Fakhri al-Barudi came of age in a time of radical change in the Ottoman Empire. In response to European encroachments and domestic nationalist movements, the empire evinced an expansion of governmental authority in the daily lives of its subjects, particularly in the arena of education. As part of its modernization reforms, the Ottoman state founded Maktab ´Anbar as a government-run boarding school for the wealthy sons of Damascus and the surrounding countryside. In his memoirs, Barudi presented one student’s perspective on the state enterprise to train its students in modern subjects and inculcate them with a sense of civic pride and shared identity. Maktab ´Anbar’s curriculum reflected a spirit of hybridity and the Ottoman reformers’ need for synthesis to effect change in the Syrian province. The state-approved coursework in science classes displayed a state endeavoring to arm students with up-to-date technical and scientific knowledge. On the other hand, the religious curriculum demonstrated the Ottoman Empire’s self-identification as an Islamic state and attempt to make this new state school acceptable to traditional families. The religious-tinged coursework reflected the state’s adaptation of their modernization project to the local Arab, Ottoman, and Islamic contexts. Linguistic training in Ottoman Turkish and classical Arabic illustrated the state’s continued need for able administrators to further the centralization projects of the modernizing Ottoman Empire. Barudi’s memoirs also offered a glimpse into the daily lives of young Arab students during a time of great change and continuity. Barudi goes on to recount his numerous run-ins with the school administrators, providing insights into traditional and Western-influenced disciplinary measures: public humiliation, the role of the school monitor, and the use of the trumpet for roll call. The student-perspective puts into question what one historian describes as the policing of a normative moral code with a clear Islamic foundation in the late Ottoman school system. Furthermore, a critical re-reading of Barudi’s memoirs rejects the notion of proto-nationalism on the part of the Arab and Turkish students at Maktab ´Anbar.. The education of Barudi thus offers a number of lessons about the end of empire and Syria’s transition into a modern nation-state.