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This happens also in the Azhar at Cairo, where I have seen more than forty different persons occupied at the same time in delivering their lectures. The subjects of the lectures in the Beitullah of Mokka, are, as usual, dissertations on the law, commentaries on the Koran, and traditions of the Prophet.
"As to the learning of which you speak, my lamb," said the Moolah, in answer to some argument of Fardet's, "I have myself studied at the University of El Azhar at Cairo, and I know that to which you allude. But the learning of the faithful is not as the learning of the unbeliever, and it is not fitting that we pry too deeply into the ways of Allah.
The exact composition of the Azhar university is as follows. Of the five hundred and odd sheykhs or professors, two hundred are Shafite, two hundred Malekite, one hundred Hanefite, and five Hanbalite. Each of these sections has a supreme sheykh, chosen by itself, whose fetwa on questions concerning the school is decisive.
If you go to the mosque Al Azhar the thousand-year-old University of Cairo you will be able to decide for yourself. There is nothing to see except many courts, cool in hot weather, surrounded by cliff-like brick walls. Men come and go through dark doorways, giving on to yet darker cloisters, as freely as though the place was a bazaar. There are no aggressive educational appliances.
In Egypt such a man is nowadays already considered as one of those more conservative moderns, who prefer the rationalistic explanation of the Azhar lore to putting it aside altogether.
This resurgent Egyptian nationalism had, to be sure, its moderate wing, represented by conservative-minded men like Mohammed Abdou, Rector of El Azhar University and respected friend of Lord Cromer, who sought to teach his fellow-countrymen that the surest road to freedom was along the path of enlightenment and progress.
Official protection of the bold innovators prevented their conservative opponents from casting them out of the Azhar, but the assent to their doctrines was more enthusiastic outside its walls than inside.
Moreover the Azhar mosque of Cairo is the great university of Arabic-speaking races, and its Ulema have the highest reputation of any in Islam. Egyptian influence, therefore, must be reckoned as an important element in the forces which make up Mohammedan opinion.
Within the Azhar, his book is sure to meet with hearty approval from the followers of Muhammed Abduh, but not less hearty disapproval from the opponents of modernism who make up the majority of the professors as well as of the students.
Its supremacy over the remainder of the starry host is recognized in the name given it by the Arabs, those nomad watchers of the skies, for while they term the moon "El Azhar," "the Brighter One," and the sun and moon together "El Azharan," "the Brighter Pair," they call Venus "Ez Zahra," the bright or shining one par excellence, in which sense the same word is used to describe a flower.
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