Monograf Journal Edebiyat ve İktidar (2014 / 1) | Page 104

From Elifba to Alphabet: The History of Learning to Read • 105

ODAK

From Elifba* to Alphabet:
The History of Learning to Read

B

Benjamin C. Fortna
Interview: Melek Aydoğan**

enjamin C. Fortna started his education at Yale University, afterwards got his MA from Columbia University and completed
his education with doctoral degree at The University of Chicago. He
taught Islamic History at the Washington University in St. Louis. He currently is professor
in the History of the Middle East at SOAS and
gives a lecture titled Modern Middle-Eastern.
His first book, on the subject of education in
the Ottoman Empire, entitled Imperial Classrom: Islam, the State and Education in the Late Ottoman Empire was
translated into Turkish with the title of Mekteb-i Hümayûn: Osmanlı
İmparatorluğu’nun Son Döneminde İslam, Devlet ve Eğitim.

“Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the
Early Turkish Republic” is your second book translated into
Turkish, about the development of reading practice based on
written documents such as course books, magazines, memories circumstantially influenced by the state and power in
the Late Ottoman and Early Republic periods. In this book,
you handle an issue different from your first book “Imperial
Classroom: Islam, Education and the State in the Late Ottoman Empire.” Why do you prefer this subject that different
from the affairs of the state?

Thank you. Yes. One of the problems, one of the frustra-

tions of the first book was my inability to get beyond the domain
of the state, or beyond the area controlled by the state. So, I could
learn lots of things from state records and state archival materials about the state’s approach to education; what the state wanted
to do; what buildings it built and the kinds of teachers it hired,
the curriculum it designed, etc. but it was very difficult to understand how the people experienced the education. In other words,
the state supplied this and we can learn about the supply from the
state’s side but the demand, the acceptance side from the people
remained somewhat distant or difficult to understand. Occasionally we found sources that showed individual stories, reactions
and experiences of students or teachers that showed a bit of the
private side of the education but in my next project I wanted to
move away a bit more from the domain of the state and to try

*Arabic Alphabet
**Eskişehir Osmangazi University, Turkish Language & Literature Department, MA
student [e-mail]

monograf 2014/1