Developing an understanding of the foundations of the educational tradition of the Turkish Republic is connected to an exploration of the specifics of Ottoman education. This qualitative study explored an Ottoman mathematics textbook published in the early twentieth century. Under the influence of naturalistic inquiry, the textbook was analyzed in terms of content, organization, and principles of elementary mathematics education. It was concluded that the textbook is successfully presented multiple representations and real-life examples while the development of content did not provide opportunities to develop reasoning skills.