Efendi; the difference in the name is a divergence of reading between the sources. This group, backed by Amasya's leading families, the ulema and the merchants, accused Ziyâ Paşa of abuse of office, while Ziyâ Paşa asserted that their fortunes had been acquired by illegitimate means and entered the struggle. In the end the rumors reached the Sublime Porte and Ziyâ Paşa was transferred to the governorship of Canik in 1865. İnalcık stresses that the real conflict that occupied him was this struggle with the local notables and ulema, and notes that the episode should be assessed within the broad Anatolian picture in which there were both arbitrary governors and notables who exploited the people.

A Rüştiye in the Place of a Madrasa

The sources speak in two different ways about Amasya's first rüştiye building. According to the Amasya entry of the Türk Maarif Ansiklopedisi, the mutasarrıf Ziyâ Paşa demolished in 1865 the Alaca Yahyâ Bey Madrasa, built by Şadgeldi Paşa in 1373, and had a rüştiye school built in its place. In the education section of the same entry, however, it is written that the Ministry of Education did this in 1864. The same entry also records that the Narlı Bahçe Madrasa, built of wood in 1754 by Türüdüzâde Hafız Süleyman Ağa, was demolished by Ziyâ Paşa in 1865. From this information it cannot be said with certainty which madrasa was demolished for the rüştiye or who started the demolition; the 1864-1865 interval and the name of the Alaca Yahyâ Bey Madrasa are the points on which the sources overlap. These arrangements, carried out with the support of the Ministry of Education, formed the beginning of rüştiye education in Amasya.

Madrasas lived on the income of endowments; the new school was an institution tied to the state's own educational organization. Replacing a madrasa with a state school also suggests the tension between the reform-minded bureaucracy and the ulema, but none of the sources examined contains a direct account of how the demolition was received in the city.

The six schools and one idadi built by Ziyâ Paşa are mentioned in the same years as the rüştiye. Here there is an uncertainty: the founding date of the Amasya Mekteb-i İdâdîsi is given in the Türk Maarif Ansiklopedisi as 1895. Whether the idadi mentioned in Ziyâ Paşa's time was a separate and earlier institution, or is regarded as a forerunner of the school of 1895, cannot be understood from the publications available to us. That the rüştiyes formed an accumulation that prepared the ground for the opening of the Amasya İdâdîsi in later years is, however, a widespread assessment.

Structure and Instruction of the Rüştiye

The rüştiyes were intermediate schools that, after basic education, systematically taught subjects such as reading and writing, arithmetic, geography, history and religious knowledge; they served as a bridge between the classical mektep and the idadi. Instruction proceeded in graded classes, according to a set program and with regular examinations, in an environment where textbooks, blackboards, maps and globes were used. For a child coming from the sıbyan school these tools were a new experience.

The staff of the rüştiyes was kept modest. As can be understood from a study based on the 1898-1903 education yearbooks for the twenty-two rüştiyes of the province of Sivas, two or three teachers served according to the number of students; beside the head teacher called the "muallim-i evvel" each rüştiye had a calligraphy teacher, and where the student body was large a "muallim-i sânî" post was added. The same study reports that ten of the twenty-four rüştiyes of the province were built in the reign of Abdülhamid II. Rüştiye teachers were often people from the educated circle of the city.

Rüştiye graduates prepared both for state service and for the idadi and higher schools. The opening of these schools contributed to rising literacy and to the formation of a new generation of educated people in the provinces. According to the assessment within the TTK publication, the rüştiyes played a distinct role in Ottoman renewal by carrying new teaching methods and a changing mentality to the provinces and by training those who would take up important posts in the Second Constitutional period.

Amasya and Its Surroundings in Numbers

The first numerical information on the schools of Amasya rests on the Sivas Yearbook of 1870. According to it, 718 Muslim students attended twenty-seven primary schools in the city, 195 students were in an Armenian sıbyan school, and thirty-one madrasas had twenty-six preachers, twenty-three imams, forty-four professors and 278 students on record. The summary as relayed contains no separate entry for the rüştiye.

Records from twenty years later are clearer. When Vital Cuinet came to Amasya in 1891, he counted two rüştiyes with eight teachers among the Muslim schools; since the student figures are evidently corrupted in the encyclopedia's rendering, they are not repeated here. According to the Sivas Yearbook of 1892, one rüştiye and four primary schools were opened in Amasya. Thus it can be seen that Amasya had more than one rüştiye in the 1890s; which one was opened in 1892 is not stated in the sources.

The data of Togay Seçkin Birbudak, who examined the education yearbooks of 1898-1903, show the situation of the sanjak of Amasya in more detail. The province had one idadi each in Sivas, Amasya and Tokat. The number of students at the Amasya İdâdîsi is given as 91 in 1898, 72 in 1899, 111 in 1900, 121 in 1901 and 97 in 1903; nine of them were non-Muslim in 1903. In the rüştiyes of the sanjak's districts, 91 students were studying in Merzifon in 1903, 120 in Ladik, 65 in Gümüşhacıköy, 30 in Köprü, 46 in Mecidözü and 35 in Havza. In the same years about a thousand people were educated each year in the province's twenty-four rüştiyes in total. The same source also shows that 530 students were enrolled in nineteen madrasas in the district of Amasya; at the end of the century the rüştiye and the madrasa were still operating side by side.

The Education of Girls

The rüştiyes were opened first for boys, and in time they made room for the education of girls as well. The girls' schools known as inas rüştiyes were the institutional beginning of women's education and, unlike the boys' rüştiyes, had needlework in their programs. The situation in Amasya, however, has not been fully established from documents. In the 1898-1903 yearbooks examined by Birbudak, the only girls' rüştiye of the province of Sivas is the Sivas İnas Mekteb-i Rüşdîsi in the center; no separate inas rüştiye appears in Amasya in these years. According to the Türk Maarif Ansiklopedisi, the number of girls' schools in Amasya rose to two in 1912, and Cuinet also writes that in 1891 girl students attended primary schools. That an inas rüştiye was opened in Amasya could not be verified in these sources; the institutional steps of girls' education in the city appear at the primary school level.

Against the Idadi and Foreign Schools

The Amasya Mekteb-i İdâdîsi was founded in 1895. The idadi was the higher step to which rüştiye graduates could proceed; the yearbooks show that Geometry, Bookkeeping, Geography, Ethics, Religious Sciences, Arithmetic, French, Turkish, Drawing, Calligraphy and Persian were among the subjects common to the three idadis of the province of Sivas. The same yearbooks record that the idadis of Sivas, Amasya and Tokat served a small number of non-Muslim students besides the Muslim ones. Because non-Muslim students went mostly to their own community schools, demand for these idadis was low.

Non-Muslim community schools were also organized at the rüştiye level: in 1903 there were fourteen non-Muslim rüştiyes in the province of Sivas, one of them in the district of Amasya and three in Merzifon. Foreign schools were also active in the region. In Merzifon there were a mixed idadi of American Protestants and a boys' idadi of the French Jesuits, and in Amasya the Bartevian College belonging to the Armenians and a Catholic French school had been opened. In 1883 a French mission established a church and a school and carried on missionary activity, and in 1892 Muslim families were forbidden to enroll their children in these schools. The spread of state schools in this environment can be read together with the decision forbidding Muslim families to send their children to foreign schools.

The Constitutional and Republican Periods

Under the Constitutional administration of 1908, new initiatives for spreading education are seen in Amasya. Topçuzâde Halil Efendi and his brother had a new school built in place of the old rüştiye school; Zileli Hasan Efendi had two schools built, one in the Tatar neighborhood and one in the courtyard of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, and the Amasya Committee of Union and Progress Club had a school opened in the Kazancı neighborhood under the name Ravza-yı İttihat. Hatipzâde Mehmed Emin Efendi had a madrasa built on the site of the Mimarbaşı Hasan Efendi School near the Burmalı Minare, and Yumuk Osmanzâde Mehmed Hamdi Efendi a library in the courtyard of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque. In 1912 the number of idadis in Amasya rose to six and the number of girls' schools to two, and a foundation school and five neighborhood schools were opened in the provincial center.

The Tedrisât-ı Umûmiye Kanun-ı Muvakkati (Temporary Law on General Education) issued in 1913 regarded the rüştiyes as the highest level of primary education and merged the rüştiyes and the primary schools under the name "mekâtib-i ibtidâiye-i umûmiye"; many articles of this law remained in force until the Law on the Unification of Education. In the first years of the Republic Amasya had a lycée, a dârülhilafe and an idadi. In 1924, when the sultânîs were converted into lycées, the Arabic and Persian courses were abolished. The school opened in 1895 as the Mekteb-i İdâdî continued from 1926 as Amasya Middle School; its lycée section opened in the 1954-1955 school year, its middle-school section was phased out gradually in 1993-1994, and the school serves today under the name Amasya Anatolian High School. The rüştiyes, for their part, were transformed into middle schools in the Republican period and carried on the tradition of education.

Chronology

1222-1228: Mübârizüddin Halifet Gazi has the Halifet Gazi Madrasa built in Amasya; its first professor is Kadı Burhâneddin.

1373: Şadgeldi Paşa has the Alaca Yahyâ Bey Madrasa built.

1839: The Mekâtib-i Rüşdiye Nezâreti is established.

1857: The Maârif-i Umûmiye Nezâreti is established.

1861: G. Perrot visits Amasya and writes that there are about two thousand students in the madrasas.

1863-1865: Ziyâ Paşa is mutasarrıf of Amasya (the starting date is read differently in the sources).

1864-1865: A rüştiye school is built in place of a madrasa; the sources attribute the demolition in one place to the Ministry of Education and in another to Ziyâ Paşa.

1869: The Maârif-i Umûmiye Nizamnâmesi is issued.

1870: According to the Sivas Yearbook there are twenty-seven primary schools and thirty-one madrasas in Amasya.

1883: A French mission opens a church and a school in Amasya.

1891: Vital Cuinet records two rüştiyes in Amasya.

1892: According to the Sivas Yearbook one rüştiye and four primary schools are opened in Amasya; Muslim families are forbidden to enroll their children in foreign schools.

1895: The Amasya Mekteb-i İdâdîsi is founded.

1908: Topçuzâde Halil Efendi and his brother have a new school built in place of the old rüştiye school.

1912: The number of idadis in Amasya rises to six and the number of girls' schools to two.

1913: The Tedrisât-ı Umûmiye Kanun-ı Muvakkati makes the rüştiyes the highest level of primary education.

1924: Sultânîs are converted into lycées and the Arabic and Persian courses are abolished.

1926: The idadi continues instruction under the name Amasya Middle School.

Bibliography

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