medreseler

Medrese (plural: medreseler) is the Turkish term for madrasa, the Islamic religious schools that served as centers of higher learning in the medieval and early modern Islamic world. The word derives from the Arabic madrasa, meaning “place of study.” In the Ottoman Empire and earlier in the Seljuk and Abbasid realms, medreseler were often attached to mosques or built as standalone complexes funded by waqf endowments. They functioned as formal institutions for training scholars, judges, and government officials and were integrated into the state’s religious-legal establishment.

Curricula typically centered on Islamic sciences, especially fiqh (jurisprudence) and usul al-fiqh (principles of Islamic law), hadith, tafsir, kalam (theology), and Arabic grammar. Over time many medreseler also offered instruction in natural philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and logic, reflecting broader scholarly trends in major centers. Instruction was largely oral, with graduates receiving ijazah or icazet licenses signifying the right to teach or issue legal opinions.

Geographic distribution of medreseler was broad across the Ottoman domains as well as in earlier and contemporaneous Islamic polities, including the Mamluk and Fatimid spheres; notable centers appeared in cities such as Istanbul, Edirne, Cairo, Damascus, and Shiraz. In the Indian subcontinent, madrasa networks played a similar role, often under royal patronage.

Decline and legacy: With modernization in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many traditional medreseler were reformed or supplanted by secular schools. Nevertheless, the medrese tradition influenced the structure of religious education and the training of ulema in many countries, and the term remains a concrete historical label for these institutions.