THE MOHAMMEDAN UNIVERSITY OF CAIRO.
BY BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D. D., LL.D.
Years ago I had taken pains to gain all accessible information concerning the most celebrated, and certainly also the largest, university in the entire Mohammedan world. In 1871 when in Cairo a number of days, through lack of a proper guide and full knowledge of this important institution, I left the city without seeing it. I was determined this time, therefore, to make sure of a visit to it, and to see carefully, with my own eyes, this marvel of the Mohammedan faith. The University is located in a mosque, and is, in fact, the one chief business of the mosque itself. Religion—such as it is—is the fundamental feature of all Moslem education. Not a science is taught in any school of Mohammedanism which does not begin with the Koran, and again come back to it. Whether law or medicine or geometry—in fact, whatever is communicated to the young, the first and ever predominant lesson imparted with it and through it is, that the Koran is the fountain of all science. Very naturally, then, the school is a part of the service of the mosque. This idea is not new. It is an oriental habit. We find proofs even in the Scriptures that the church was God’s first school. In ancient Egypt the temple, the palace, and the school were the perfected trinity in every city, and often the temple and the school were so closely enclosed that no careful observer could tell where one began and the other ended. The same idea re-appears in the arrangements which Charlemagne made for the higher education of the Frankish empire. The school was often located under the palace and in close connection with the chapel roof, and was called scholia palatina, or the school of the palace. At first the object seems to have been that the emperor’s children and other children of the court might have the best opportunity for learning; but very soon the limits became broader, and all who wanted to learn could have every advantage, within close distance of both church and palace.
The approach to the University of Cairo is a narrow street, with open booths on either side, where the artisans ply their crafts in full view of every passer-by. Three industries take the lead of all others—book-selling, book-binding, and hair-shaving. The nearest street to the University bears the name of the Street of the B, and such it may well be called. The Mohammedan has always a shaven head. He wears a great turban, of white or some other color. Green is the most infrequent shade, for that indicates that the wearer is a descendant of the prophet Mohammed. Not one hair is allowed under that turban. When it gets a little long the barber must shave the pate as clean as an ostrich egg. All along a part of the street leading to the University the barbers sit on the floors their shops, and shave the heads of their customers. The one to be shaved does not sit in a chair, but simply stretches out full length on the floor and puts his head in the lap of the barber, who also sits on the floor, with his feet doubled up under him. Then begins the process of shaving. It is a most lowly operation. No paper is used during the process, the barber getting rid of the shaved hair and soap by wiping the razor on his customer’s face until the entire tonsorial feat is finished and an ablution of cranium and face is in order. In addition to the barber shops there are probably not less than twenty-five book shops, as many binderies, and a good number of stationery stalls. These are all of modest dimensions, but are well stocked with everything that a student needs that is to say, a student of the Mohammedan order.
Between the point where the street ends and the University enclosure proper, there is a large fore-court. Here one sees such a medley of all forms of life and strange habits, in connection with study, that he can never forget it. It is the place where no serious study goes on, but where the news is discussed and conversation enjoyed. Even the barbers have spilled over into this court, for I saw a number of them busily shaving the heads of outstretched students. One of them, seeing a Frank scanning his work, stopped a moment, and holding up his razor from the pate which he had nearly made bald again, asked me if I did not want to be shaved too. I thanked him—but had not time. Imagine a half-dozen students lying about in Mead Hall, in Drew Seminary, near the doors of Drs. Butts, or Strong, or Miley, or Crooks, or Upham, and having their heads shaved by busy barbers, who sit flat on the marble floor and relieve the crania of their theological patrons of their last capillary endowment! Then think of students munching at a crust of dark bread or a pomegranate, or some edible, good or poor, according to his resources. Some students have families, and here the children come and play about them, at times when their fathers are not busy with their books. So far as I could see, there was no formal studying in this great fore-court. Perhaps there were a hundred persons in it, lying, sitting, walking. Some alone with their meditations, others entertaining a group of eager listeners, and gesticulating with oriental realism. Only one class had the appearance of any work, a group of boys. One of the number displeased his teacher, whereupon the latter beat him smartly with his fist until the little fellow’s eyes swam in tears; my blood fairly boiled at the teacher’s cruelty. I thought I was already in the University proper, but this was a serious error. The institution was yet to come; I was only approaching the great establishment.
I had no sooner touched the threshold of the great central hall than a man met me, and, with a most polite salaam, informed me that I must now put on slippers. He was a magnificent specimen of a well developed Egyptian—tall, muscular, grave, yet pleasant, and only answering such questions as were put to him. Unlike the European guides in blue and brass, those of Africa have no stereotype speeches which they hurl at you, as they have done at the thousands before you. In a moment four pairs of soft slippers, of yellow sheepskin, were brought to my companions and myself, and the wary hands which brought them slipped them on over our boots and tied them on with red strings. We were now to enter upon the holy stone floor of the great hall of Mohammedan learning, and only holy dust must fall upon that tessellated floor, and then only with softest touch. Here was a scene which baffles all description. The hall was about two hundred and fifty feet long and two hundred wide. All the classes were reciting, engaged in work, or listening to the professor. Every one who recited did it loudly. I stood beside one of the theological professors and watched his method. His class numbered forty students, whose various physiognomies showed that they had come from every part of the broad Mohammedan world. The professor sat squat on the floor, with his bare feet doubled up about him. There is no craze as yet among Mohammedans for only young teachers. This man, like many others, had long since passed beyond middle life. His heavy gray beard and very dark face were lighted up by as keen a pair of black eyes as ever became diamonds, when they saw in his young days the prophet’s torch in Mecca, or in vision beheld the curtain drawn aside which hides the Moslem paradise from human sight. The forty students sat about him in a circle, yet in such way that all were before him at once. He was one of the circle, in fact, and as he taught he swayed to and fro, and looked off into the distance as if in reverie, and then again at his class, and, with an intensity that only an Arab possesses, he burned his ideas into the very brain of the students. He sat at the foot of a stone pillar, and leaned against it at intervals, when his weary form needed a little rest.
This theological professor had the method of all. He held a thin book in his hand which seemed to be his own brief, and, after reading snatches from it, he gave a comment or explanation of it, and then had one student and then another repeat what he had said. Our American infant class method of teaching verses, and having them committed to memory while the class are together, and then repeating them, so that the teacher can see that the work is well and surely done, is precisely the method of both elementary and advanced education in this greatest university of the Mohammedan world. The brief of this theological professor was merely his collection of definitions, and these were committed to memory on the spot. Some of the students had sheets of tin, something smaller than the sheets of roofing tin with which we are familiar in the United States. On these they wrote in ink, with reed styles, and with such dexterity that a whole page was filled in a very short time. What was written on these tin slates was taken away, and designed to be committed to memory, when that process was not finished during the session of the class.
Now the entire floor of this immense hall was covered with classes at work. No teacher or student sat in a chair. There was not even a footstool in the entire University. The professors and students formed little or large groups all over the immense space, no class interfering with another, and each going on with its work as if alone, and yet not a partition or a curtain dividing the groups at study. I saw only a little eating here, an occasional student slily making a lunch of new dates, the fruit with “gold dust” on it, now just in from the country.