Around the Black Sea / Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania

by William Eleroy Curtis

The largest branch of the university is the law department, called the Mektebi Hookouk, where an average of more than a thousand young men are attending lectures to prepare themselves for the bar, and for employment by the government as magistrates and in other legal capacities. Many of these young men finish their courses at the Sorbonne, Paris, and other European institutions. More attention is paid to the Shariat, the Mohammedan code, than to European law, because that prevails throughout the entire Ottoman Empire, and is based entirely upon the Koran. Several propositions have been offered for the appointment of a commission to modernize this code, that it may better apply to everyday affairs, but thus far the Mohammedan priests have been able to head them off.

The law school is open to students of all nationalities. The matriculation fee is $5.00 and there are similar fees for tuition and for each examination, which makes the total charge $15.00 for the first year. Parliament has passed a law authorizing the officials of the university to waive the fees of students who bring certificates from local magistrates that they are competent and worthy to attend the lectures, but are not able to pay the charges. During the year 1910, 40 per cent. of the students in the law department took advantage of this exemption.

There are about fifty instructors in the law school, and probably 2,500 different young men attend all or a part of the lectures during the year, coming and going according to their convenience, but the average attendance does not exceed one thousand.

The next largest school is the Mektebi Milkieh, or school of politics, where attendance is obligatory and each student is required to appear at three lectures a day, except on Friday, which is the Moslem sabbath. There are about three hundred students and nine professors, who are teaching the several languages spoken in the Turkish Empire, and other general branches for the purpose of qualifying the graduates to fill official positions in the different provinces and in the various departments of the government. It is a training school for government employés.

The Ulumi Dinieh, or theological department, has ten professors and one hundred and forty students, who are being prepared for the Moslem priesthood. The methods of instruction are said to be considerably in advance of those that prevail in the ordinary medresses, or seminaries. In the latter the students simply commit to memory the Koran and study the commentators on that remarkable book. At the university the instruction is broader and includes other branches of learning.

The medical department has nearly a thousand students and occupies a separate building near the railway station in Haidar Pasha on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus. This school was established many years ago to train medical officers for the army and most of the instructors are Frenchmen and Greeks. There are several Germans also. The course of study covers five years and the examinations are said to be very strict. There are schools of dentistry and pharmacy connected with the medical department.

The department of natural sciences has ten instructors and ninety students, who are mostly engaged in studying chemistry, and the graduates are employed in laboratories connected with the custom house, arsenals, and other military depots. There does not seem to be any fixed course.

The school of literature includes everything else, a sort of omnibus, where a student may receive instruction in almost every branch. And the department is divided into various schools of mathematics, modern languages, finance, engineering and fine arts. The latter has about one hundred and fifty students under the direction of Vosgam Effendi, a sculptor who has made a considerable reputation by his work. Architecture, painting, sculpture, engraving, and etching are taught by twelve instructors. The school occupies a building in the Seraglio near the new museum.

A normal school, called Dar-ul-Mouallumin, was added to the university in 1910, for the purpose of training teachers for the public schools that have recently been established throughout the empire. The corps of instructors are mostly drawn from the American missionary schools, which have been accepted as models by the government, and to secure admission to the normal schools students must have diplomas from one of the branches of the university or from some American missionary school.

The best education to be had in Turkey outside of the American colleges has been given by the military school at Constantinople. Nearly all the leaders of the recent revolution were educated there. It was a pet of Abdul Hamid and at times he treated it with great generosity. The lyceum of Galata Serai, in the foreign quarter of Constantinople, has been the only other native school where Turkish boys could get a respectable education, and some of the best men in the Turkish service have been educated there under a French principal and German and Swiss professors. The school had a bad reputation, however, among the autocrats. It was suspected of being a nursery for breeding enemies of the despotism, and Abdul Hamid compelled several of his ministers to take away their boys who had been sent there, because of the liberal tendencies of the faculty. Five or six years ago, the school was burned down. It was a case of arson, and every body believed that the sultan paid one of his minions to set it on fire. He would never allow the Galata Serai to be rebuilt, and the ruins lay undisturbed until the Young Turk party came into power. Then the school was promptly reorganized and Fikret Bey, a Turkish scholar and poet and a member of the faculty of Robert College, was appointed director. As soon as a new building can be erected the school will resume its old importance.