Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

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.