Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

“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.