Thus saying we arrived at the hotel where our friends were stopping and upon their expressing a desire to find out more about Turkish schools and Turkish educational institutions, I promised to arrange for them to visit some of the exclusively Turkish schools and colleges and to take them to call on people who would be able to tell them about modern Turkish education better than I could and we parted until the following week when I was able to keep my promise to them. XII EDUCATION AND ART It was very easy to assist my friends in the investigation they wanted to conduct for their own private information on Turkish schools and the educational system of Turkey. My father had been twice Minister of Public Education and he was in a position to give all the information desired. My first step was, therefore, to take our friends to him and have him explain the present educational system in our country. Contrary to what is generally believed in foreign countries education is obligatory in Turkey and there are fewer illiterates among the Turks than, for instance, among Russians and other Near Eastern people. This is principally due to the fact that all Muslims have considered it their duty ever since the time of the Prophet Mahomed to learn how to read the Koran. Unfortunately, however, this religious principle was taken too literally by the average Muslim who, for centuries was satisfied to learn just the alphabet, as he imagined that as long as he could read the Holy Book he was accomplishing his religious duty. In the course of time, therefore, when other nations besides the Arabs embraced the Muslim faith, the people who did not know Arabic were also perfectly contented to be able to read the Koran even if they did not understand its meaning. All Muslim countries having adopted the Arabic alphabet this very elementary education placed even the greatest majority of non-Arab Muslims in a position to read their own language. But it was only a very restricted higher class which took the trouble of studying its grammar. Thus for centuries only a limited number of Turks--as was the case with the Muslims of other nations--were learned enough to read and write fluently their own languages, although the greatest majority knew enough of the alphabet to be able to read the Koran and to sign their names. Of course this restricted knowledge of reading cannot count as education, but when it is considered that the science of reading was so neglected among the nations of the West that practically up to the period of Louis XIV very few of the Western nobles knew even how to sign their names or to decipher the simplest document, it will be admitted that anyhow the rudimentary knowledge of the East was preferable to the almost total ignorance of the West.