The educational reality in the holy city of Karbala witnessed a successive decline during the Ottoman occupation to the country for more than four centuries due to the weak - and sometimes useless- curricula imposed by its authorities on the local schools at the time.
Although the Ottoman basic law or the “Constitution” has contained what so-called then “mandatory and free education” for all subjects of the Ottoman Empire, but this paragraph was never applied in the Iraqi provinces under the occupation authority, where the duration of the elementary school according to the Baghdad's education law, was (4) years, however, this duration has been reduced during the last decade of the nineteenth century into (3) years only. (1)
Regarding the curricula applied at the time, they were limited to certain classes like Koranic studies, reading and writing, arithmetic, Ottoman literature, and Ottoman history and geography.
Source
(1) Karbala's Civilizational Encyclopedia، Historical Axis، Department of Modern and Contemporary History: by the Karbala Center for Studies and Research [Vol. 8, p. 75]
