in their livelihood. For centuries Cairo has stood unrivalled as a seat
of Mohammedan learning of every kind; and even now the Uaram of Mecca is
not to be compared to the Azhar-mosque as regards the number and the fame
of its professors and the variety of branches cultivated.

In the last half-century, however, the ancient repute of the Egyptian
metropolis has suffered a good deal from the enormous increase of European
influence in the land of the Pharaohs; the effects of which have made
themselves felt even in the Azhar. Modern programs and methods of
instruction have been adopted; and, what is still worse, modernism itself,
favoured by the late Mufti Muhammed Abduh, has made its entrance into the
sacred lecture-halls, which until a few years ago seemed inaccessible to
the slightest deviation from the decrees of the Infallible Agreement of the
Community. Strenuous efforts have been made by eminent scholars to liberate
Islam from the chains of the authority of the past ages on the basis of
independent interpretation of the Qoran; not in the way of the Wahhabi
reformers, who tried a century before to restore the institutions of
Mohammed's time in their original purity, but on the contrary with the
object of adapting Islam by all means in their power to the requirements of
modern life.

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. The ever
more numerous adherents of modern thought in Egypt do not generally proceed
from the ranks of the Azhar students, nor do they generally care very much
in their later life for reforming the methods prevailing there, although
they may be inclined to applaud the efforts of the modernists. To the
intellectuals of the higher classes the Azhar has ceased to offer great
attraction; if it were not for the important funds (_wagf_) for the
benefit of professors and students, the numbers of both classes would have
diminished much more than is already the case, and the faithful cultivators
of mediaeval Mohammedan science would prefer to live in Mecca, free from
Western influence and control. Even as it is, the predilection of foreign
students of law and theology is turning more and more towards Mecca.

As one of the numerous interesting specimens of the mental development
effected in Egypt in the last years, I may mention a book that appeare