"criminal cases" which were shaped under Islamic Law were limited in serving their purpose adequately. Beginning with the 19th century, the Ottoman Islamic codes and legal provisions generally were impracticable in dealing with the wider concept of social systems. In 1841 a criminal code was drawn up in the Ottoman Empire. When the Empire dissolved, there was still no legislation with regard to family and marital relationships. Polygamy has not been practiced by law-abiding citizens of Turkey after Atatürk's reforms, in contrast to the former rules of the Mecelle. There were thousands of articles in the Mecelle which were not used due to their inapplicability. The adaptation of laws relating to family and marital relationships is an important step which is attributed to Mustafa Kemal. The reforms also instituted legal equality and full political rights for both sexes 5 December 1934, well before several other European nations. A penal code adopted based on that of Italy (original one codified in 1865) passed between 1924 and 1937. Educational reforms Educational systems (schooling) involve institutionalized teaching and learning in relation to a curriculum, which was established according to a predetermined purpose of education. The Ottoman schools were a complex "educational system" based on (differentiated) mainly on religion, established with different curricula for each path. The Ottoman educational system had three main educational groups of institutions. The most common institutions were medreses based on Arabic, teaching the Quran and using the method of memorization. The second type of institution was idadî and sultanî, which were the reformist schools of the Tanzimat era. The last group included colleges and minority schools in foreign languages that used the latest teaching models in educating their pupils. The unification of education, along with the closure of the old-style universities, and a large-scale program of science transfer from Europe; education became an integrative system, aimed to alleviate poverty and used female education to establish gender equality. Turkish education became a state-supervised system, which was designed to create a skill base for the social and economic progress of the country. Unification came with the Law on Unification of National Education, which introduced three regulations. They placed the religious schools owned by private foundations under the scope of the Ministry of Education. By the same regulations, the Ministry of Education was ordered to open a religious faculty at the Darülfünun (later to become the Istanbul University) and schools to educate