Azhar, al-

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AZHAR, AL-

Official mosque and university at Cairo, the world center of Sunni Islamic learning.

Jawhar the Sicilian, the general of al-Muʿizz li-Din-Allah, established al-Azhar in 970; it was to be the official mosque of the new Fatimid regime and to serve as the center of the effort to bring the Egyptians into the Shiʿite fold. For this reason, it lost its official status under the Sunni Ayyubids but regained it under the Mamluks. The line of succession of its head, known as Shaykh al-Azhar, has been traced to Muhammad Abdullah al-Kurashi (d. 1690). Although the shaykh was always a member of a religious elite, the occupant of this position only gradually became the chief Muslim religious official in Egypt.

Al-Azhar is the world's oldest school of higher learning in continuous operation. Although the Islamic disciplines have dominated, it has a history of secular education as well. Moses Maimonides taught medicine there. By the middle of the nineteenth century, with over 7,000 students, it had achieved a preeminent position in Egypt and was attracting students from the entire Islamic world. In 1903 alAzhar had 104 foreign students, mostly from Arab countries and Africa, but also from Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, and China. Although all four Sunni rites were represented there, the Maliki, Shafiʿi, and Hanafi rites, each with its own shaykh, dominated. The student residential sections were endowed for specific rites or geographical groups. The only organization to integrate this segmented structure was the office of the Shaykh al-Azhar, who sided with his own group when interests conflicted. There were no formal programs of study, no degrees, and no general examination system. Students sat in circles in the mosque, each group surrounding its teaching shaykh, who sat in front of one of the numerous columns. The teacher commented on a classical or postclassical text, which the students were to memorize. When a student was deemed to have mastered a text, the teacher wrote a note authorizing him to teach it. When a student had acquired a number of these certificates and a sufficient reputation, he could compete in the informal process by which teachers were given the right to teach in the mosque.

In the late nineteenth century al-Azhar came under sharp criticism for outmoded educational content and methods, not only from the secular elite but also from such Muslim reformers as Muhammad Abduh, himself an alumnus. The curriculum had almost no secular content, its religious content was more theoretical than applied, and student performance was very low. As early as 1812, the state intervened by appointing the Shaykh al-Azhar, and in 1895 to 1896 Abduh, representing the government, intervened by introducing a salary law, a government salary subsidy, the Azhar Administrative Council, and the Azhar Organization Law. A conservative reaction thwarted this effort, which was followed by a new organization law in 1911 that was designed to introduce a bureaucratic organization and modern programs of study, examinations, and degrees. In that year 62 percent of al-Azhar's budget came from the government (it reached 96 percent by 1959). In 1930, under Shaykh al-Azhar Muhammad alAhmadi al-Zawahiri, a major reform law established a true college program with three departments: theology, Islamic law, and Arabic. For the first time diploma programs roughly paralleled the Western bachelor's, master's, and doctorate system.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser promoted even more change. In 1961, under Shaykh al-Azhar Muhammad Shaltut, a secular campus was added at a different site; it had the various degree programs of a full university, including medicine and other sciences. The following year the government decreed the opening of the first of several al-Azhar colleges for women. In 2002 al-Azhar University had twelve colleges in Cairo, eight in Assiut, and twenty more in other parts of the country, with a total of 185,000 students and 9,000 teachers.

An extensive primary and secondary system of Azhar institutes had meanwhile been built throughout Egypt, with a core program of secular courses, but also including a significant number of courses in the Islamic disciplines. Thus al-Azhar established a viable, comprehensive Muslim alternative to the state education system, which Egypt's ulama tended to view as a secular threat to Islamic society and mores.

By virtue of the increased organizational differentiation and hierarchy, some positions began to enjoy a presumption of religious authority and correctness

of opinion. The 1911 law created the Corps of High Ulama, which was partly an effort to coopt senior ulama who might otherwise have opposed the reform, and also a response to a perceived need to have a group to pronounce on Islamic issues. The 1961 organization law transformed this body into the Academy of Islamic Research, specifically to research and pronounce on Islamic issues. The academy holds conferences to bring together ulama from most Muslim countries to present and discuss studies. The academy, along with the non-Azhar positions of the mufti of Egypt, the minister of awqaf (religious properties), and the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, assists the state with important issues of control. All these positions, both in and outside alAzhar, are filled by state appointees.

Since a number of Muslim countries have created their own centers of Muslim learning, it is a tribute to al-Azhar that it continues to enjoy the greatest prestige internationally, even if its dominance is somewhat eroded. However, both in Egypt and abroad, Muslims with differing views, including those who oppose current regimes in the Muslim world, criticize the Azharis as "official" or "government" ulama. It is true that most violent Muslim radicals in Egypt are neither Azhar ulama nor Azhar graduates, but the case of Umar Abd al-Rahman, a professor at al-Azhar's Asyut campus who associated with the jihad organization that killed Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat, as well as well-known cases where Azharis oppose government policies (for example, in the realm of family planning), indicate that Azhari autonomy of opinion and action is far from totally compromised. Today, as in the past, alAzhar performs an essential role in the accommodation of Muslim and secular institutions and maintains continuity in the face of rapid social and cultural change.