From a distance, it is likened to a citadel: with a wide dome and daunting structure. Closer, it is more akin to a mosque, with the illusion of crescent peaks and minarets. However, when one stands
From a distance, it is likened to a citadel: with a wide dome and daunting structure. Closer, it is more akin to a mosque, with the illusion of crescent peaks and minarets. However, when one stands at the gates, it is neither; it is Cairo’s cornerstone university, and Egypt’s first national institution for higher learning.
For a century, Cairo University has been a landscape for the gifted, and a historical monument which marked the modernisation of Egyptian learning—becoming both a benchmark and blueprint for universities across the region.
Prior to Muhammed Ali’s restructuring of Egypt’s educational systems—an endeavor which saw the country lean further and further into French inclinations—Al Azhar was the “main pillar” of higher education in the country; between its focus on the elementals of Islam and its decorated history, Al Azhar was an epicenter for budding intellectuals and religious schoalrs region-wide. Still, despite its esteem, the institution was not immune to deterioration.
During the Ottoman reign over Egypt, Al Azhar was in a state of decline, and as such, an alternative was sought out. This shepherded the beginning of a new educational system, one which launched in 1836 and continues on to this day. By the early 1900s, the call for a national, Egyptian university became impossible to ignore or deny.
Mostafa Kamel Pasha, a national activist and one of Egypt’s beloved historical figures, was one of the first to make the call, publishing an 1906 article in which he pledged to start “funding the establishment of a university.” Soon after, figures such as Saad Zaghloul, Egypt’s then-minister of education and founding leader of the Wafd political party, and Qasim Amin, a renowned feminist judge, lobbied for the same cause. Zaghloul would remain as minister of education only until 1910, when he would become minister of justice.
Following suit, many Egyptians donated to the founding of Cairo University—the most prominent of whom was Princess Fatma Ismail, daughter of Khedive Ismail. She provided an endowment of 661 feddans (686 acres) to the establishment of the university, donated six feddans (6.2 acres) of royal land to expand its campus, and a historically significant EGP 18,000 (USD 915 based on current conversion rates, but was a heftier sum at the time) for its construction. Alongside her donations,