The article deals with the issues related to the crisis of traditional Muslim education in the Kazakh steppe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and attempts to modernize it by the Russian authorities and Muslim intellectuals, which resulted the opening of Russian-Kazakh and new method schools. On the basis of archival documents, studies and testimonies of direct participants in the processes under study, as well as authors of later periods, the features of reforming the education system in the Kazakh steppe have been studied. When considering processes and phenomena, the literature of various historical periods was used, which contributes, both to the utmost detail of the processes and phenomena under consideration, and to the abstraction and generalization required in certain cases, using the advantages of a certain chronological remoteness. The paper considers the school programs of both new educational institutions and old ones (mektebs and madrasas), attention is paid to the peculiarities of each type of school and the processes of modernization, adaptation to the situation on the ground. The issues under study are considered in the context of the processes of modernization within the Russian Empire itself, the development of the newly attached territories of the Kazakh steppe and their further integration into the all-Russian agenda, significant socio-economic transformations in the state.
