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Abstract
In the late nineteenth century, the Arab provinces were drawn closer to a revitalized Ottoman center as a result of administrative changes and improved communication and transportation networks. In an attempt to better their central government connections, provincial Arab elites began to send their sons to imperial schools in Istanbul. Graduates of these schools spent several years in institutions designed to produce competent and loyal Ottoman officials, then entered government service. Many of these men later held important political positions in the Mandate governments established after World War I.
My dissertation focuses on Ottoman education as a means of training Arab provincial elites as Ottoman gentlemen and loyal members of the ruling elite. The process by which these men became Ottoman bureaucrats is examined through a group biography of the fifty men from what is now the Syrian Arab Republic who graduated from the Mulkiye Mektebi, the Ottoman School of Civil Administration, between 1890 and 1915. As students at the Mulkiye, these men formed close bonds with their fellow classmates, who came from all over the empire, and established professional connections which often proved useful in pursuing a career in the Ottoman bureaucracy. They were exposed to European culture and a Western oriented outlook, and gained a strong sense of being Ottoman in terms of their literary interests, manners, and cultural orientation.
Based on their education, cultural orientation, and career choices, most Syrian Mulkiye graduates could be considered Ottomans. Ironically, however, their Ottoman identity was intensifying during a time of increasing ethnic fervor throughout the empire. Syrian Mulkiye graduates did not remain immune from these trends, and became increasingly aware of their Arab heritage even as their Ottoman identity deepened. Most graduates expressed this heightened awareness through an interest in Arab literature and in the Islamic tradition as Arab history and literature. Some scholars have seen these developments as signs of incipient Arab nationalism, but for most Syrian Mulkiye graduates, being a subject of the Ottoman empire in no way contradicted their Arab identity. Culturally, they continued to be Ottoman as well as Arab, and politically, they remained loyal Ottomans.