The Orientalist Will,
However, Meet With Many Disappointments; Besides The Difficulty Of
Discovering Good Works, He Will Find In The Booksellers, Scribes, Et
Hoc Genus Omne, A Finished Race Of Scoundrels.
[FN#20] Lane (Mod.
Egyptians) has rectified Baron von
Hammer-Purgstall's mistake concerning the word "Azhar"; our English
Orientalist translates it the "splendid Mosque." I would venture to
add, that the epithet must be understood in a spiritual and not in a
material sense.
Wilkinson attributes the erection of the building to
Jauhar al-Kaid, general under Al-Moaz, about A.D. 970. Wilson ascribes
it partly to Al-Moaz the Fatimite (A.D. 973), partly to his general and
successor, Al-Hakim (?).
[FN#21] Wakf, property become mortmain. My friend Yacoub Artin declares
that the whole Nile Valley has parcel by parcel been made Wakf at some
time or other, and then retaken.
[FN#22] If I may venture to judge, after the experience of a few
months, there is now a re-action in favour of the old system. Mohammed
Ali managed to make his preparatory, polytechnic, and other schools,
thoroughly distasteful to the people, and mothers blinded their
children, to prevent their being devoted for life to infidel studies.
The printing-press, contrasting in hideousness with the beauty of the
written character, and the contemptible Arabic style of the various
works translated by order of government from the European languages,
have placed arms in the hands of the orthodox party.
[FN#23] Finding the Indian Riwak closed, and hearing that an endowment
still belonged to it, I called twice upon the Shaykh or Dean, wishing
to claim the stipend as a precedent.
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