They are the ten thousand students come from all parts of the world to absorb the changeless doctrine of El-Azhar.
At the first view it is difficult to distinguish them, for they are far down in the shadow, and out here we are almost blinded by the sun.

In little attentive groups of from ten to twenty, seated on mats around a grave professor, they docilely repeat their lessons, which in the course of centuries have grown old without changing like Islam itself.

And we wonder how those in the circles down there, in the aisles at the bottom where the daylight scarcely penetrates, can see to read the old difficult writings in the pages of their books.
In any case, let us not trouble them--as so many tourists nowadays do not hesitate to do; we will enter a little later, when the studies of the morning are over.
This court, upon which the sun of the forenoon now pours its white fire, is an enclosure severely and magnificently Arab; it has isolated us suddenly from time and things; it must lend to the Moslem prayer what formerly our Gothic churches lent to the Christian.

It is vast as a tournament list; confined on one side by the mosque itself, and on the others by a high wall which effectively separates it from the outer world.

The walls are of a reddish hue, burnt by centuries of sun into the colour of raw sienna or of bloodstone.