CHAPTER V.
A CENTRE OF ISLAM "To learn is the duty of every Moslem." -- Verse from the Hadith or Words of the Prophet.
In a narrow street, hidden in the midst of the most ancient Arab quarters of Cairo, in the very heat of a close labyrinth mysteriously shady, an exquisite doorway opens into a wide space bathed in sunshine; a doorway formed of two elaborate arches, and surmounted by a high frontal on which intertwined arabesques form wonderful rosework, and holy writings are enscrolled with the most ingenious complications.
It is the entrance to El-Azhar, a venerable place in Islam, whence have issued for nearly a thousand years the generations of priests and doctors charged with the propagation of the word of the Prophet amongst the nations, from the Mohreb to the Arabian Sea, passing through the great deserts.

About the end of our tenth century the glorious Fatimee Caliphs built this immense assemblage of arches and columns, which became the seat of the most renowned Moslem university in the world.

And since then successive sovereigns of Egypt have vied with one another in perfecting and enlarging it, adding new halls, new galleries, new minarets, till they have made of El-Azhar almost a town within a town.
***** "He who seeks instruction is more loved of God than he who fights in a holy war." -- A verse from the Hadith.
Eleven o'clock on a day of burning sunshine and dazzling light.

El-Azhar still vibrates with the murmur of many voices, although the lessons of the morning are nearly finished.
Once past the threshold of the double ornamented door we enter the courtyard, at this moment empty as the desert and dazzling with sunshine.

Beyond, quite open, the mosque spreads out its endless arcades, which are continued and repeated till they are lost in the gloom of the far interior, and in this dim place, with its perplexing depths, innumerable people in turbans, sitting in a close crowd, are singing, or rather chanting, in a low voice, and marking time as it were to their declamation by a slight rhythmic swaying from the hips.