EL-AZHAR AND ITS MOSLEM STUDENTS throughout Egypt are connected with it. They hold the university in such high regard that an order from its pro¬ fessors would be as much respected as one from the govern¬ ment, if not more.

The university education is almost altogether Moham¬ medan. Its curriculum is about the same as it was a thousand years ago, the chief studies being the Koran and the Koranic law, together with the sacred traditions of the religion and perhaps a little grammar, prosody, and rhet¬ oric. A number of the professors also teach in the schools connected with the mosques of the Egyptian villages, which are inspected, but not managed, by the government. Even there the Koran takes up half the time, and religion is considered far more important than science.

Indeed, it is wonderful how much time these Egyptians spend on their bible. The Koran is their primer, their first and second reader, and their college text book. As soon as a baby is born, the call to prayer is shouted in its ear, and when it begins to speak, its father first teaches it to say the creed of Islam, which runs somewhat as follows: “There is no God but God; Mohammed is the Apostle of God,” and also “Wherefore exalted be God, the King, the Truth! There is no God but Him! The Lord of the glorious Throne.”

When the boy reaches five or six he goes to the mosque school, where he squats down, cross-legged, and sways to and fro as he yells aloud passages from the Koran. He studies the alphabet by writing texts with a black brush on a slate of wood or tin. Year after year he pounds away, committing the Koran to memory. There are more than two hundred and fifty thousand pupils in the Egyptian schools, of whom a majority are under thirteen 7i