Centuries Before UDL: Imam Birgivi (1573AD) and His Vision for Inclusive Education

During my time at UKM around 2013, my research focused heavily on Birgivi Mehmed Efendi’s ideas regarding religious reform. Those were also my early years working as an educator at the Khalifah Education Foundation. Looking back at my subsequent training in inclusive education, it is fascinating to observe how Imam Birgivi conceptualised inclusive pedagogy long before it was formalised into the contemporary frameworks we recognise today.

Although the modern lexicon of “inclusive education” and “special educational needs” did not exist in sixteenth-century Ottoman discourse, Birgivi Mehmed Efendi’s pedagogical framework demonstrates a profound commitment to expanding access, removing barriers, and enabling learning for marginalised groups. His approach to inclusivity was fundamentally rooted in his theological conviction that foundational religious knowledge (‘ilm-i hal) is a universal obligation necessary for salvation (Krstić, 2021).

To ensure this knowledge reached everyone, he addressed the democratisation of learning through socio-economic reform, linguistic vernacularisation, and pedagogical simplification (Ivanyi, 2012).

Overview: Schooling, Learning, and Children in the Ottoman Era

During the Ottoman period, a child’s connection to learning was primarily forged through a highly structured, religiously anchored educational system that sought to integrate cognitive acquisition with moral and spiritual formation. The foundational stage of this system was the sıbyan mektebi (primary school) or mu’allimhane, institutions that were established in nearly every town and village to teach young children the Qur’an, basic Islamic morality, reading, and writing. Within this system, particularly during the era of the influential sixteenth-century scholar Birgivi Mehmed Efendi (1523–1573), concepts akin to contemporary inclusive education, such as overcoming socio-economic barriers, fostering empathetic teacher-student dynamics, and ensuring cognitive accessibility, were systematically addressed through the waqf (pious endowment) system and innovative vernacular pedagogies.

Equal Access and the Removal of Socio-Economic Barriers

Birgivi tackled the fundamental issue of equal educational access by fiercely opposing the commodification of learning, which he viewed as an institutional barrier preventing the poor from acquiring knowledge. He argued that teaching the Qur’an and religious sciences was an act of worship intended to draw the believer closer to God. Consequently, he categorically condemned the practice of demanding or accepting wages (ujra) for these services (Zilfi, 1988).

By insisting that scholars and teachers must not turn religious instruction into a means of making a livelihood, Birgivi theoretically envisioned an educational landscape free of financial obstacles (Mandaville, 1979). In his view, monetising education corrupted the teacher’s intention and unjustly restricted the transmission of divine knowledge, which he believed was a communal right necessary for societal moral order (Ivanyi, 2012).

Overcoming Linguistic and Literacy Barriers

To overcome linguistic barriers and enable learning for those with reading difficulties, Birgivi recognised that the formal medrese system, operating primarily in Arabic, excluded the vast majority of the Ottoman public (Krstić, 2021).

He challenged this exclusionary structure by producing vernacular catechisms, most notably his Vasiyetname. Written in simple and clear Ottoman Turkish, this text ensured that the unlettered masses could comprehend the foundational tenets of their faith (Zilfi, 1988). He specifically targeted the ümmi, a demographic that encompassed individuals with limited fluency in learned Arabic and Persian discourse, as well as those who were entirely illiterate (Krstić, 2021).

By writing for the common people, Birgivi shifted the locus of education from exclusive colleges to the household and the local mosque.

Contextualising the Ilmiye: The Ottoman Religious Hierarchy

To appreciate the radical nature of Birgivi’s inclusivity, one must understand the institutional behemoth he was reacting against. In the mid-16th century, the Hapsburg ambassador Ogier de Busbecq famously remarked that in the Ottoman system, “each man carries in his own hand his ancestry,” implying a meritocracy where even a slave could rise to the summit of the ilmiye.

However, as Zilfi’s research demonstrates, this meritocratic ideal was being eclipsed by a rigid, stratified structure.

By the late 17th and 18th centuries, the “ancestry in hand” described by Busbecq had been replaced by a closed-loop aristocracy. Zilfi’s quantitative data provides a staggering indictment of this shift: between 1703 and 1839, 60% of the top ulema (112 out of 188) were the sons of “Great Molla” families.

The merit-based door had slammed shut, and the ilmiye had become the “patrimony of great families.” Dynasties like the Dürrizades and Ebu Ishakzades dominated the landscape, protected by what I call the “Three Pillars of Ulema Privilege”:

1. Freedom from Execution: High-ranking scholars were traditionally immune from the death penalty.

2. Freedom from Confiscation: Their wealth was safe from the state’s reach upon their dismissal.

3. Heritability of Wealth: These protections allowed the consolidation of vast, multi-generational fortunes.

This decay birthed the “Cradle Corps” (beşik ulemalığı), where infants of elite families were granted high-ranking diplomas (rüus) while still in their nurseries. While a child of the Dürrizades was initiated into the professorship in his cradle, the talented provincial student was increasingly “Mollazade-quoted” out of the career.

Inclusive Education Avant la Lettre: Birgivi vs. The Arpalık System

Was the Kadızadeli movement (Birgivi’s later followers) merely a fundamentalist reaction? Or was it, as the evidence suggests, a populist demand for educational transparency?

Birgivi’s focus on “popular religion” stood in direct opposition to the “Arpalık” system. This system turned provincial judgeships into “barley-money” or sinecures for Istanbul elites. As Zilfi notes, this practice “impoverished the countryside,” effectively creating an exclusionary education model where the best scholars remained in the capital while rural areas were left with under-resourced, temporary “deputies.”

Birgivi’s demand for ‘ilm-i hal was a demand for accountability. If the law was to be universal, its teaching had to be transparent, accessible, and inclusive of those outside the Istanbul “Great Family” bubble.

5. The “De-ulemaising” Fiction and Professional Integrity

The lengths to which the ilmiye went to protect its “corporate honour” are exemplified by the concept of “Hadd” (limits of conduct). When an alim (scholar) committed a crime, the institution faced a crisis: how to punish the man without admitting that the “holy class” was fallible?

The solution was a status-preserving fiction.

In 1807, the professor Abdüllatif was “de-ulemaised”, stripped of his robes and awarded a secular military title (Mirmiran), before his execution. This “institutional myth of immunity” allowed the state to shed blood without technically shedding “ulema blood.”

To a modern inclusive education specialist, this is the antithesis of the transparency and accountability required for a just system. It was an institution prioritising its own image over the universal application of justice.

Birgivi Mehmed Efendi’s commitment to universalising ‘ilm-i hal is more than a historical footnote; it is a profound precedent for modern inclusive education. His 16th-century solution to the “abstruse” barriers of his time echoes the challenges we face today in ensuring every student, regardless of background, has access to foundational literacy.

Addressing Gender Inclusivity

Furthermore, Birgivi explicitly addressed gender inclusivity regarding foundational education. He unequivocally stated that the acquisition of situational knowledge (‘ilm al-hal), the specific legal and moral demands of one’s immediate circumstances, is an absolute individual obligation (fard ‘ayn) for “every Muslim, male and female” (Ivanyi, 2012).

Because women were largely excluded from the formal medrese establishment, vernacular religious primers like Birgivi’s became central to female education and piety (Krstić, 2021). Ottoman women were encouraged to read these texts or to have them read aloud at home, thereby bypassing the institutional barriers of the patriarchal educational hierarchy and actively participating in learning circles.

Cognitive Load and Pedagogical Enablement

Birgivi also demonstrated an acute awareness of cognitive load and learning difficulties by engineering his instructional materials to be pedagogically accessible. In his Arabic grammar manuals, Avamil and Izhar, he deliberately avoided the obscure and exhaustive theoretical disputes that characterised traditional linguistic texts, recognising that such complexity often frustrated or bored students (İmam Birgivî’nin Avâmil ve İzhâru’l-Esrâr’ının İncelenmesi, n.d.).

Instead, he structured these works using practical, memorable formulas and simplified sentence constructions to facilitate easier memorisation and comprehension.

To further enable learning, Birgivi embedded moral and theological principles directly into his grammatical examples. This allowed students to absorb ethical training simultaneously with syntax, streamlining the educational process and making the abstract rules of grammar highly relevant to their daily religious lives.

Systemic Accommodations for Diverse Learners

Regarding learners with severe cognitive impairments, physical disabilities, or specific sensory difficulties, historical sources do not contain evidence of Birgivi explicitly formulating a targeted “special education” pedagogy. Ottoman legal and social frameworks did address disabilities; for example, classical Islamic jurisprudence recognised that the legally incompetent, such as young children and the mentally impaired, were exempt from certain religious obligations (Artan, 2022). Jurists also issued rulings regarding the civic participation of individuals with deafness, blindness, or physical deformities.

While there is no direct equivalent in Birgivi’s corpus to modern differentiated instruction for specific modern cohorts, such as students with ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia or other specific learning difficulties, his overarching educational accommodations were incredibly progressive. They were primarily systemic and demographic, focused on breaking down the barriers of language, class, and gender to ensure that every cognitively capable believer had the practical means to engage with their education and secure their salvation (Ivanyi, 2012).

A Promising Area to Discover

Reflecting on that 2013 research at UKM, I see that the struggle for inclusion has always been a struggle against “Great Family” gatekeeping and the Arpalık-style neglect of the periphery. Birgivi reminds us that an educational system is only as strong as its ability to simplify, scaffold, and reach the “masses of the faithful.” True reform begins by recognising that knowledge is not a patrimony to be inherited, but a right to be democratised.

Birgivi Mehmed Efendi’s educational ideas and practices, when examined across his diverse works, demonstrate a clear alignment with the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and inclusive education. His efforts to dismantle socio-economic and linguistic barriers, alongside his simplification of complex syntax in texts like Avamil and Izhar, reflect an early commitment to providing multiple means of representation and engagement. By intentionally reducing cognitive load and vernacularising theological concepts, Birgivi created flexible learning pathways that resonate closely with contemporary strategies used to support diverse cohorts, including university students with ADHD.

To fully grasp the depth of this pedagogical philosophy, it is necessary to situate it within the broader framework of Islamic Shariah and, more specifically, Maqasid al-Shariah.

While the literature is vast and diverse, and much more remains to be explored, the framework of maqasid and the common principles of Shariah provide a promising context for drawing such parallels. This is an area I continue to explore as I embark on my PhD journey in September, Insya-Allah.

Hasrizal Abdul Jamil
www.hasrizal.com

Further Reading:

• Artan, T. (2022). Patrons, painters, women. Brill.

• Chambers, R. L. (1973). The education of a nineteenth-century Ottoman alim, Ahmed Cevdet Pasa. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 9(4), 440-464.

• Çiçek, N. (2021). Beating is heaven-sent: Corporal punishment of children in the late Ottoman and early Republican era. In G. Yılmaz & F. Zachs (Eds.), Children and Childhood in the Ottoman Empire: From the 15th to the 20th Century (pp. 289-314). Edinburgh University Press.

• İmam Birgivî’nin Avâmil ve İzhâru’l-Esrâr’ının İncelenmesi [Unpublished master’s thesis]. (n.d.).

• Ivanyi, K. A. (2012). Virtue, piety and the law: A study of Birgivī Mehmed Efendi’s al-Ṭarīqa al-muḥammadiyya [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Princeton University.

• Ivanyi, K. A. (2020). Adab, akhlāq and early modern Ottoman paraenesis: Birgivī Meḥmed Efendī’s (d. 981/1573) al-Ṭarīqa al-muḥammadiyya. In [Source Title Omitted in Excerpt] (pp. 49-62). Brill.

• Korić, E. (2021). Childhood and education in Ottoman Bosnia during the early modern period. In G. Yılmaz & F. Zachs (Eds.), Children and Childhood in the Ottoman Empire: From the 15th to the 20th Century (pp. 315-335). Edinburgh University Press.

• Krstić, T. (2021). You must know your faith in detail: Redefinition of the role of knowledge and boundaries of belief in Ottoman catechisms (ilm-i hāls). In T. Krstić & D. Terzioğlu (Eds.), Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750 (pp. 161-194). Brill.

• Mandaville, J. E. (1979). Usurious piety: The cash waqf controversy in the Ottoman Empire. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 10(3), 289-308.

• Martı, H. (2015). Birgivi Mehmed Efendi. In A. H. Furat (Ed.), Doğu’dan Batıya düşüncenin serüveni: Osmanlı’da felsefe ve aklî düşünce (pp. 635-667). İnsan Yayınları.

• Shafir, N. (2021). Vernacular legalism in the Ottoman Empire. Islamic Law and Society, 28(1-2), 32-75.

• Yenen, H. (2010). İmam Birgivî’nin Avâmil ve İzhâru’l-Esrâr’ının incelenmesi [Unpublished master’s thesis]. Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi.

• Zilfi, M. C. (1988). The politics of piety: The Ottoman ulema in the postclassical age, 1600-1800. Bibliotheca Islamica.