ustapha and he are busy discussing--as if it were
a matter of actual interest--a controversial question concerning the
events which followed the death of the Prophet, and the part played by
Ali. . . . In that moment how my good friend Mustapha, whom I had seen
so French in France, appeared all at once a Moslem to the bottom of
his soul! The same thing is true indeed of the greater number of these
Orientals, who, if we meet them in our own country, seem to be quite
parisianised; their modernity is only on the surface: in their inmost
souls Islam remains intact. And it is not difficult to understand,
perhaps, how the spectacle of our troubles, our despairs, our miseries,
in these new ways in which our lot is cast, should make them reflect and
turn again to the tranquil dream of their ancestors. . . .

While waiting for the conclusion of the morning studies, we are
conducted through some of the dependencies of El-Azhar. Halls of every
epoch, added one to another, go to form a little labyrinth; many contain
_Mihrabs_, which, as we know already, are a kind of portico, festooned
and denticulated till they look as if covered with rime. And library
after library, with ceilings of cedarwood, carved in times when men
had more leisure and more patience. Thousands of precious manuscripts,
dating back some hundreds of years, but which here in El-Azhar are no
whit out of date. Open, in glass cases, are numerous inestimable Korans,
which in olden times had been written fair and illuminated on parchment
by pious khedives. And, in a place of honour, a large astronomical
glass, through which men watch the rising of the moon of Ramadan. . . .
All this savours of the past. And what is being taught to-day to the ten
thousand students of El-Azhar scarcely differs from what was taught to
their predecessors in the glorious reign of the Fatimites--and which was
then transcendent and even new: the Koran and all its commentaries; the
subtleties of syntax and of pronunciation; jurisprudence; calligraphy,
which still is dear to the heart of Orientals; versification; and, last
of all, mathematics, of which the Arabs were the inventors.

Yes, all this savours of the past, of the dust of remote ages. And
though, assuredly, the priests trained in this thousand-year-old
university may grow to men of rarest soul, they will remain, these calm
and noble dreamers, merely laggards, safe in their shelter from the
whirlwind which carries us along.

*****