Education, early Ottoman - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Zilfi, Madeline C.
Leiden
Brill
(1,622 words)
In the early Ottoman Empire, up until the modernising reforms of the nineteenth century, and with the exception of children's Qurʾān schools (mektep, maktab, kuttāb) , formal education for Muslims was essentially male and effectively divided between two distinct vocational expectations. The empire's system of religious colleges, medrese s ( madrasa s), prepared youths for religious careers. Their more secular counterparts, the schools of the imperial palaces (Enderun-i Hümayun Mektebi, Enderūn-i Humāyūn Mektebi) in Edirne and Istanbul, groomed young men for positions in the imperial household or its