ABSTRACT
Entering the twentieth century, the Islamic world saw two lines of development in its historical practice: the tremendous growth of the national history genre and the professionalization of historical research and teaching. Both phenomena had a good deal to do with the increasing contacts and interaction of Muslims with the Western world at the time. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, when Western powers intensified the pace of their colonization of the world, heralding the age of modern imperialism, they also exported nationalism to non-Western regions. As we have already seen in the ‘Urabc Revolution in Egypt, nationalism had become an effective weapon with which Muslims – and peoples of non-Western regions in general – could fight off the brunt of colonialism and imperialism. In order to construct a nation-state and shore up its borders, it seemed imperative to nationalize the production of cultural and
historical discourses. This necessitated the introduction of educational reforms in accordance with the Western model. As early as 1845, the Ottomans had already contemplated establishing a national university, though it (the University of Istanbul) was not founded until 1900. Nonetheless, from the mid-nineteenth century on, a number of modern-type schools at the secondary level emerged in various parts of the Ottoman Empire (some were older schools that had been refurbished); and from their graduates, there emerged many political and intellectual leaders. The Mülkiye school, for example, produced, among others, Murad Bey (?–1912), a future leader of the Young Turks movement, and ‘Abdurrahman Sheref, the last Imperial Historiographer and a transitional figure in the emergence of modern Ottoman/Turkish historiography.1
