284 Egypt
Azhar, with five to six thousand students, is still a
medieval Moslem university teaching the Koran and
Arabic grammar, and like it are the five other colleges
attached to mosques. The National or rather Nationalist
University, in spite of repeated reorganisation, is still
important rather as a centre of agitation than as a seat
of learning. It gives a few lectures but no degrees.
Undoubtedly the language difficulty greatly hampers
literary expression. The substitution of English for
French as the first foreign language in schools did not
survive the Protectorate, and British foreign schools in
Egypt have never been comparable to the French or
even to the German. French in the Near East is the
national language of the scientific, legal, literary, pro-
fessional, and business world, just as Arabic is still the
international language of religion. But as Europeanisa-
tion develops and Islam declines, Arabic becomes more
and more unsuitable as a medium of expression. The
cumbrous business of learning this most difficult of
literary languages merely in order to read such Western
literature as has been translated into it will certainly be
short circuited. It is not impossible that in the distant
future Egypt will substitute French for Arabic, as other
future nations of North Africa are already doing. For
Coptic, which has the best claim to be a native national
language, has been extinct as a spoken language for
three centuries, and cannot be considered a serious com-
petitor.
The Press still remains the principal means of educa-
tion. Cairo has two hundred and seventeen printing
presses, which turn out on an average one book or
brochure a day. Much of this is translation into Arabic
of Western fiction, which is rapidly resulting in a new
philosophy of life. The old Islamic ideals and inhibitions