irty years
ago. 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. 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.

In these very last years a new progress of modern thought has manifested
itself in Cairo in the foundation, under the auspices of Fu'ad Pasha, an
uncle of the present Khedive, of the Egyptian University. Cairo has had for
a long time its schools of medicine and law, which could be turned easily
into university faculties; therefore, the founders of the university
thought it urgent to establish a faculty of arts, and, if this proved a
success, to add a faculty of science. In the meantime, gifted young men
were granted subsidies to learn at European universities what they needed
to know to be the professors of a coming generation, and, for the present,
Christian as well as Mohammedan natives of Egypt and European scholars
living in the country were appointed as lecturers; professors being
borrowed from the universities of Europe to deliver lectures in Arabic on
different subjects chosen more or less at random before an audience little
prepared to digest the lessons offered to them.

The rather hasty start and the lack of a well-defined scheme have made
the Egyptian University a subject of severe criticism. Nevertheless, its
foundation is an unmistakable expression of the desire of intellectual
Egypt to translate modern thought into its own language, to adapt modern
higher instruction to its own needs. This same aim is pursued in a perhaps
more efficacious manner by the hundreds of Egyptian students of law,
science, and medicine at French, English, and some other European
universities. The Turks could not freely follow such examples before
the revolution of 1908; but they have shown since that time that their
abstention was not voluntary. England, France, Holland, and other countries
governing Mohammedan populations are all endeavouring to find the right way
to incorporate their Mohammedan subjects into their own civilization. Fully
recognizing that it was the material covetousness of past generations
that submitted those nations to their rule, the so-called colonial powers
consider it their d