 | CHAPTER XIII The Egyptian problem |  |
CHAPTER XIII
EDUCATION
At a time when the Egyptian Government schools
were being demoralised by turbulent political agitators,
and schoolboys and students were going on strike and
deserting their classes for rowdy street demonstrations,
the Ministry of Education displayed unconscious humour
in selecting as a motto for a recent report on elementary
education a quotation from the Talmud: "By the
breath of the school-children shall the State be saved."
By whatever standard we judge the educational system
devised for the youth of Egypt under British control,
it has tended not at all to the salvation of the State.
It is unquestionably the worst of our failures. At the
end of nearly four decades illiteracy weighs down 92 per
cent. of the male population and over 99 per cent. of
the women of Egypt. In spite of the warning example
of India before our eyes, we have barely yet approached
the urgent question of popular education, beyond multiplying
the old native Kuttabs and trying to extend
their usefulness, as far as the appalling dearth of teachers
who can even read and write allows, to something more
than the mere learning of the Koran by rote. Not till
1916 were higher elementary schools started to take up
the teaching where the elementary schools leave off, and
to give in a four years' course, between eleven and sixteen,
simple but practical instruction, suitably differentiated
the general capacities of pupils with a view to their early
absorption in the business of life."
Perhaps the best thing that has been done so far for
elementary education has been the delegation of powers,
to which I have already alluded, to the Provincial Councils.
It has already yielded some good results and awakened
genuine public interest in the question. It led to the
appointment in 1917 of a Commission to inquire into the
subject, and its Report was published in 1919. It is
not a particularly illuminating document, and as the
Commission took no evidence, it is little more than a
record of pious opinions. But it shows at any rate how
little has been done in the past, and how enormous is the
leeway to be made up. Egypt devotes only 2 per cent.
of its revenue to educational purposes, as against 7 to 10
per cent. in other backward countries, such as the Balkan
States before the war, and of that small amount the
meagre pittance that goes to elementary education,
though the fellaheen, who need it so badly, contribute the
bulk of the Egyptian revenue, barely reaches £20,000
per annum actually expended by the State. One cannot
therefore be surprised to find that, whereas in Western
countries the attendance at elementary schools is usually
estimated at about 16 per cent. of the population, it is
only 3 per cent. in Egypt. So much for quantity. The
quality is even more deplorable. The Commission's
Report, which devotes five long pages to admirable
quotations from high authorities on the inestimable value
of education, but says very little about what elementary
education should be in Egypt, outlines a vast and costly
scheme which in twenty years would provide Egypt with
8,000 elementary schools and 30,000 teachers, and
meet the requirements of 80 per cent. of the boys and
50 per cent. of the girls of school-going age—i.e., between
six and eleven. In Egypt, however, as in many countries,
it is a far cry from the recommendations of a report
to their execution, and the training of 30,000 teachers
the provision of 8,000 school buildings.
But if we have sacrificed popular to higher education,
what have we to show to our credit in regard to the latter?
In the broadest sense of the term, desperately little.
We have concentrated our efforts on secondary schools
and on the few higher colleges for law, medicine, engineering,
and teaching, which existed for the most part before
the Occupation, and we have done so mainly for the
production—still quite inadequate—of Government
officials. Even in this limited field the schools and
colleges are insufficiently equipped and staffed. Classes
overgrown beyond all possibility of real efficiency are
still not large enough to satisfy the ever-increasing
demand, for the Egyptian middle classes have been
simply clamouring for education. In 1916 only 341 out
of 619 youths who had passed the requisite examinations
and were entitled to expect admission to the higher
schools could be accommodated in them.
I will say nothing of the School of Law, as it is under
the Ministry of Justice, nor of the more recently established
School of Agriculture, which is under the Ministry of
Agriculture. But the School of Medicine at Kasr-el-Aini
in Cairo, the only one in Egypt—there is no School of
Dentistry at all—is under the Ministry of Education.
It is at the same time the only School of Pharmacy.
Its diplomas are recognised in Europe, and it produces
first-rate men. But its totally inadequate equipment
only allows it to turn out fifty graduates a year, when the
country requires hundreds. The average of annual applications
for admission, all from young men with recognised
educational qualifications, has been 149 for the last
six years. For every applicant admitted four were turned
back. For the School of Pharmacy the average was 38,
and of these only one in four could find admission. Egypt
meanwhile continues to be flooded with quack chemists
of foreign nationality, who are free from all control or
interference under cover of the Capitulations. Both
housed in an entirely obsolete building in which, according
to the annual reports of visitors appointed by the Royal
Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons, the principles of
modern sanitation and cleanliness may be taught but
cannot be properly practised. After Sir Henry Morris's
visit in 1913, the London Committee of those Colleges
wrote: "They feel bound once more to express their
disappointment that in spite of their repeated strong
criticism, no steps have been taken to provide a modern
hospital on up-to-date sanitary conditions, capable of
affording a thorough medical and sanitary education."
This pungent criticism is passed altogether in silence
in the Report of the British Adviser to the Ministry of
Education for 1913—the last Report issued before the
war interrupted publication—though he takes good care
to say that Sir Henry Morris expressed himself as generally
pleased with the teaching and examinations. On this
point there have never been any two opinions. Dr. Owen
Richards has an admirable and devoted staff, both
English and Egyptian, and they are doing excellent work.
But official neglect has handicapped them too heavily.
The training of native teachers under the Ministry of
Education has been no less inadequate. The one higher
training college, rightly described by the Educational
Adviser as "the most important educational institution
in the country," had 235 students in 1913 and could not
meet the increasing applications for admission, because the
building in which it was located was not only old and
dilapidated and constantly needed extensive and costly
repairs to keep it habitable, but left no room for further
expansion. There is no real Egyptian University, though
there is an institution, founded in 1909, which calls itself
by that high-sounding name. It is an outcome of the
Nationalist movement of that period, and Saad Pasha
Zaghlul is one of those who took the keenest interest in it.
But there has been no generous response from the Egyptian
public. Its diplomas are not recognised. The few
sparsely attended, though it is worth noting that a
distinguished Spanish Orientalist, Conte V. de Golanza,
has succeeded in attracting half a dozen students from
El Azhar to a course of lectures delivered by him in
Arabic on Western philosophy, one year on Pascal and
another year on Kant. A Government Commission got
as far as the drawing up of a preliminary report on the
creation of a State University, and the higher schools,
if properly developed, should provide a sound working
nucleus. Neither a good literary education nor a scientific
education in such subjects as analytical chemistry or
zoology or astronomy—and where are there better
conditions for the study of the heavens?—is to be had
to-day, under Government auspices, in Egypt. A serious
effort has yet to be made to provide for the study of
Oriental languages or of Egyptian archæology, though
Cairo is the ideal centre for both. Commercial and
technical schools were at last started about ten years
ago in response to a public demand too long ignored.
They have been a step in the right direction, but they,
too, are already suffering from overcrowding and from
the dearth of competent teachers.
One of the most disastrous results of the failure of
Government to foresee or to keep pace with the rush for
education that has followed the development and growing
prosperity of the country has been the multiplication of
indigenous "private" schools. They are called "private"
because, though they can send up their pupils for State
examinations, they are entirely free from all State control
unless they receive a grant-in-aid. Many of these
"private" schools are mere squalid speculations or
worse, for anyone can open a school in Egypt without
the slightest test of character or educational qualifications.
There has been talk at times of making a law which would
subject the opening of any school to a licence from the
Ministry of Education, but so long as the Capitulations
are in force it would be practically impossible to extend
for evading its provisions would, as they constantly
do in regard to many dubious avocations, shelter their
interests behind the names of men of straw enjoying
foreign protection. As things are to-day, low fees and
no inquiries as to the boy's capacity or antecedents
appeal too often to the ignorant Egyptian parent.
On the other hand, many Egyptian parents of the
better classes have discovered by painful experience
that if the intellectual training in the Government schools
is poor, the training of character has been still more
neglected. For that reason they prefer to send their
children to the "foreign" schools—especially to the
French schools—where a higher moral standard and
far better discipline are combined with more thorough
teaching. These institutions receive large subventions
from their Governments, and they are entirely independent
of the Egyptian Ministry of Education, whose officers
are not entitled to set foot inside their doors. The only
British institution of that sort is the excellent Victoria
College in Alexandria, which never received any assistance
from the British Government, and owes its existence—still
only too precarious—to the public spirit of the community
and the generosity of a few munificent patrons.
No doubt, even if much better provision had been
made for Western education in Egypt, many Egyptians
would have desired to complete their studies in Europe.
But, in the absence of such provision, Egyptians who
want to give their sons a really good education are almost
compelled to send them abroad, and to send them at an
age when they are dangerously accessible to the worst
rather than to the best influences of European surroundings
entirely alien to them.
It may be said in extenuation of the present educational
system that we did not create it, but found it already in
existence at the time of the Occupation. It dates back
in part to Mehemet Ali and his French advisers, and his
primary object undoubtedly was, just as was Macaulay's
Government offices and administrative services. Nor
have the majority of Egyptians yet got beyond the stage
of looking upon education as the avenue that leads to
Government employment. Unfortunately, we allowed
that conception to go on dominating primary and secondary
education, and up to 1916 the award of a Primary
Education Certificate sufficed to qualify its recipient for
appointment to Government service. "Many parents,"
the Educational Adviser confessed in his Report for 1913,
"were thereby led through mistaken pride to send their
children to Primary Schools without any hope of continuing
their education beyond that stage, in the belief
that they would thus open to them a career of reputed
respectability in an office. Large numbers of youths
were thus diverted from their natural career in agriculture
or industry, and found themselves eventually, on completing
the Primary course or after failing to complete it,
without any prospect of obtaining the kind of employment
that they hoped for, and estranged from their own
surroundings and parental influences." The remedy
that was devised was to abolish the Primary School
Certificate examination and substitute for it an Entrance
Examination, known as Part I, for admission to Secondary
Schools. This remedy only aggravated the evil, for it
simply provoked a rush for this Entrance Examination,
which has led to a tremendous overcrowding of the old
schools and the opening of a large number of new private
schools of a very low type, and to the steady deterioration
of secondary education itself.
During the absence in England of the late Educational
Adviser his locum tenens published a Report on the
results for the last ten years of the Secondary School
examinations which suddenly poured a flood of lurid
light on to the dark places of the system. It showed
up the absolute worthlessness of most of the Eygptian
"private" schools and exhibited the Government schools
as only some degrees better. In the examinations known
on the English side from Government schools,
and from the schools merely under Government inspection
only 309 passed out of 2,020, whilst from private schools
not under inspection only 264 out of 1,824, or barely
14 per cent. From two large "private" schools in Cairo
that sent up over 400 candidates between them about
half failed to reach the minimum in either arithmetic
or algebra or geometry, and a good proportion did not
even get a single mark. In the examinations known as
Part II the results were very similar; 225 out of 438, or
51 per cent., passed from Government schools, whilst only
158 passed out of 527 from other schools merely under
inspection, and 63 out of 236 from "private" schools
not under inspection. Subject after subject was passed
in gloomy review, and in their final conclusions the
examiners, commenting on the year's "catastrophe,"
declared the root of the evil to lie, not only in the uncontrolled
increase of numbers sent up by "private" schools,
where the teachers are often "unqualified, ill-paid and
occasionally corrupt," but also "in the lack of common-sense,
in the absence of any reasoning power, in the dull,
mechanical repetition of memorised facts, in the want of
interest and practical intelligence"—defects only less
marked in the Government schools than in the "private"
schools, and apparently not confined to the pupils alone.
The charts which accompany the report show the general
decline in efficiency to have been going on steadily for
years, whilst the numbers have been constantly going up.
Can any more damning verdict be conceived on a system
of which examinations have been the Alpha and the
Omega?
Egyptian education has, no doubt, been handicapped
by the language question. Before the Occupation French
was the chief teaching language. English has not yet
entirely displaced it. As soon as the Anglo-French
Entente of 1904 diminished the acute rivalry between
French and English, the Egyptians began to agitate for
become the chief teaching medium. But the difficulty
with Arabic is that the vernacular differs very widely
from the literary tongue, which is that of the Koran.
Mahomedan influence clings to the latter and would fain
have every text-book written in it, which is much like
requiring of an English text-book on aviation that no
word be used which cannot be justified out of Chaucer.
The scientific text-books suffer most, but the study of
Arabic itself tends to slip to the ground between the two
stools of the literary and vulgar tongues. European
teachers are naturally prone to hold the change largely
responsible for the steady retrogression in the Secondary
Schools. The arguments in favour of making the language
of the country the vehicle for instruction are admittedly
very strong. But, unfortunately, there is very little
modern literature of any value in Arabic, and youths
who under the present system do not learn enough
English or French to get any pleasure out of English
or French literature feed chiefly on vernacular newspapers
more exciting than edifying. Only in one thing does the
Western education they are supposed to receive in
Government schools impress its stamp upon all. The
boys are all obliged to wear European clothes, far less
clean and far less suitable to the climate than their own
native dress.
The British teaching staff, amongst whom are to be
found some of the severest critics of the whole system
imposed upon them, is often harshly taken to task by
Egyptians. The service would probably have been less
open to attack if men had been specially recruited for it
from the beginning. But for a long time the best amongst
those who joined it were promptly switched off into the
other public services. When the war broke out, most
of the British and French teachers went off to fight or
to do war work, and at a critical moment the European
element in the schools was reduced to a minimum. Then
during the last twelve months the Egyptian teaching
has in many cases directly contributed to the complete
breakdown of all discipline under the incitements of
political agitation.
We have, unhappily, no more reason to be proud of
our record of female than of male education. It shows
an even worse failure to foresee, or to keep pace
with, the growing demand. The proportion of illiteracy
amongst the women of Egypt is still appalling. Only
three per 1,000 knew how to read or write at the time of
the last census in 1907, and the fraction is still probably
well under one per cent. But the movement in favour
of female education, which started in the upper classes,
has been spreading downwards, and the old prejudice
against it is dying out even in the rural districts.
The Egyptian girls who are receiving some sort of
instruction to-day in schools of all kinds under the
management or inspection of the Ministry of Education
number roughly 50,000. This is more than double the
number in 1910, but it still represents only 6 per cent. of
the total number of girls of school-going age. In addition
to these, another 20,000 are receiving instruction in
Egyptian "private" schools, and the girls' "private"
schools have even a worse reputation than those for boys.
In one place a girls' school was started by a woman of
notoriously bad character. As she was an Egyptian
subject, sufficient pressure was brought to bear upon her
to give up her seminary for young ladies, though there
is no law that could have forced her to do so. Had she
been a foreign subject, or a "foreign protected" subject,
it might have been still more difficult to deal with her.
As in the case of their sons, many of the most respectable
Egyptian parents prefer for their daughters the schools
conducted by foreign religious communities and especially
by French nuns.
The girls' schools under the Ministry of Education are
even more overcrowded than the boys' schools. Many
of them have long waiting lists. They are wretchedly
grudgingly before the war, and now the whole housing
problem is as acute in Egypt as at home. The question of
high schools for girls has scarcely yet been approached,
and the only training college for other than elementary
teachers contains just ninety students. Yet the supply
of qualified teachers for the better-class girls' schools
is a matter of no less urgency and difficulty than the
provision of school buildings, for the strong feeling amongst
Egyptians that the first business of a woman is to get
married, and to get married early, militates very much
against teaching as a profession that does not favour
marriage. Elementary education, in which also the
Provincial Councils are beginning to take an intelligent
interest, is still absolutely in its infancy and almost entirely
confined to the old native maktahs, with just the most
sorely needed improvements in their very primitive curriculum
and squalid premises. The most promising
feature is that of the 3,600 maktahs at present under
Government inspection, 45—a little more than one in
100—have been set apart for girls only, and in these a large
proportion of the teaching staff has now been trained
in the Bulak Elementary Training College. Only six
years ago the Ministry of Education had to admit that
a good many of the women teachers in the maktahs were
themselves unable to read and write!
If we have made such a poor job of Egyptian education,
the great underlying cause is only too clear. There have
been very few Englishmen in responsible positions in
Egypt who have ever paid more than lip-worship to the
importance of education. In the early days of the
Occupation rigid economy had to be enforced everywhere
in order to meet a financial situation that seemed almost
desperate. But those lean years are now remote, and
education still continues to be treated with stepmotherly
parsimony.
Our whole educational policy lacked inspiration. It
was left almost entirely in the hands of a British Adviser
and indefatigable industry were beyond dispute, but
whose horizon remained that of his early pedagogic
training. None could fail to respect him, but his methods
stand condemned by the results. With his many excellent
if somewhat dour qualities, he had a narrowly utilitarian
conception of his task, believing in quantity rather than
quality. Tied overmuch to his office desk, whence he
issued innumerable rules and regulations, he was seldom,
if ever, it would appear, disposed to consult or to consider
outside opinion—least of all Egyptian opinion. He kept
the machinery of education and its results to himself,
and it is because of this secrecy that the publication,
during his absence, of the Report which for the first time
told the Egyptian parents the whole truth with regard to
their boys, as shown in the results of the examinations
that for most of them are the be-all and end-all of education,
fell on them like a bomb-shell. How little they are
themselves capable of realising its true significance they
have shown by venting their first resentment in a demand
that the standards of examination should at once be
lowered.
Wiser conclusions are, however, beginning to be drawn,
and they should be assisted by the appointment of a new
Educational Adviser, Mr. Paterson, who, though he has
had very little professional experience and only in the
first years of his career in Egypt, has gained general and
genuine popularity amongst Egyptians, as well as Europeans,
as an able and broad-minded official in the Finance
Department. It must be hoped that, before starting on
new experiments, Mr. Paterson will institute a careful
inquiry into the whole educational system required for
a country such as Egypt is. Sir Thomas Sadler's Commission,
which, though technically limited to the Calcutta
University, has probed many of the wider problems of
Indian education, has shown how the best native opinion
can be rallied to the cause of sound education by giving
a full and patient hearing to Indian witnesses and justifying
in its exhaustive and illuminating Report. The problem
of Western education in Egypt is far less complex, and
with the help of a man of Sir Thomas Sadler's experience,
Mr. Paterson and one or two leading Egyptians should
have little difficulty in conducting an inquiry which would
place its solution on a new and sounder basis. We should
then at least have done our best to discharge one of our
great responsibilities—one which we have hitherto treated
with culpable indifference.
Western education, even if it can be raised on to a
higher plane, will for a long time to come have to contend
with powerful and profoundly antagonistic forces of
which our own acquired habits of religious tolerance
make it difficult for us to grasp the reality. One of the
most stubborn facts we have to reckon with in Egypt is
that the ancient school or university of El Azhar still
remains, with its offshoots in the provinces, the great
Mahomedan educational agency which moulds the character
and outlook of a considerably greater number of
young Egyptians than all the primary and secondary
schools and colleges modelled on Western lines. Its
most brilliant days belong to that short period when
Arab civilisation, absorbing the remnants of Greco-Byzantine
and Persian civilisation, kept the torch of ancient
learning alight which had almost flickered out in the
darkness of the Middle Ages in Europe. Its intellectual
decay followed, as in the rest of the Mahomedan world,
when mere scholasticism of the narrowest type destroyed
such germs of evolutionary vitality as Islam may have
originally possessed. But the influence of El Azhar as
a stronghold of Mahomedan orthodoxy continued none
the less to grow, and it gradually overshadowed and
absorbed all the other seats of Mahomedan learning in
Egypt, or brought them into subordinate affiliation
with itself, like those of Tanta and Alexandria and a
few others of less importance. Its position has seldom
been more dominant than it is to-day as the rallying
important a part in the various phases through which
the Egyptian Nationalist movement has passed, that
the nature of the intellectual and moral training which its
students undergo deserves more notice than it generally
receives.
Most visitors to Cairo in more tranquil days will remember
the venerable, if rather dilapidated, pile of
buildings, partially restored some twenty years ago, which
opens on to narrow and crowded streets behind the Muski
in the heart of the old native city. It has grown up
in the course of nearly ten centuries round the Mosque
called El Azhar—"the blossoming"—which was built
by one of the Fatimite Khalifs in 970, and set aside for the
use of students. Through the Barbers' Gate a long
vaulted passage leads into a large sun-bathed quadrangular
court with a basin for ceremonial ablutions in
the centre, and surrounded by deep pillared arcades.
This courtyard is the threshold of the great seat of
Mahomedan learning which, with its affiliated offshoots,
attracts more than 13,000 students duly enrolled mostly
from Egypt, but also in smaller numbers from the most
remote parts of the world of Islam, besides another
10,000 whose attendance is more casual—young boys
and youths, and grown-up men and, not long ago, even
greybeards. Under the latest regulations issued in 1911,
the limit of age for admission is between ten and seventeen,
but as the complete course of studies lasts fifteen
years and in exceptional cases more, most of them are
approaching middle life before they leave El Azhar, and
many of them have married either before or soon after
entering it, the usual age for marrying being fifteen or
sixteen. In the great courtyard the students lie about on
mats, some sleeping, some eating, some reciting aloud from
their text-books in a rhythmical sort of chant to which
their swaying bodies keep time. Water carriers and
itinerant food sellers and hawkers of all kinds move
freely amongst them, swelling the din of voices with their
from one of the lofty minarets of the adjoining mosque
is the signal for the students to stream into the sanctuary,
an immense hall of which the low and time-blackened
roof is borne on over a hundred columns. Each of the
four great rites, or schools of theology, into which orthodox
Sunni Mahomedanism has been divided since the second
century of the Hejira, has its own Kibleh pointing to
Mecca for worshippers to turn to at prayer-time. The
students as they enter split up into different groups and
move towards the one of the 126 columns which the
teacher at whose feet they elect to sit has made his own.
With their legs crossed under them and their shoes deposited
behind them, they crouch round the teacher, whose
audience fluctuates with his popularity. He does not
indeed always lecture, as we understand lectures, but
confines himself to answering any questions put to him
by the students, who in turn read out from the text-book
of which each one has a copy in his hand. When El Azhar
overflows, similar scenes may be witnessed in other
mosques appointed for the purpose. These sittings,
which have now been shortened, still take up seven hours
of the student's day.
The object of El Azhar education was defined in the Law
of 1911 to be "the maintenance of the Sheria (the Mahomedan
Sacred Law) by imparting sound knowledge of the
sciences relating to it and by forming a body of ulema
(men learned in the Sacred Law) competent to give
religious instruction and to discharge the public functions
connected with the administration of the Sheria for the
guidance of the people into the path of happiness."
Now, as the Sheria is an immutable law based upon the
Koran and the Traditions of the Prophet, it is upon these
that the whole course of studies centres. No student is
admitted who, besides reading and writing sufficiently to
study the text-books, cannot recite half the Koran by
heart. Blind students, who in a land of ophthalmia are
so numerous as to form a separate and important group,
of subjects that form the curriculum is significant. They
are divided into three sections. The first, or religious
section, comprises the art of intoning the Koran, exegesis
of the Koran, the Traditions of the Prophet and their
terminology, monotheism, Mahomedan law and the
philosophy of legislation, Mahomedan jurisprudence and
its juridical principles, religious morals, the life of the
Prophet, the drawing up of legal documents and judicial
procedure according to the Sheria. The second section
is called that of philological science, and immense importance
is attached to it owing to the Mahomedan belief
in the textual revelation of the Koran which came down
from Heaven in its Arabic form, every word and every
letter of which is equally sacred. It comprises grammar
and the science of the formation of words, morphology,
elocution, rhetoric, the ornaments of style, Arabic literature,
composition, prosody, rhyme, calligraphy, dictation
and reading. The third section is called that of mathematical
and other sciences, and as it was considered
desirable to introduce some rudiments of modern learning,
it comprises in a strange medley logic, the art of discussion,
arithmetic, geometry, drawing, algebra, history, geography,
the "lessons of things," the properties of bodies,
hygiene, natural history, cosmography, the calculation of
time, administrative and judicial organisation, and theoretical
and practical pedagogy. The relative value of
these different subjects in the eyes of El Azhar authorities
can be gauged from the list of marks allotted to them
for examination purposes, the maximum in the "modern"
subjects being only half that obtainable in most of the old
orthodox subjects, and only a nominal minimum being
required in them in order to qualify for the certificates of
learning awarded to successful students.
It is the study of these subjects that absorbs fifteen
years of the student's life—a very strenuous life usually
spent in cramped and unhealthy surroundings. Unless
he lives at home in Cairo, he shares with other fellow
it would be misleading to call them colleges—assigned
to Egyptian students according either to the province
they come from or to the particular school of theology they
affect. For some time, perhaps for two or three years,
he has to support himself entirely. Then he passes from
the waiting list on to the list of those privileged to share
the modest bread rations, provided out of the bequests
of pious patrons of old. In his erudite work on the
Mahomedan universities of Egypt, M. Arminjon, a French
professor at the Cairo School of Law, reproduces an account
given to him by an El Azhar student of the way in which
his days were spent:—
"I rise at dawn, and having made my ablutions and said
my early prayers, I hurry off to El Azhar to attend the course
of Traditions of the Prophet, which lasts until after sunrise.
As soon as that is over the same teacher hears us on the Law
and its philosophy for another two hours or more. I then
go back to breakfast on the bread or rice and beans and lentils
of which my family send me a provision every month. My
repast finished, I return to El Azhar to study calligraphy until
the hour of midday prayer, and then a course of grammar
keeps me busy for another two hours, after which I retire
to a corner of the courtyard with my room-mate Ahmed,
and whilst we have a snack we rehearse the morning's lesson
in law and prepare for the next day's. By that time it
is the hour of afternoon prayer, and I go off to a neighbouring
mosque where for the last year a professor teaches us arithmetic
in European fashion with a black-board. Then back to El
Azhar to prepare for a lesson in logic, which a venerable Sheikh,
too infirm to move, gives us in his own house between the
hours of sunset and evening prayer. Having said the last
prayer for the day at El Azhar, I and my room-mates rush
back to our house, eat our supper, sit for a while talking,
and then retire to sleep."
Asked if he never made time for any amusements
and never went to any theatre or café, he replied:
"I should never set foot in such places as our holy religion
prohibits, but on Thursday afternoon, which we have free,
I go with some of my fellow-students to the Hammam, and
then we take a walk into the country and come back at dusk
is being held, enjoy the festoons of lights, buy a few sweets,
and listen in one of the tents to the reading of religious poems
or of the holy Koran. Friday's day of rest I devote to visiting
my friends."
During the vacation he went home to his family, with
whom he had to leave his wife as he could not afford to
bring her to Cairo. Not all students are as austere, but
physical exercise and games no more enter into their
minds than European forms of recreation.
And what do these dreary years of study profit the
El Azhar student's mind? All the canons of Mahomedan
Sacred Law having been laid down by the great doctors
who founded the four different schools of theology—
schools which differ only in their processes of codification
and not in the spirit of the codes common to all—the
teaching is essentially formal and tends to develop
the memory rather than the reasoning powers of the
student. For instance, the study of the Traditions
of the Prophet turns mainly upon an accurate knowledge
of the successive authorities for the accuracy of each
Tradition, as the "links" in the chain of witnesses through
whom it is traced back to the mouth of the Prophet himself,
i.e., the companions of the Prophet, those who
received them from his companions, and so on down to
the time when they were finally, and for all time, embodied
in the form in which they came to be accepted
and are still accepted as beyond any more possibility
of doubt than the Koran itself. Or take the study of
Arabic grammar, which in view of the textual sanctity of
the Koran, is regarded as the corner-stone of all Islamic
learning. It bulks very large in the first eight years
of the student's curriculum. It teaches him the meaning
and explains to him the form of every word used in the
sacred book, and therefore capable of being used in any
orthodox Mahomedan work. But he never learns how
to write an original composition, or what is the origin
of the Arabic language or its relationship to other Semitic
their minds never emerge from this atmosphere of paralysing
formalism. It would be surprising if they did. To
some, no doubt, Nature has given sufficient intellectual
power and independence of character to break away from
this barren scholasticism. In former times such men
founded new schools of thought which were denounced
by the orthodox as heresies and placed beyond the
pale of Islam.
In more recent times a few, like the late Sheikh Mohamed
Abdu at El Azhar, have striven for a sufficient elasticity
at least of interpretation to reconcile the old dogmas
with the intellectual and social needs of the modern world.
Their influence has seemed at times to be considerable,
but the promise of any real reforming movement which
it may have held out has hitherto been very imperfectly
fulfilled, perhaps because it is of the essence of Islam that
it should be incapable of fulfilment. The best that can
be said for El Azhar is that the most distinguished of its
students, besides being fine Arabic scholars, leave it with
a genuine sense of the dignity and responsibility attaching
to their learning, however narrow its limitations, which is
reflected not merely in their grave deportment, but often
in the sedate rectitude of their lives as good and earnest
Mahomedans. More frequently, however, it is to be
feared, the average El Azhar student carries away with
him chiefly a religious arrogance which, rooted in the
belief that the world belongs by rights to Islam, resents
all forms of progress emanating from Western civilisation
and readily translates itself into aggressive fanaticism.
A school of Kadis, or judges in the Courts administering
the Sacred Law, was founded in Lord Cromer's time independently
of El Azhar, but there is now a movement for
reincorporation with it, and the lawyers who practise
in those Courts as well as the whole staff of employés
connected with them and with the Ministry of Wakf
(Mahomedan Pious Foundations) are all drawn from
El Azhar. It is El Azhar that provides throughout Egypt
in all domestic matters that come under personal law,
and it should provide all the preachers and officiating
clergy of the mosques, if rank jobbery did not often override
even the privileges of a great religious institution.
Its influence, always great in Cairo, spreads into the
remotest villages. It has always been a power in the
land. In the old days of the Mameluke Sultans it sometimes
made or unmade them, and when Bonaparte landed
in Egypt he addressed himself to the Sheikhs of El Azhar
and not to the temporal rulers of the country, and held
them responsible for the great rising which took place
a few months later in the capital. It was they again
who in 1805 expelled the last Pasha sent from Constantinople
to represent the Ottoman Sultan, and set up
Mehemet Ali in his place, who never forgot altogether
what he owed to them, even when he realised that the
archaic education given at El Azhar could no longer supply
the needs of the more modern State which he was bent
on creating. Ismail himself, though his religion sat
light on him, always had doles for El Azhar. During
the early years of the Occupation, the number of its
students decreased perceptibly and its influence seemed
for a time to be waning. But it revived with the revival
of Egyptian Nationalism.
Lord Cromer, who was always at pains to keep his
finger on the pulse of the Egyptian people, saw the
importance of establishing some contact with an institution
that played so large a part in moulding Mahomedan
thought. Any direct interference would have incurred
deep suspicion as an intrusion upon a strictly Mahomedan
preserve, but he gave whatever indirect support he
could to the small group of men who, like Mohamed
Abdu, were anxious to introduce a new and more liberal
spirit into the ancient precincts of El Azhar and gave
his active sympathy credit for being entirely free from
sectarian arrière-pensées. Mohamed Abdu died. Lord
Cromer left Egypt, and neither of his successors took
accorded with their policy of giving a freer hand to the
Khedive to attempt to check him when he sought to
tighten his own hold over El Azhar. Upon Abbas, too,
his religion sat very light indeed, but he had been quick
to perceive the uses to which he could put his authority,
as head of the State, over El Azhar, both to enhance his
own prestige and to turn Mahomedan feeling against the
British control. A law passed in 1898 had done something
to place the functions and powers of the governing
body on a sounder basis and to regulate the course of
studies and the tests to be applied for the granting of
certificates of proficiency. Another law framed under
the Khedive's close supervision was passed in 1911, which
made a great show of introducing modern features into
the curriculum and further reforms into the government
of the University. But the most important clause of
all was that which reserved the choice and appointment
of the Rector to the Khedive alone. Its whole tenor
bore out the old Egyptian saying: "If the head of the
State is a strong man, he rules El Azhar, but if he is a
weak man, El Azhar rules him." And with all his
faults Abbas was a strong man.
We have lately witnessed the truth of that saying
in the other alternative, when, with a Sultan on the throne
of Egypt who owes his nomination to the British Protectorate,
the governing body of El Azhar, of which the
Sultan is the recognised chief, issued a manifesto boldly
denouncing the Protectorate and endorsing all the demands
of the Party of Independence. To-day the Azharites,
who a few years ago were derided as hopelessly vieux jeu
by the more "advanced" students of the Government
schools and colleges, are welcomed by them once more
as brother patriots in every Nationalist demonstration,
and El Azhar itself has become the chief centre of antiBritish
agitation. But it would not be fair to attribute
the revolt of El Azhar solely to religious or social animosity.
It has never felt the pinch of poverty so severely as
necessaries of life, and especially of the staple articles of
native food. The vast majority of its students are
extremely poor. Its professors receive the merest
pittance. Their average salaries are under £5 a month.
The ex-Khedive promised that they should be raised and
was able to put down his failure to redeem that promise
to the parsimony of British financial control. He knew
when to be generous to those in authority whose support
he required for his own purposes, but he had no wish to
raise the University as a whole to a position of greater
financial independence. Its resources are still totally
inadequate. Its income only amounts to £E.72,000
a year—a subvention of £E.18,000 from the State and
£E.54,000 from trusts administered by the Wakf. The
governing body is now moving for a very large increase,
amounting to no less than £172,000 altogether, in the
yearly grants made to it out of the Egyptian Budget.
The demand may be excessive, and in the present temper
of El Azhar it may well have been pitched so high merely
to court a refusal which will constitute a fresh grievance
against the British controlling power. But whatever
their resentment of the hostile attitude adopted by
El Azhar and of its unjustifiable intrusion into the domain
of politics, those who are responsible for British policy
would do well to remember that it is just as shortsighted
to starve Mahomedan as to starve Western education in
Egypt, and that El Azhar represents forces which in the
present state of Islamic discontent outside as well as
inside Egypt we can only continue to ignore at our peril.
| CHAPTER XIII The Egyptian problem | |