I’m writing this series of articles on the occasion of the centenary of Cairo University to elaborate on how the idea of creating an Egyptian university was initiated, developed and realized. Then I will give an overview of the pattern of teaching that was followed during the first decade of its operation and amuse on reciting how people like Taha Hussein developed their career under its auspices.
In this article I will give an overview of the annual report of the first year of the operation of the newly created university.
In the first meeting of the general assembly of the university they formed the board of directors out of 15 personalities headed by the Crown Prince Ahmed Fouad Pasha and two deputies Hussein Rushdi Pasha and Ibrahim Naguib Pasha.
The first location of the university was at Bab el-Louq with a rent of 400 L.E. per year. The Khedive Abbas Helmi accepted to inaugurate the university on December 21st, 1908, which took place at the main hall of the Shura Council. The university started with limited resources and limited educational activities; the main capital, at the beginning of the university was about LE 20,000.
As for the education, they decided to start with only five subjects, to be increased in the following years; two subjects to be taught by Egyptian professors: Ahmed Bek Zaki teaching Islamic Civilization and Ahmed Bek Kamal teaching Ancient Civilization of Egypt up until the arrival of Islam, and three other subjects to be taught by European professors; these are History and Geography, English language and French. Two classes were scheduled daily; the first started at 5pm for an hour followed by half hour of recess during which the students met with their professors, then the second class was taken for another hour.
The management divided the students into two categories: regular students who would be certified at the end, and listening students who were not seeking a degree. The annual fees for regular students were 40 piasters per subject or 120 piasters for three or more subjects. They also assigned five piasters for the attendance of one lecture. The number of students who attended the first year was 754; 675 Egyptians and 79 foreigners out of which 550 students were regular. As for the religion distribution, there were 508 Muslims, 234 Christians and 12 Jews. As for gender distribution, there were 723 males and 31 females.
From the first year, the university granted scholarships in England and France to 11 students, selected from 152 candidates, in order to prepare them for future staffing, in addition to three other scholarships that were offered by the Crown Prince Ahmed Fouad, Aziz Pasha Ezzat and Medhat Pasha Yakan. When the students returned back home they were offered LE4 for every month they spent abroad and were nominated staff members with a starting salary of LE400 per year. In parallel to this, the university had appointed two persons (equivalent to the cultural attaché now) to supervise the students studying in England and France.
One of the big achievements is that within the first year of the creation of this university, a quite sizable library was established containing about 100,000 books! That was due to the effort of Prince Ahmed Fouad as well as Maspero Pasha and Ahmed Zaki Pasha who acquired book donations from different countries like Italy, France and England.
That was a quick account of the first operational year of the university summarized from its first annual report.
