I could not help noticing the various ages of the students. Some were really very advanced in years. They were waked up very late in life. Something had broken loose under their twenty-five yards of cotton cloth which they call a turban, and they had come down the Nile with the rise, or had been wafted from the Darfur sands, and were going to study. They could do more, and be more, when they went back again. Here, too, was the old-time idea. The notion that a university is a thing for the young alone is a modern affair. The old conception was, it was everybody’s place—the universum of men as well as studies. In Mohammedanism, as in Christianity, when once the passion for learning strikes one, the years count nothing. The person in the fifties or even in sixties is just as apt to be overwhelmed, swept on, by the learning frenzy as though he were only eighteen and smitten by other inspirations.
The entire number in attendance at this greatest University of the Mohammedans is about thirteen thousand. Some calculations place it at fifteen thousand. They come from every part of the world where the cimetar of Mohammed and his successors has drawn blood, and where the crescent now floats. Each part of the large hall has its nation, where the students are grouped territorially. Here, in one place, are the Benguelese, from southwestern Africa; in another place are the Algerines, from the sound of the Mediterranean surf. Yonder are only Thracians, from south of the Balkans. This group, as black as your hat, consists entirely of Nubians. Another is made up solely of natives of Zanzibar. These divisions reach into nearly all the Asiatic and African lands. There are Afghanistaneze and others from still farther east, from the very heart of India, and even from the far Pacific islands. One has only to see these collections of students, massed around a teacher of their own language and nationality, to become convinced of the broad field of Mohammedanism and the mightiness of the effort needful to uproot it.
Poverty! That is no name for the condition of the students. They come to Cairo from the far-off regions, impelled by some passion bordering on that for learning, living on a little crust and fruit, having no sleeping place at night save the space of the sacred mosque which serves as a university, never paying a piastre for all the instruction of years, and looking forward with earnest longing to the time when they can leave again and impart to their native villages, or the very desert wastes, the wisdom which they have gained in the shades of the great hall of learning in the Cairo of the caliphs. There is a dash of self-seeking in their coming hither. When the tocsin of war is sounded, there is no exemption from conscription save learning. He who has once entered the doorway is safe from the conscription list. Were an attack made on the very citadel where Mohammed Ali put to death every plotting Mameluke—except one, who leaped upon his faithful Arab steed and plunged safely into the depths below—nothing could touch him. He has come to the fountain of knowledge, and Mars has no claim upon him. At the present time the number of students is not so large as usual, for there is no fear of a war, except such as the English are fighting and holding themselves responsible for. I looked carefully at the kind of food which these students ate, and in all cases it was of the simplest quality. Some were taking their solid dinner, and it was nothing more than a rude bowl of lentil soup or a flat cake of pounded grain. The clothing in most cases betokened the same poverty. The slippers were of rude construction, such as fifteen cents would buy, and even these are to be worn at the general prayer, which begins the day for all the students, only to be laid aside during the later hours. The habit is a loose black, or other colored robe, which has become threadbare by long usage. I am sure I saw many students, and professors as well, whose entire dress could not have cost five francs apiece. This dress they have on, moreover, is the whole scope of their wardrobe. When they get another suit it will probably be when they reach home again, and enter upon their calling for life.
The professors get no salary. They have passed through various stages of learning, and when once they have committed every word of the Koran, and perhaps some of the more noted commentaries on it to memory, and have given other proofs of aptness at teaching, they are declared able to instruct. But they get no pay for teaching. Neither the University treasury pays them, nor does the student do it. Their instruction is positively gratuitous. Now, if by copying the Koran or other book, or by private teaching in families, or by doing some outside manual work, they can be supported, well and good. But for sitting squat on the sacred marble floor and teaching students the holy laws, and all the holy sciences that come from them, there must be no itching palm. This is the one place, and only one, so far as I can recall, where I have been where there has been no call for backsheesh.
How, then, is this immense establishment supported? I answer, that many students are sustained, and so permitted to remain at the University, by the funds of the institution. The treasury, instead of taking care of the professor, goes rather to keeping the student from starvation. There are many endowments which have fallen into the hands of the state which constitute a large part of this treasury. Education has always been an attractive investment, and many Mohammedans have left sums of money for this purpose, and so the University of Cairo owes a good part of its wealth to this source. Again, when funds fall from certain causes, into the treasury of the state—perhaps property for which there are no heirs—it is devoted to this purpose. The building and all its belongings, and all really needy students are thus provided for. Out of the three hundred professors and other teachers, only one is paid a salary. He is the general director, or rector, and his salary amounts to 10,000 piastres, or about five hundred dollars of our money.
Of one thing I was very careful to make inquiry. I mean as to the bearing of this institution on the propagation of Mohammedan ideas. In all descriptions I had become familiar with concerning the great purpose of the students, the thought was made predominant that the students went away with a missionary zeal, and became intense propagators of the faith throughout their lives. The Rev. Mr. Harvey, of that noble cause and magnificent institution for Egypt, the United Presbyterian Mission, from the United States, was a very kind escort during my visit. He has been many years a resident of Cairo, and is very familiar with every form of Mohammedan life, and he informs me that this zeal for the Moslem faith does not exist, that the students do not go away with it, and never exhibit it, except in rare cases, in later life. Their stay in the University may be long. They may be three or four or five years, and if no way to work opens they may spend most of their life there, but whenever they do leave, sooner or later, they go off not simply as teachers of theology, but as jurists, mathematicians, or professional men of other callings, and religion is less in mind than secular work. Even when they go out as imams, or priests, that profession carries with it certain functions which belong both to the town clerk or the district judge, and hence the priesthood is absorbed in certain legal and administrative functions which eclipse the sacred office altogether. As to a burning zeal to disseminate Mohammedanism, it does not exist. It has no unquenchable love for itself, and is only continuing its own means of propagation because of something better. That something better is at its doors, and is beginning to thread the labyrinths of the Dark Continent. In due time Christianity will do for Africa what it has done for Europe, and is this day doing for the half of Asia.
The darkest feature of my visit to the University was the absence of women. Alas! you never see the Mohammedan woman in these oriental lands, save with veiled face and hesitant step. Only yesterday I saw a handsome carriage being driven along one of the principal Cairene streets, preceded by a gaily dressed herald, who cried, “Make way, make way,” as is the fashion here still. The silken curtains were drawn, but the occupants were two ladies. They must live in the dark. In the mosque they must sit in the lofty spaces, far back behind the wooden screen work, and even then be veiled. The very small girls, who trip about with little rattling and tinkling bells around their ankles, are hardly old enough to learn the way to the next street before the veil is drawn over their face, and only their little eyes are permitted to look out. In the multitudes which I saw at the University, both as students and teachers, there was but one woman. She was probably the wife of a professor, and had come merely to bring the learned man his dinner, and then slip back again to the dark rear room of the house misnamed a home, and await his coming, and be the menial still to prepare his evening meal. Mohammedanism has no place for woman in its educational system. Its best interpretation of her office is that she is simply man’s slave. But the better day is coming, and may it soon be here, when the right of all women, in all these oriental countries, to the highest and the largest knowledge, shall be recognized as equal to that of any men beneath the shining sun.