[P.101]Perhaps A Score Of Nations Meet In It; There Is A Confusion Of Tongues, And The Din At Times Is Deafening.

Around the court runs a tolerably well-built colonnade, whose entablature is garnished with crimson arabesques, and in the inner wall are pierced apartments, now closed with plank doors.

Of the Riwak, as the porches are called, the Azhar contains twenty-four, one for each recognised nation in Al-Islam, and of these fifteen are still open to students.[FN#18] Inside them we find nothing but matting and a pile of large dingy wooden boxes, which once contained the college library; they are now, generally speaking, empty.[FN#19]

There is nothing worth seeing in the cluster of little dark chambers that form the remainder of the Azhar. Even the Zawiyat al-Umyan (or the Blind men's Oratory), a place where so many "town and gown rows" have emanated, is rendered interesting only by the fanaticism of its inmates, and the certainty that, if recognised in this

[p.102]sanctum, we shall run the gauntlet under the staves of its proprietors, the angry blind.

The Azhar is the grand collegiate Mosque of this city,-the Christ Church, in fact, of Cairo,-once celebrated throughout the world of Al-Islam. It was built, I was told, originally in poor style by one Jauhar al-Kaid,[FN#20] originally the slave of a Moorish merchant, in consequence of a dream that ordered him to "erect a place whence the light of science should shine upon Al-Islam."

It gradually increased by "Wakf[FN#21]" (entailed bequests) of lands, money, and books; and pious rulers made a point of adding to its size and wealth.

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