The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

I visited the college at Asyut not long ago. It is full to overflowing, and notwithstanding the new structure just completed it needs more money and more buildings. It has a great prestige throughout Egypt, and with a little money its efficiency could easily be doubled. The college is said to give a better education than the government institutions, and that at the lowest possible cost. The tuition is nominal. For the poorest schools it is only about one dollar a term in money, and the ordinary rate is about ten dollars a year. The cost of the education varies with the taste of the students. These are of all classes from the sons of the poorest fellah to the heir of the highest pasha or richest merchant. There are three kinds of accommodations, the cost of which ranges from thirty-five dollars a year upward. The wealthy Egyptian boy can have his own room, or groups can live four in a room. He can eat at the best table, or he can get cheaper board with meat three or four times a week. On the other hand, he can work his way through college, furnishing his own food, buying vegetables and fish at very low cost. Many of the boys bring their bread from home. It is made of ground corn or millet and baked in cakes an inch thick. These cakes are toasted until they are as hard as stone, in which shape they will go through the term. Before going to a meal the students dip their bread in buckets of water set out for the purpose, and when it is soft carry it with them to the table.

The Asyut institution has its graduates in all the government departments of Egypt. They are among the leading merchants of the country, and every town has numbers of them. Many of them are Copts and not a few are Mohammedans. I am told that there are more than fifteen thousand boys now being educated in the United Presbyterian schools and colleges.

Shortly before Sultan Abdul Hamid was ousted by the Young Turk party and carried to his prison in Saloniki, he referred bitterly to the work that Robert College had done in unsettling his empire. Said he: “That institution has cost me Bulgaria, and it is like to lose me my throne.”

He was right. Robert College was founded in Constantinople in 1863 by a New York merchant named Robert, who gave a large part of his fortune to this institution. He was aided by the Reverend Cyrus Hamlin, D.D., who was, I think, the real organizer. Since then its graduates have formed the leaven for new ideas throughout the Near East. Some of its graduates organized the colleges and schools in Bulgaria. Others have been teaching in schools throughout the Turkish Empire; many have acted as officers of the Government, and some of the best leaders of Turkey to-day got their education at Robert College.

Robert College has now five hundred or six hundred students, including Mohammedans, Jews, Armenians, and Russians, as well as representatives of the other nations about. The teaching is non-sectarian, although all are required to attend daily prayers and go to services on Sunday. The college has won the approval of the Government, but the officials want it incorporated as a Turkish institution so it will be subject to their laws. To this the Americans naturally object. They say that they are organized under the laws of New York and they expect to stand by all the rights which they now enjoy as an American corporation under the protection of the United States Government.

There is no doubt that the Americans are sensible in preferring the protection of Uncle Sam to that of the Sultan. Conditions are bound to be unsettled in this part of the world for years to come. There will be revolutions and counter-revolutions before the Turks come down to a solid, substantial, modern government. There is always the fear that the college will be put under a strict censorship, as used to be the case. As it is now, the students can read what books they like, and there is little trouble as to the newspapers. They can go where they please without passports, and the present government seems to be doing all it can to promote education.

Under the régime of Abdul Hamid it was far different. In his time every newspaper was carefully looked over by Turkish officials, and all sentences or words objectionable to the Government were cut out. This was true of papers coming in through the mail as well as of the native publications. Here in Beirut a Sunday weekly is published devoted largely to the life and sayings of our Saviour. The censors objected to it, saying: “The paper is a dangerous one, for in it they kill a King of the Jews every week. This might suggest the assassination of the Sultan, and we cannot permit it.”

Dr. Bliss, the president of the American University of Beirut, once imported an old copy of Shakespeare. It was kept at the customs house, the censor objecting to its importation. Said the latter: “Shakespeare is not a good book for the Turks. It has in it the story of a man named Macbeth who killed a king. It would be a bad example for our people.” Dr. Bliss succeeded in getting his Shakespeare through by saying he had another copy of the same book, which, as it was already in the country, could not be taken out, and he would be glad to trade this for the new copy. The censor consented, accepted the Shakespeare which cost a dollar, and admitted the fine old edition instead.

At another time some New Testaments sent to Constantinople were held back by one of the censors because of the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians. Galata is one of the divisions of Constantinople, and the censor asked: “Who is this man Paul, and why is he writing to our people in Galata?” He was with difficulty persuaded that St. Paul was dead and that his letter was not part of a plot. There is a story that a textbook on chemistry was kept out because a censor objected to the term H₂O, saying that it seemed to mean that Hamid II (the Sultan, Abdul Hamid) amounted to nothing.