Catching Up With Modern Egypt. Oldest University Has A He Look: If the entry requirement of English universities were to know the Bible by heart the problem of finding enough places fore aspiring students would vanish. Yet in the oldest university in the world, Al Azher in Cairo every entrant until recently had to be able to recite the whole of the Koran, must still learn by heart long passages. Al Azhar has had a long story of prosperity and decline. Built in 972 A.D. by Jabal the Sicilian and since partially destroyed and rebuilt several times,it was once a flourishing centre of Islamic heresy,became in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries as world-wide source of intellectual stimulation until its slow lapsing throughout the past few hundred years into oldfashioned and thoughtless religious. Now things are changing rapidly. As part of a tenyear plan land has been reclaimed from the desert and a new campus is being built outside the city. two modern faculties,engineering and medicine, have been added to the traditional ones of Islamic Law, Arabic Studies, Theology and Commerce, there will be a new teaching hospital and modern opportunities for race action, and as an even more radical step in a country there until a few years ago women covered their faces and took no part in public life, a faculty has been formed for girls to learn homemaking, religious teaching and secular subjects. In the beautiful old mosque there learned men used to stand and teach moslem philosophy to the students sitting at their feet, the lovely coloneded courtyard and living quarters surrounding the main courtyard, students from all over the world now walk barefoot on the holy ground, read the koran and modern scientific techniques, will probably stay on as long as 22 years taking back their new knowledge and wisdom to 64 countries. Applications for entry increas and numbers next year will reach 40,000, making Al Azher once again the leader of the intellectual Islamic world. The modern university building constructed a few year ao are spacious and elegent in concept. this is one of the main corridors leading to the amphitheatre, the main examination hall.
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