BY BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D. D., LL.D.

Years ago I had taken pains to gain all accessible information concerning the most celebrated, and certainly also the largest, university in the entire Mohammedan world. In 1871 when in Cairo a number of days, through lack of a proper guide and full knowledge of this important institution, I left the city without seeing it. I was determined this time, therefore, to make sure of a visit to it, and to see carefully, with my own eyes, this marvel of the Mohammedan faith. The University is located in a mosque, and is, in fact, the one chief business of the mosque itself. Religion—such as it is—is the fundamental feature of all Moslem education. Not a science is taught in any school of Mohammedanism which does not begin with the Koran, and again come back to it. Whether law or medicine or geometry—in fact, whatever is communicated to the young, the first and ever predominant lesson imparted with it and through it is, that the Koran is the fountain of all science. Very naturally, then, the school is a part of the service of the mosque. This idea is not new. It is an oriental habit. We find proofs even in the Scriptures that the church was God’s first school. In ancient Egypt the temple, the palace, and the school were the perfected trinity in every city, and often the temple and the school were so closely enclosed that no careful observer could tell where one began and the other ended. The same idea re-appears in the arrangements which Charlemagne made for the higher education of the Frankish empire. The school was often located under the palace and in close connection with the chapel roof, and was called scholia palatina, or the school of the palace. At first the object seems to have been that the emperor’s children and other children of the court might have the best opportunity for learning; but very soon the limits became broader, and all who wanted to learn could have every advantage, within close distance of both church and palace.

The approach to the University of Cairo is a narrow street, with open booths on either side, where the artisans ply their crafts in full view of every passer-by. Three industries take the lead of all others—book-selling, book-binding, and hair-shaving. The nearest street to the University bears the name of the Street of the B, and such it may well be called. The Mohammedan has always a shaven head. He wears a great turban, of white or some other color. Green is the most infrequent shade, for that indicates that the wearer is a descendant of the prophet Mohammed. Not one hair is allowed under that turban. When it gets a little long the barber must shave the pate as clean as an ostrich egg. All along a part of the street leading to the University the barbers sit on the floors their shops, and shave the heads of their customers. The one to be shaved does not sit in a chair, but simply stretches out full length on the floor and puts his head in the lap of the barber, who also sits on the floor, with his feet doubled up under him. Then begins the process of shaving. It is a most lowly operation. No paper is used during the process, the barber getting rid of the shaved hair and soap by wiping the razor on his customer’s face until the entire tonsorial feat is finished and an ablution of cranium and face is in order. In addition to the barber shops there are probably not less than twenty-five book shops, as many binderies, and a good number of stationery stalls. These are all of modest dimensions, but are well stocked with everything that a student needs that is to say, a student of the Mohammedan order.

Between the point where the street ends and the University enclosure proper, there is a large fore-court. Here one sees such a medley of all forms of life and strange habits, in connection with study, that he can never forget it. It is the place where no serious study goes on, but where the news is discussed and conversation enjoyed. Even the barbers have spilled over into this court, for I saw a number of them busily shaving the heads of outstretched students. One of them, seeing a Frank scanning his work, stopped a moment, and holding up his razor from the pate which he had nearly made bald again, asked me if I did not want to be shaved too. I thanked him—but had not time. Imagine a half-dozen students lying about in Mead Hall, in Drew Seminary, near the doors of Drs. Butts, or Strong, or Miley, or Crooks, or Upham, and having their heads shaved by busy barbers, who sit flat on the marble floor and relieve the crania of their theological patrons of their last capillary endowment! Then think of students munching at a crust of dark bread or a pomegranate, or some edible, good or poor, according to his resources. Some students have families, and here the children come and play about them, at times when their fathers are not busy with their books. So far as I could see, there was no formal studying in this great fore-court. Perhaps there were a hundred persons in it, lying, sitting, walking. Some alone with their meditations, others entertaining a group of eager listeners, and gesticulating with oriental realism. Only one class had the appearance of any work, a group of boys. One of the number displeased his teacher, whereupon the latter beat him smartly with his fist until the little fellow’s eyes swam in tears; my blood fairly boiled at the teacher’s cruelty. I thought I was already in the University proper, but this was a serious error. The institution was yet to come; I was only approaching the great establishment.

I had no sooner touched the threshold of the great central hall than a man met me, and, with a most polite salaam, informed me that I must now put on slippers. He was a magnificent specimen of a well developed Egyptian—tall, muscular, grave, yet pleasant, and only answering such questions as were put to him. Unlike the European guides in blue and brass, those of Africa have no stereotype speeches which they hurl at you, as they have done at the thousands before you. In a moment four pairs of soft slippers, of yellow sheepskin, were brought to my companions and myself, and the wary hands which brought them slipped them on over our boots and tied them on with red strings. We were now to enter upon the holy stone floor of the great hall of Mohammedan learning, and only holy dust must fall upon that tessellated floor, and then only with softest touch. Here was a scene which baffles all description. The hall was about two hundred and fifty feet long and two hundred wide. All the classes were reciting, engaged in work, or listening to the professor. Every one who recited did it loudly. I stood beside one of the theological professors and watched his method. His class numbered forty students, whose various physiognomies showed that they had come from every part of the broad Mohammedan world. The professor sat squat on the floor, with his bare feet doubled up about him. There is no craze as yet among Mohammedans for only young teachers. This man, like many others, had long since passed beyond middle life. His heavy gray beard and very dark face were lighted up by as keen a pair of black eyes as ever became diamonds, when they saw in his young days the prophet’s torch in Mecca, or in vision beheld the curtain drawn aside which hides the Moslem paradise from human sight. The forty students sat about him in a circle, yet in such way that all were before him at once. He was one of the circle, in fact, and as he taught he swayed to and fro, and looked off into the distance as if in reverie, and then again at his class, and, with an intensity that only an Arab possesses, he burned his ideas into the very brain of the students. He sat at the foot of a stone pillar, and leaned against it at intervals, when his weary form needed a little rest.

This theological professor had the method of all. He held a thin book in his hand which seemed to be his own brief, and, after reading snatches from it, he gave a comment or explanation of it, and then had one student and then another repeat what he had said. Our American infant class method of teaching verses, and having them committed to memory while the class are together, and then repeating them, so that the teacher can see that the work is well and surely done, is precisely the method of both elementary and advanced education in this greatest university of the Mohammedan world. The brief of this theological professor was merely his collection of definitions, and these were committed to memory on the spot. Some of the students had sheets of tin, something smaller than the sheets of roofing tin with which we are familiar in the United States. On these they wrote in ink, with reed styles, and with such dexterity that a whole page was filled in a very short time. What was written on these tin slates was taken away, and designed to be committed to memory, when that process was not finished during the session of the class.

Now the entire floor of this immense hall was covered with classes at work. No teacher or student sat in a chair. There was not even a footstool in the entire University. The professors and students formed little or large groups all over the immense space, no class interfering with another, and each going on with its work as if alone, and yet not a partition or a curtain dividing the groups at study. I saw only a little eating here, an occasional student slily making a lunch of new dates, the fruit with “gold dust” on it, now just in from the country.

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.