Bureaucratic formation of education in Ottoman provinces (1881-1918)

The bureaucratization of education in the Ottoman provinces was put on a legal basis with the Maarif-i Umumiye Nizamnamesi published on September 1, 1869. Thus, the establishment of education councils and commissions in the provinces became official. After the publication of the regulation, education councils and commissions began to be established in the provinces as of 1870. The first important steps in the bureaucratization of education in the provinces were taken. In 1882, with the appointment of education directors and education inspectors, education administrations were established in the provinces and the second and most important step towards bureaucratization was taken. With the establishment of the education administrations, clerks, accounting clerks, and chest trustees were also appointed to work in the butras. The establishment of education administrations was not completed at the same time in every province. In some provinces, this process was completed very late. The education councils and commissions established in the provinces fulfilled three main duties: personnel affairs and transactions, financial affairs, and educational affairs and transactions. In addition, the duty of inspection was carried out through education directors and inspectors. The main source of the study is the documents of the Ottoman Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey State Archives Directoratee. In addition to archival documents, official publications, salnames, newspapers, memoirs and copyrighted works were utilized. There is no collective study on the bureaucratization of Ottoman education in the provinces. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap and contribute to the history of Ottoman education in the recent period.