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whit out of date.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.

*****

"It is a sacrilege to prohibit knowledge. To seek knowledge is to