Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt

by Donald Malcolm Reid

Overview

Cairo University has been crucially important in shaping the national life of twentieth-century Egypt. It has educated much of the political, professional and cultural elite; doctors and lawyers, novelists and philosophers, bankers and prime ministers have all studied there. Founded in 1908 and for many years competing only with the religious al-Azhar, the European-inspired Cairo University quickly became the prime indigenous model for other state universities in the region and its influence has spread even beyond the Arab world. Professor Reid has drawn on university archives hitherto untapped by Western scholars and on a wide range of other Arabic and Western sources. He explains the university's part in the national quest for independence from Britain, in the perennial tension between secular and religious world views, and in the push for a more egalitarian society. Nasser and Sadat, Kings Fuad and Faruq, nationalist hero Saad Zaghlul and Nobel Prize winner Najib Mahfuz, all feature prominently in this fascinating history of Egypt's most important modern educational institution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521894333
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/04/2002
Series:	Cambridge Middle East Library , #23
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; List of tables; Acknowledgments; Note on academic terminology and transliteration; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. The Private University, 1908–1919: 1. Antecedents; 2. Implementing the plan; 3. Challenges and adjustments; Part II. The University and the Liberal Ideal, 1919–1950: 4. The transition to a state university; 5. Rival imperialisms and Egyptianization; 6. Issues of equity: a university for whom?; 7. The university and politics, 1930–1950; 8. The issue of religion; Part III. In Nasser's Shadow, 1950–1967: 9. The end of the old regime; 10. Quality, quantity, and careers; 11. Mobilizing the university?; Part IV. The University since Nasser: 12. The open door and the Islamist challenge; Conclusion and prospect; Notes; Select bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Donald Malcolm Reid has written a major work which is both instructive and genuinely entertaining to read....Complex as his subject is, he has managed to harness a great amount of material and to have presented a fascinating picture of one of the world's major national institutions....Well written and manageable in terms of data and argument, this sustained study of Cairo University, alma mater to Egypt's other state universities (except for Al Azhar), is a commendable study in Egyptian university history and in the wider scholarship of the history of universities." Jean-Pierre V. M. Herubel, Digest of Middle East Studies

From the Publisher