The education system and the press

According to the textbook, before the colonial period traditional education was based on Islamic rules: in school, over 5–6 years pupils studied the Arabic alphabet, the “Haftiyak”, the “Chor kitob” and works of Sufi Olloyor; higher education was in madrasas, and women were taught by otins. In the colonial period old schools remained but the government gave them no funds. Russian-native schools were opened to train interpreters and spread Russian culture: Governor-General G. Rosenbach (1884–1889) drew up a plan for a network, the first school opened in Tashkent in 1884 in the house of Saidgani Saidazimboy, and by 1911 there were 89 of them; the day was in two parts, a Russian teacher first and then a local teacher. According to the textbook a gymnasium opened in Tashkent in 1896 (the Tashkent boys’ gymnasium had in fact begun work in the 1870s). In Jadid schools history, mathematics, geography and the mother tongue were also taught. According to the textbook, the administration put them under supervision: use of Turkish and Persian literature was banned, textbooks were censored, in 1911 nearly 50 Jadid schools were closed, and by 1913 all of them in the Emirate of Bukhara were closed. In the press, “Turkiston viloyatining gazeti” appeared regularly from 1870; in 1906 the first Uzbek national newspaper “Taraqqiy” came out under editor Ismail Obidov (first issue 27 June), that year “Xurshid”, in 1907–1908 “Shuhrat” and “Osiyo”, in 1913–1915 “Sadoi Turkiston”, “Sadoi Farg‘ona”, “Samarqand” and others, and in 1917 “Hurriyat”.