Mathematics Education in the Balkan Societies up to the WWI

UDC 51(091)“19“ Teaching Innovations, 2014, Volume 27, Issue 3, pp. 46–57 Received: 28 October 2014 Accepted: 5 November 2014 Snezana Lawrence1, PhD Original Article Bath Spa University, School of Education, United Kingdom Mathematics Education in the Balkan Societies Up To the WWI Abstract: Whilst the world is indebted to the Greeks for their development of geometry and to Islamic mathematicians for their development of algebra, the history of violence and wars of the Balkan peninsula meant that neither heritages of these two great mathematical cultures survived into the 19th century. Th is paper is based on the research done for the history of mathematics in the Balkans and will be limited to the development of mathematical education in three Balkan societies: Greek, Ottoman, and Serbian, culminating in the early 20th century. It will try to explain how the three cultures of mathematics education were conceptualized, and how their development was infl uenced by the mathematical cultures of Western Europe. Th e systems of schools and universities, the fi rst professors of mathematics at the universities in the three countries, mathematical syllabi, and some of the fi rst textbooks in mathematics will be mentioned. Key words: 19th century mathematics education, Balkan mathematics, Greek mathematics, Ottoman mathematics, Serbian mathematics. Introduction and their military apparatus. Th e second focal point will be the mathematics of two Orthodox popula- Th is paper focuses on the development of tions then under the Ottoman Empire: Greeks and Balkan mathematics education, which will be cov- Serbs. Greeks were the predominant Orthodox eth- ered through the history of three national schools nie, both in terms of their heritage and cultural in- of mathematics. In particular, it deals with identify- fl uence, and the wide spread of the Greek diaspo- ing and describing the types of institutions in three ra, with merchant communities scattered through- societies of the Balkans in the latter part of the 18th out the Empire, gave them an enviable position in and most of the 19th century. First, we will look at terms of their ability to import learning from for- the mathematics of the ruling Ottomans, and exam- eign countries. Finally, we will look at the particular ine how mathematical culture developed under the and relatively small national mathematical culture, programme of modernization of the Ottoman state that of Serbia, and examine a personal story that 1 [email protected] 46 Mathematics Education in the Balkan Societies Up To the WWI contains many ingredients considered typically Bal- Students entered madrasas aft er their ba- kan, interwoven with a love of mathematical studies. sic schooling in the mektebs (equivalent to primary schooling), and spent years rising through the ranks (twelve in total) corresponding to the ranks of their Th e Mathematics of the Ottomans teachers. Aft er completing studies in madrasas, a student may become a tutor, enter the teaching pro- Th e Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) at the fession or, if all he had completed all grades, enter height of its power in the sixteenth and seventeenth the ulema hierarchy becoming a learned man or a centuries spread across three continents, from south religious cleric. Th is type of education was based on eastern Europe, to north Africa and the Middle East, tradition, and the handing on of existing knowledge, and included territories from Gibraltar to the Per- rather than the development of new concepts (Zilfi , sian Gulf and from modern-day Austria to Sudan 1983). Th e major challenge to this system, through and Yemen. Th e relative religious tolerance meant wider political developments, came aft er the Otto- that non-Islamic ethnies were allowed to profess mans lost the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Th e Otto- their faith.2 Until the end of the eighteenth century mans subsequently fought a number of wars with learning developed slowly in the Balkan principali- the Russians, eventually establishing the Habsburg- ties. Ottoman-Russian borders in southeast Europe. At Th e Ottomans developed schools known as the same time they lost large areas of the Empire, madrasas, (literally meaning ‘place where learning is such as Egypt and Algeria, to Britain and France. done) which were founded throughout the Muslim Th e Ottoman government therefore became in- world from the ninth century. Th e primary aim of creasingly concerned by two major problems: the madrasas was to instruct in the science of jurispru- loss of power and infl uence on the one hand, and dence. It is signifi cant to note that certain madrasas the perceived decline and corruption of the military included teaching on ‘rational’ sciences such as log- apparatus on the other. Th ere was hence seen to be ic, ethics, Arabic language subjects, and arithmetic, an urgent need for modernizing of the army and the apart from the religious and jurisprudence subjects. accompanying technology, which included changes 3 It is however, generally believed that individual ma- in the learning of mathematics. drasas included mathematical sciences and astron- At its core, this modernizing process was omy if the madrasa professors studied such scienc- not motivated by ideas of Western Enlightenment. es and were therefore immersed themselves in such Rather, the Empire sought to create an education- subjects.4 al system geared towards meeting military needs by introducing Western engineering and scientifi c 2 Roudometof (1998: 12) describes ethnie thus as a pre- learning. Th e importation of western sciences there- modern concept of identity: ‘An ethnie may have the fol- fore related to the art of war rather than to peace lowing characteristics to diff ering degrees: a collective or the pursuit of knowledge itself. One of the ma- proper name, a myth of common ancestry, shared histor- jor problems that eventually arose through this pro- ical memories, some elements of common culture (e.g., language, religion), an association with a specifi c home- cess was that of exclusion. Th e new educational pro- land, and a sense of solidarity’. See also Smith (1986: 40). gramme that emerged, at least for the fi rst half-cen- 3 Under the reign of Kanuni Sultan Suleyman (1495- tury, and its close link with the military goals, ex- 1566) this trend was most widely spread, but became less cluded de facto the many ethnic groups whose cul- common aft er the end of the 16th century. See Sürmen, ture was linked to Christianity rather than to Islam. Kaya, Yayla, (2007). 4 See Lawrence (2008). 47 Snezana Lawrence However, as the French and Turks had a long (1338-1449) who was a head of Samarkand madra- history of cooperation since the sixteenth century, sa and published shortened and simplifi ed versions when France received permission to trade in all Ot- of Elements under the title EsKalü’t-te’sis (c. 1400). toman ports, the French and then other Western Rifk i’s example tells of an overwhelming need mathematics came into the Ottoman Empire even- to translate original works into national languages tually through this channel. into from the western sources rather than from the First, a Naval Engineering College was found- existing translations of the original work. Th e prac- ed in Istanbul, at the Golden Horn – a fresh water tice indicates that the importation of western ideas estuary dividing old and new Istanbul – in 1773, un- of mathematics and of education corresponded with der the guidance of Baron de Tott.5 A Military En- the production of new ways of learning even of the gineering College was established in 1795, with a things that were already known. Th is phenomenon mathematical syllabus almost identical to that of is an interesting one that perhaps requires further the Naval College, but with the additional subject of documentation and consideration, as it indicates fortifi cation. Th ese two institutions were the fi rst in that the western sources seemed to be deemed more the Empire to teach modern mathematics, focussing suitable for the purpose of teaching at the newly es- on the sciences and their application to military and tablished institutions of higher learning, rather than civil engineering, and departing from the traditional the original, native sources. Islamic teaching of the madrassas. Th e two colleges Perhaps this is because at the beginning of later merged and were, in eff ect, the origin of the Is- the nineteenth century Ottoman mathematics was tanbul Technical University. strongly infl uenced by military preoccupations, and Among the fi rst group of teachers at the Naval was mostly limited to the translation of French and Engineering College was Gelenbevi Ismail (1730- English texts for use fi rstly, in the newly established 1790), who is credited with introducing logarithms military engineering colleges, and later for the use to the Empire. Th e second generation of teach- in teacher training colleges. Th e mathematics found ers initiated a more organised programme of west- in French and English sources was deemed modern ern mathematics by translating texts into Turkish. for such uses. Likewise, the training into such math- Huseyin Rifk i, for example, who taught at the Mili- ematical culture became necessary. Kerim Erim was tary Engineering School became a prolifi c transla- the fi rst Ottoman mathematician to be granted a tor of western works. Th is was a part of the wide- PhD in mathematics in 1919, at the Friedrich-Alex- ranging sentiment among the Ottoman scholars to ander University of Erlangen.6 increasingly look to the West rather than East, or to As a consequence, because the local cultural re-examine the Arabic mathematical heritage (Sür- tradition was abandoned in favour of the modern men et al., 2007).

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