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 (waqf) 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 mediæval 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 appeared in Cairo two years ago,[1] containing a description of the present Khedive's pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, performed two years before. The author evidently possesses a good deal of the scholastic learning to be gathered in the Azhar and no European erudition in the stricter sense of the word. In an introductory chapter he gives a summary of the geography and history of the Arabian peninsula, describes the Hijâz in a more detailed manner, and in his very elaborate account of the journey, on which he accompanied his princely master, the topography of the holy cities, the peculiarities of their inhabitants and of the foreign visitors, the political
- ↑ Ar-riḥ lah al-Hijâziyyah, by Muhammed Labîb al-Batanûnî, 2d edition, Cairo, 1329 Hijrah.
