EL-AZHAR AND ITS TEN THOUSAND MOSLEM STUDENTS
The biggest university of the Mohammedan world is situated in Cairo. It
has, all told, over ten thousand students, and its professors number
more than four hundred. Its students come from every country where
Mohammedanism flourishes. There are hundreds here from India, and
some from Malaya and Java. There are large numbers from Morocco, as
well as from Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli. There are black Nubians,
yellow-skinned Syrians and Turks, and boys from southeastern Europe with
faces as fair as our own. There are long-gowned, turbaned Persians,
fierce-eyed Afghans, and brown-skinned men from the Sudan and from about
Kuka, Bornu, and Timbuktu. The students are of all ages from fifteen to
seventy-five, and some have spent their lives in the college.
This university has been in existence for almost a thousand years. It
was founded A.D. 972, and from that time to this it has been educating
the followers of the Prophet. It is to-day perhaps the strongest force
among these people in Egypt. Ninety-two per cent. of the inhabitants of
the Nile valley are Mohammedans and most of the native officials have
been educated here. There are at least thirty thousand men in the public
service among its graduates, while the judges of the villages, the
teachers in the mosque schools, and the _imams_, or priests, who serve
throughout Egypt are connected with it. They hold the university in such
high regard that an order from its professors would be as much respected
as one from the government, if not more.
[Illustration: A fifteen-minutes drive from the hotel quarter through the
bazaars of the Mouski and the narrow “Street of the Booksellers” brings
one to the university of El-Azhar, for 900 years the educational centre
of the Moslem world.]
[Illustration: The various nationalities are segregated in the courtyard
porticos of El-Azhar. Instruction is free and almost entirely in the
Koran. If a student doesn’t like one professor, he moves on to another.]
The university education is almost altogether Mohammedan. Its curriculum
is about the same as it was a thousand years ago, the chief studies being
the Koran and the Koranic law, together with the sacred traditions of the
religion and perhaps a little grammar, prosody, and rhetoric. A number
of the professors also teach in the schools connected with the mosques
of the Egyptian villages, which are inspected, but not managed, by the
government. Even there the Koran takes up half the time, and religion is
considered far more important than science.
Indeed, it is wonderful how much time these Egyptians spend on their
bible. The Koran is their primer, their first and second reader, and
their college text book. As soon as a baby is born, the call to prayer is
shouted in its ear, and when it begins to speak, its father first teaches
it to say the creed of Islam, which runs somewhat as follows:
“There is no God but God; Mohammed is the Apostle of God,” and also
“Wherefore exalted be God, the King, the Truth! There is no God but Him!
The Lord of the glorious Throne.”
When the boy reaches five or six he goes to the mosque school, where
he squats down, cross-legged, and sways to and fro as he yells aloud
passages from the Koran. He studies the alphabet by writing texts with a
black brush on a slate of wood or tin. Year after year he pounds away,
committing the Koran to memory. There are more than two hundred and fifty
thousand pupils in the Egyptian schools, of whom a majority are under
thirteen years of age. It was brought out by a school census some years
ago that over fifty thousand of these boys could recite a good part of
the Mohammedan bible, and that forty-five hundred had memorized the whole
from beginning to end. Another forty-five hundred were able to recite
one half of it from memory, while thirty-eight hundred could correctly
give three fourths of it. When it is remembered that the Koran contains
one hundred and fourteen divisions and in the neighbourhood of eighty
thousand words, it will be seen what this means. I’m willing to bet that
there are not four thousand children in the United States who can reel
off the New Testament without looking at the book, and that with our vast
population we have not fifty thousand boys who can recite even one book
of our Bible from memory and not mispronounce a word.
The Mohammedans reverence their bible quite as much as we do ours. While
it is being read they will not allow it to lie upon the floor, and no
one may read or touch it without first washing himself. It is written
in Arabic and the Moslems consider its style a model. They believe that
it was revealed by God to Mohammed, and that it is eternal. It was not
written at first, but was entirely committed to memory, and it is to a
large extent in that way that it is still taught. The better classes of
Mohammedans have beautiful copies of this book. They have some bound in
gold with the texts illuminated, and the university has a collection of
fine editions which is looked upon as one of its greatest treasures.
This famous Mohammedan university is situated in the heart of business
Cairo. When I rode to it to-day (on my donkey) I passed through a mile or
more of covered bazaars, thronged with turbaned men and veiled women and
walled with shops in which Egyptians were selling goods and plying their
trades. Known as the Mosque of El-Azhar, or “The Resplendent,” it is one
of the oldest mosques of Cairo. It covers several acres, and the streets
about it are taken up largely with industries connected with the college.
One of the bazaars is devoted to bookselling and bookbinding and another
to head dressing. Since every Mohammedan has his head shaved several
times a week, there are in this institution ten thousand bald-headed
students. The men wear turbans of white, black, or green, and there is
not a hair under them except on the top of the crown, where a little tuft
may be left that the owner may be the more easily pulled into heaven.
My way was through this street of the barbers, where I saw students
kneeling down while being shaved. One or two were lying with their heads
in the laps of the barbers at work on their faces. The barbers used no
paper, wiping the shavings on the faces of their victims instead. At the
end they gave the head, face, and ears a good washing.
As I approached the entrance of the university I saw many young men
standing about, with their books under their arms, and some carrying
manuscripts in and out. Each student has his shoes in his hand when he
enters the gates, and before I went in I was made to put on a pair of
slippers over my boots. The slippers were of yellow sheepskin and a
turbaned servant tied them on with red strings.
Entering the gate, I came into a great stone-flagged court upon which
the study halls face. The court was surrounded by arcades upheld by
marble pillars, and in the arcades and in the immense rooms beyond were
thousands upon thousands of seekers after Koranic learning. They sat in
groups on the floor, listening to the professors, who were lecturing on
various subjects, swaying back and forth as they chanted their words of
wisdom. Some of the groups were studying aloud, until the confusion was
as great as that at the Tower of Babel when the tongues of the builders
were multiplied. There were at least five thousand men all talking at
once, and all, as it seemed to me, were shouting at the tops of their
voices. As I made my way through the mass, I had many unfriendly looks
and narrowly escaped being mobbed when I took snapshots of the professors
and students at work under the bright sun which beat down upon the
court. The inmates of this school are among the most fanatical of the
Mohammedans, and I have since learned that the Christian who ventures
among them may be in danger of personal violence.
I spent some time going from hall to hall and making notes. In one
section I found a class of blind boys who were learning the Koran, and I
am told that they are more fanatical than any of the others. In another
place I saw forty Persians listening to a professor. They were sitting
on the ground, and the professor himself sat flat on the floor with his
bare feet doubled up under him. I could see his yellow toes sticking out
of his black gown. He was lecturing on theology and the students were
attentive.
Another class near by was taking down the notes of a lecture. Each had a
sheet of tin, which looked as though it might have been cut from an oil
can, and he wrote upon this in ink with a reed stylus. The letters were
in Arabic so I could not tell what they meant.
I looked about in vain for school furniture such as we have at home.
There was not a chair or a table in the halls; there were no maps or
diagrams and no scientific instruments. There were no libraries visible;
the books used were mostly pamphlets.
There is no charge for tuition and the poor and the rich are on much the
same level. Many of the undergraduates are partially supported by the
university; it is no disgrace to be without money. Some of the students
and professors live in the university. They sleep in the schoolrooms
where they study or teach, lying down upon mats and covering themselves
with their blankets. They eat there, peddlers bringing in food and
selling it to them. Their diet is plain, a bowl of bean soup and a cake
of pounded grain, together with some garlic or dates, forming the most
common meal. These things cost little, but to those who are unable to
buy, the university gives food. Nine hundred loaves of bread are supplied
without charge to needy students every day.
As I passed through the halls I saw some of the boys mending their
clothes and others spreading their wash out in the sun to dry. They did
not seem ashamed of their poverty and I saw much to admire in their
attitude.
The professors serve for nothing, supporting themselves by teaching in
private houses or by reading the prayers at the mosques. It is considered
such a great honour to be a professor here that the most learned men of
the Mohammedan world are glad to lecture in the El-Azhar without reward.
In fact, the only man about the institution who receives a salary is the
president, who has ten thousand piastres a year. This seems much until
one knows that the piastre is only five cents, and that it takes ten
thousand of them to make five hundred dollars.
I asked about the government of the university, and was told that it had
a principal and assistant professors. All students are under the direct
control of the university, so if they misbehave outside its walls, the
police hand them over to the collegiate authorities for punishment. The
students are exempt from military service, and it is said that many enter
the institution for that reason alone. There seem to be no limitations
as to age or as to the time one may spend at the college. I saw boys
between six and eight studying the Koran in one corner of the building,
and gray-bearded men sitting around a professor in another. Most of the
scholars, however, are from sixteen to twenty-two or of about the same
age as our college boys at home.
This university has little to do with the great movement of modern
education now going on in Egypt. It is religious rather than academic,
and the live, active educational forces outside it are two. One of these
is the United Presbyterian Church and its mission school at Asyut, about
three hundred miles farther up the Nile valley, and the other is the
government. There are besides about one thousand schools supported by the
Copts, the most intelligent of the native population.
When the British took over the administration Egypt was very illiterate,
and even now not more than six per cent. of the natives can read and
write. But the desire for learning is increasing and the system of common
schools which has been inaugurated is being developed. There are now
about four thousand five hundred schools in the country, with over three
hundred thousand pupils. There are a number of private schools, several
normal schools, and schools devoted to special training. A system
of technical education has been started and the government has model
workshops at Bulak and Asyut. At Cairo it has a school of agriculture, a
school of engineering, and schools of law and medicine.
An important movement has been the introduction of modern studies into
the village schools belonging to the Mohammedans. These were formerly,
and are to some extent now, under the university of El-Azhar. They were
connected with the mosques and taught by Mohammedan priests. They were
supported by the people themselves and also by a Mohammedan religious
organization known as the Wakf, which has an enormous endowment. There
were something like ten thousand of these schools scattered over the
lower part of the Nile valley, with an attendance of nearly two hundred
thousand. They taught little more than the Arabic language, the Koran,
and reading, writing, and arithmetic. Lord Cromer wanted to bring these
schools under the ministry of public instruction and introduce our modern
studies. When the teachers refused to accept supervision, he offered to
give every mosque school that would come in an appropriation of fifty
cents for every boy and seventy-five cents for every girl. This brought
good results. At present only half of each school day is set apart for
the study of the Koran and the precepts of Islam, and I am told that such
of the Mohammedan pupils as do well are more likely to get appointments
under the government than if they were Christians or Copts.
The girls of Egypt are beginning to get an education. For a long time it
was hard to persuade their parents to send them either to the government
or the private schools, but of late some of the native educated women
have taken places as teachers and many girls are now preparing
themselves for school work. Other parents send their daughters to school
to give them a good general education, because the educated boys want
educated women for wives. There are at present something like two hundred
girls’ schools, with an attendance of nearly fifty thousand pupils. An
effort is being made to establish village schools for girls, and the
time will come when there will be girls’ schools all over Egypt and the
Mohammedan women may become educated.
We are apt to think that the only kind of charity is Christian charity.
I find that there is a great deal of Mohammedan charity as well, and
that many of the richer Moslems give money toward education and other
public welfare work. The endowment of the El-Azhar university is almost
entirely of this nature. Some of the village schools are aided by native
charity as are also some high schools. A Mohammedan benevolent society at
Alexandria raised fifty thousand dollars for an industrial school there.
That school accommodates over five hundred pupils, and has an endowment
of about four thousand dollars per year. In the industrial school at
Abu Tig, founded and liberally endowed by Mahmoud Suleiman, weaving,
carpentry, blacksmithing, and turning are taught free of charge. Towns
of the Faiyum and Beni-Suef have raised money for industrial schools and
the government gives assistance to twenty-two such institutions. There is
also talk of a national university along modern lines, to be supported
by the government. This university will be absolutely scientific and
literary and its doors will be wide open to all desirous of learning,
irrespective of their origin or religion.
[Illustration: A house thirty feet square might rest on the flattened
apex of the Great Pyramid, but originally it was much higher and came to
a sharp point. All the pyramids have been robbed of their stones by house
builders in Cairo.]
[Illustration: “If you will climb upon your dining room table 250 times
you will have an idea of my ascent of the stepping-stone sides of the
Great Pyramid. At the base the huge blocks are waist-high.”]