The legal and administrative construction of sıbyan/ibtidai education in the Ottoman Empire through the framework of legal texts (1824–1913)

The aim of this study is to examine the process through which primary education (sıbyan/ibtidai education) in the Ottoman Empire was legally and administratively constituted between 1824 and 1913, with particular reference to key legislative texts. The study considers Sultan Mahmud II’s Tâlim-i Sıbyan Imperial Edict of 1824/25, the Lâyiha of the Meclis-i Umûr-ı Nâfi‘a (1839), İmamzâde Esad Efendi’s Memorandum (1839), the Instruction of April 1847, the Reform Edict (Islahat Fermanı) of 1856, the Regulation of Public Education (Maârif-i Umûmiye Nizamnâmesi) of 1869, the Ottoman Constitution (Kanun-ı Esasi) of 1876, and the Provisional Law of Primary Education (Tedrisat-ı İbtidaiye Kanun-ı Muvakkatı) of 1913 as the principal normative texts that illuminate the transformation of the legal and administrative organisation of primary education. Conducted using a historical research method grounded in a qualitative approach, the study draws on data collected through document analysis. The principal normative texts, supplementary primary sources, and relevant secondary literature were comparatively analysed within their respective historical contexts. The findings were interpreted through the concepts of centralisation, Margaret Archer’s notions of unification and systematisation, and Max Weber’s approach to rational bureaucracy. The findings indicate that the legal and administrative organisation of sıbyan/ibtidai education was shaped not by a single regulation or reform, but through a long-term process of institutional transformation in which legislative measures introduced at different historical moments were successively articulated with one another. Over the course of this process, primary education was increasingly incorporated into the sphere of direct state regulation and supervision, while compulsory education, school organisation, curricula, inspection, and administrative responsibilities were progressively codified in written rules. In this way, sıbyan/ibtidai education was transformed from an educational domain organised around local and traditional structures into a public service defined and regulated by the state and administered through bureaucratic mechanisms.