CHAPTER IX EL-AZHAR AND ITS TEN THOUSAND MOSLEM STUDENTS HE biggest university of the Mohammedan world is situated in Cairo. It has, all told, over ten thousand students, and its professors number A more than four hundred. Its students come from every country where Mohammedanism flourishes. There are hundreds here from India, and some from Malaya and Java. There are large numbers from Morocco, as well as from Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli. There are black Nu¬ bians, yellow-skinned Syrians and Turks, and boys from southeastern Europe with faces as fair as our own. There are long-gowned, turbaned Persians, fierce-eyed Afghans, and brown-skinned men from the Sudan and from about Kuka, Bornu, and Timbuktu. The students are of all ages from fifteen to seventy-five, and some have spent their lives in the college.

This university has been in existence for almost a thou¬ sand years. It was founded A.D. 972, and from that time to this it has been educating the followers of the Prophet.

It is to-day perhaps the strongest force among these people in Egypt. Ninety-two per cent, of the inhabitants of the Nile valley are Mohammedans and most of the native officials have been educated here. There are at least thirty thousand men in the public service among its graduates, while the judges of the villages, the teachers in the mosque schools, and the imams, or priests, who serve