Al-Azhar University

“ It is to-day the most important Mohammedan college in the world; for though it has no longer the twenty thousand students who crowded its courts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there is still an annual attendance of from seven to ten thousand; by some authorities the number is given as twelve thousand. The twelve thousand have no academic groves; they have not even one tree. There is nothing sequestered about El Azhar; it is near the bazaars in the old part of the town, where the houses are crowded together like wasps' nests. ”

“ The El Azhar mosque is the great college of Cairo, and also the principal university of the East. There are small porticoes, divided into apartments, for the use of natives from different parts of Egypt and the Orient, each province or country having a room to itself. The professors receive no salaries, but live upon presents from the pupils, and by copying books or performing other literary work. There are nine thousand students, and more than three hundred professors attached to this university! Nearly all the sciences taught in all the colleges of the globe have a place here. ”

“ And so we propose to the rector of the Azhar University to combine a study of the commercial sciences and accountancy with a program of religious instruction of missionaries, so that the Azhar missions may propagate trade and religion at the same time. The missionaries will carry on their business and will also preach in the countries to which they are sent. Their commission will be in harmony with the precepts of Islam, which require that a man should work for God and for the world. ”

“ The Azhar students not seldom enter government offices and even hold important administrative posts, but they never lose the stamp of their education—the narrow, unteachable spirit, incapable of progress, always lost in external details, and never able to grasp principles and get behind forms to the substance of a matter. ”

“ The press as a medium of disaffection was bad enough, but El Azhar is worse. It is a hotbed of rebellion, and a word spoken there goes, as by wireless telegraphy, all over Egypt. It is a secret society, and as such it must be stopped."
"But have you reflected——"
"Do I do anything without reflection?"
"Closed, you say? The University? The mosque of mosques? It is impossible! You are trifling with me."
"Have you taken leave of your senses, sir?"
"I beg your pardon, Father. I only wish to prevent you from doing something you will never cease to regret. ”

“ The following is the course of study in the Azhar. The school-boy of four or five years' standing has been taught, by a liberal application of the maxim "the Green Rod is of the Trees of Paradise," to chant the Koran without understanding it, the elementary rules of arithmetic, and, if he is destined to be a learned man, the art of writing. [FN#25] He then registers his name in Al-Azhar, and applies
[p.104] himself to the branches of study most cultivated in Al-Islam, namely Nahw (syntax) , Fikh (the law) , Hadis (the traditions of the Prophet) , and Tafsir, or Exposition of the Koran. ”

“ In all this I sympathized, but discouraged him from hoping that the Government would do much to help Mohammedan education as such, for the tendency was towards merely secular education, and would hardly be reversed. I hoped, however, that they might be able to found something in the way of a University which should be within their means, a University where, as in the Azhar at Cairo, the students lived on their own resources, and merely attended lectures. He promised to introduce me to some of the Ulema to talk these matters over, but he was afraid to have the meeting at his own house. ”

“ But the Azhar (splendid mosque) is not only the cathedral mosque of the Egyptian capital, but the principal, and perhaps in the present day the only Moslem university. In the riwaks, or apartments appropriated to [Pg 290] students from different countries, chiefly poor scholars supported by the funds of the mosque, "after passing successively among natives of different divisions of Egypt, we find ourselves in the company of people of Mekkeh and El-Medeeneh; then in the midst of Syrians; in another minute among Muslims of Central Africa ”

“ To enter the university one need only know al-lugha sufficiently to be able to read the Koran. This higher institution will give him the rest of his education, imparting this wisdom in the most primitive way. The professor sits on a slightly raised dais and does all his teaching from memory alone, reciting passages from the Koran and from the law, or shariat. The students listen to the words of the professor and endeavor to memorize them, often loudly repeating the verses after him but never making any notes or using the manuscripts or books which lie decaying in the libraries. ”

“ The outfit of a well-provided student at El Azhar consists of a rug, a low desk like a small portfolio-easel, a Koran, a slate, an inkstand, and an earthen dish. Instruction is free, and boys are admitted at the early age of eight years. The majority of the pupils do not remain after their twelfth or fourteenth year; a large number, however, pursue their studies much longer, and old students return from time to time to obtain further instruction, so that it is not uncommon to see a gray-bearded pupil studying by the side of a child who might be his grandson. ”

“ On the S. side of it runs the Shâria el-Kubri, to the W., to the Great Nile Bridge (p. 457) , while from it to the S. stretches the long Shâria Kasr el-Aïni (Pl. A, 5, 6) . In the latter street, immediately to the left, is the free Egyptian University (Pl. A, 5) , founded in 1908, the purpose of which, in contrast to the old Gâmia el-Azhar (p. 447) , is to offer Mohammedans a liberal modern education. Farther on, to the left, opposite the handsome houses built on the site of the palace Kasr ed-Dubara, are the Ministries of Public Works and War (Pl. A, B, 5) and the building of the Sudan Agency ”

“ This is the minaret of the most important mosque and greatest medersa in the city, Kairween. It is our most noted university, possessing the ablest professors in the land and counting the greatest number of students. The other universities have their eminent teachers in certain spheres of learning, but none of them boasts such a faculty as ours, among whom are the highest authorities in every branch of our science. The council of professors is the supreme authority in all religious and scientific disputes, to which even the authorities in Egypt, Turkey and Syria turn for advice. ”

“ This author and his book would have been impossible in the Moslim world not more than thirty years ago. In Egypt such a man is nowadays already considered as one of those more conservative moderns, who prefer the rationalistic explanation of the Azhar lore to putting it aside altogether. Within the Azhar, his book is sure to meet with hearty approval from the followers of Muhammed Abduh, but not less hearty disapproval from the opponents of modernism who make up the majority of the professors as well as of the students. ”

“ El Azhar is a vast edifice that stands in the midst of the Arab quarter of Cairo like a fortress on an island rock, being surrounded by a tangled maze of narrow, dirty, unpaved streets, with a swarming population of Mohammedans of every race; and the Christian who crosses its rather forbidding portals feels that he has passed in an instant out of the twentieth century and a city of civilisation into scenes of Bible lands and the earliest years of recorded time. ”

“ In the meantime, however, liberal thought will have a fair field for its development, and can hardly fail to extend its influence wherever the Arabic language is spoken, and among all those races which look on the Azhar as the centre of their intellectual life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cairo has had for a long time its schools of medicine and law, which could be turned easily into university faculties; therefore, the founders of the university thought it urgent to establish a faculty of arts, and, if this proved a success, to add a faculty of science. In the meantime, gifted young men were granted subsidies to learn at European universities what they needed to know to be the professors of a coming generation, and, for the present, Christian as well as Mohammedan natives of Egypt and European scholars living in the country. ”

“ Universities are intended for higher studies, for new departures in every branch of learning, for those who wish to live the higher life in perfect independence of the errors which beguile the outside world. The nation, which cements that higher life, which tries to ascend to the higher level, is the nation which must occupy a foremost place. The nation which neglects such aspirations, which disregards such influences, which thereby degrades University life must inevitably fall back in the intellectual race. ”

“ Head Priest of Teheran, and Official Sayer of Prayers to the Shah.
In the large cities a higher education can be obtained in the elaborate Madrassahs adjoining the mosques, and here, too, entirely at the hands of the Mullahs; but these higher colleges, a kind of university, are only frequented by the richer and better people, by those who intend to devote themselves to medicine, to jurisprudence, or to theological studies. Literature and art and science, all based mostly on the everlasting Koran, are here taught à fond, the students spending many years in deep and serious study. ”

“ And tell him that, although El Azhar is in no way comparable to the great Occidental seats of learning, I was nevertheless astonished at what I saw there. I remarked to myself: 'Ah, this is Islam's great stronghold and defence! From here Mohammed's young champions go out. Here, at El Azhar, the potions of wisdom that keep the Koran's doctrines healthy and vigorous are blended.'"
All of this the traveller said almost in one breath. Now he made a pause, so that the guide would have an opportunity to interpret for the soothsayer. ”

“ Besides the impression he has produced upon the people, which is strong and likely to be enduring, Ishmael seems to have an almost unaccountable fascination for Arabic scholars and theologians. A number of the professors at El Azhar are already deep in metaphysical disputations about the inner significance of the words attributed to him, and it is whispered that the venerable Chancellor (now nearly a hundred years of age) is compiling a book, half biography and half commentary, that is full of mystical meanings. ”

“ But how to make this influence a continuous influence in the life of our graduates and undergraduates, how to develop that sense of responsibility which attaches to membership in such an intellectual communion, is a problem to which as a University we have yet to address ourselves. I do not believe that we shall ever be able to reap the best fruits of a University culture until this consciousness of organic union has been established, and all are made to feel that they have an interest wider than that of their individual College, wider than that of the Faculty under which they are enrolled. ”

“ If the life of the nation requires it, so long as Universities are in touch with that life they will be bound to respond to this demand. A recent writer has well said: "The University may be described as the higher knowledge of the nation, concentrated and organized for the purposes of extension and communication with a view to the perfecting of the truth and the better formation of men. So considered it must be a living and ever-augmenting body—growth in the sciences taught and in the faculties teaching them is necessary to its very idea. ”

“ The Association will endeavour to bring together those of all countries who are in close touch with university life, to unite them in a common faith in the advantages of the free development of the mind. It groups them for the struggle against the growing empery of mechanism and militarism in all the manifestations of life.... It hopes to realise the ideal of universities which shall remain centres of higher culture, in the service of truth alone, unsullied shrines of scientific research, absolutely independent in matters of opinion, paying no attention to selfish aims or to class interests. ”

“ Any person who is competent to the task may become a professor by obtaining a licence from the Sheykh of the mosque. The students mostly obtain their livelihood by the same means as the professors, or by reciting the Kur-án in private houses, and at the tombs and other places. When sufficiently advanced in their studies, some of them become kádees, muftees, imáms of mosques, or schoolmasters, in their native villages or towns, or in Cairo; others enter into trade; some remain all their lifetime studying in the Azhar, and aspire to be ranked among the higher ’Ulama. ”

“ It affords a far better gymnasium for the general training of the mind than has been heretofore supposed by many. We observe with thankfulness that the Natives are awaking to a consciousness of the importance of this study. As this University is the lawfully constituted controller of the higher education, is the acknowledged leader of independent opinion regarding intellectual progress, and is the embodiment of enlightened ideas, we felt that the recognition of the study must spring from the University and must culminate in the granting of Degrees in Science. ”