"To learn is the duty of every Moslem."
--Verse from the Hadith or Words of the Prophet.

In a narrow street, hidden in the midst of the most ancient Arab
quarters of Cairo, in the very heat of a close labyrinth mysteriously
shady, an exquisite doorway opens into a wide space bathed in sunshine;
a doorway formed of two elaborate arches, and surmounted by a high
frontal on which intertwined arabesques form wonderful rosework, and
holy writings are enscrolled with the most ingenious complications.

It is the entrance to El-Azhar, a venerable place in Islam, whence
have issued for nearly a thousand years the generations of priests and
doctors charged with the propagation of the word of the Prophet amongst
the nations, from the Mohreb to the Arabian Sea, passing through the
great deserts. About the end of our tenth century the glorious Fatimee
Caliphs built this immense assemblage of arches and columns, which
became the seat of the most renowned Moslem university in the world. And
since then successive sovereigns of Egypt have vied with one another
in perfecting and enlarging it, adding new halls, new galleries, new
minarets, till they have made of El-Azhar almost a town within a town.

*****

"He who seeks instruction is more loved of God than he who fights
in a holy war."
--A verse from the Hadith.

Eleven o'clock on a day of burning sunshine and dazzling light. El-Azhar
still vibrates with the murmur of many voices, although the lessons of
the morning are nearly finished.