Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge Middle East Library, Series Number 23) - Softcover

Reid, Donald Malcolm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521894336 ISBN 13: 9780521894333

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2002

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Book Description

Cairo University has been crucially important in shaping the national life of modern Egypt. In this history, Professor Reid 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.

Review

"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

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0521894336
• ISBN 13: 9780521894333
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 316