Students in mosques are generally supported by the people of the parish, (each mosque having its section or parish), who can be called upon for food for all the inmates of a mosque every morning and evening. Not unfrequently mosques are endowed with land, or rents of shops and houses, for the payment of professors. Mr. Lane speaks of a mosque in Cairo, which had an endowment for the support of three hundred blind students. The great mosque al-Azhar, in Cairo, is the largest and most influential seat of learning in Islām. In 1875, when the present writer visited it, it had as many as 5,000 students gathered from all parts of the Muḥammadan world.
In India almost every mosque of importance has its class of students of divinity, but they are not established for the purposes of general education, but for the training of students of divinity who will in time become the Imāms of mosques. Some of the Maulawīs are men held in great reputation as Arabic scholars, but they are, as a rule, very deficient in general knowledge and information. Whether we look to India, or Persia, or Egypt, or Turkey, the attitude of Muḥammadanism is undoubtedly one in direct antagonism to the spread of secular education.
A MUSLIM SCHOOL.
Much has been made by some writers of the liberal patronage extended to literature and science by ʿAbdu ʾr-Raḥmān and his successors as K͟halīfahs of Cordova in the Middle Ages. But there was nothing original, or Islāmic, in the literature thus patronised, for, as Professor Uerberweg remarks in his History of Philosophy, “the whole philosophy of the Arabians was a form of Aristotelianism, tempered more or less with Neo-Platonic conceptions.” The philosophical works of the Greeks and their works of medical and physical science, were translated from Greek into Arabic by Syrian Christians, and not by Arabian Muslims. Muḥammadans cannot be altogether credited with these literary undertakings.
Al-Maqqarī, in his History of the Dynasties of Spain, has an interesting notice of education in that country, in which he writes:—
“Respecting the state of science among the Andalusians (Spaniards), we must own in justice that the people of that country were the most ardent lovers of knowledge, as well as those who best knew how to appreciate and distinguish a learned man and an ignorant one; indeed, science was so much esteemed by them, that whoever had not been endowed by God with the necessary qualifications to acquire it, did everything in his power to distinguish himself, and conceal from the people his want of instruction; for an ignorant man was at all times looked upon as an object of the greatest contempt, while the learned man, on the contrary, was not only respected by all, nobles and plebeians, but was trusted and consulted on every occasion; his name was in every mouth, his power and influence had no limits, and he was preferred and distinguished in all the occasions of life.
“Owing to this, rich men in Cordova, however illiterate they might be, encouraged letters, rewarded with the greatest munificence writers and poets, and spared neither trouble nor expense in forming large collections of books; so that, independently of the famous library founded by the K͟halīfah al-Ḥākim, and which is said by writers worthy of credit to have contained no less than four hundred thousand volumes, there were in the capital many other libraries in the hands of wealthy individuals, where the studious could dive into the fathomless sea of knowledge, and bring up its inestimable pearls. Cordova was indeed, in the opinion of every author, the city in Andalus where most books were to be found, and its inhabitants were renowned for their passion for forming libraries. To such an extent did this rage for collection increase, says Ibn Saʿīd, that any man in power, or holding a situation under Government, considered himself obliged to have a library of his own, and would spare no trouble or expense in collecting books, merely in order that people might say,—Such a one has a very fine library, or, he possesses a unique copy of such a book, or, he has a copy of such a work in the hand-writing of such a one.”
EGGS. According to the Imām Abū Ḥanīfah, if a person purchase eggs and after opening them discover them to be of bad quality and unfit for use, he is entitled to a complete restitution of the price from the seller. (Hidāyah, vol. ii. p. 415.)
EGYPT. Arabic Miṣr (مصر). The land of Egypt is mentioned several times in the Qurʾān in connection with the history of Joseph and Moses. In the year A.H. 7 (A.D. 628), Muḥammad sent an embassy to al-Muqauqis, the Roman Governor of Egypt, who received the embassy kindly and presented the Prophet with two female Coptic slaves.