1. Russell Galt, The Effects of Centralization on Education in Modern Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo, Department of Education, 1936), p. 121. [BACK]

2. Brown, Peasant Politics. [BACK]

3. Richard Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers. (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 213. [BACK]

4. R. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, p. 213. [BACK]

5. Cromer, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1906, vol. 137, p. 569. [BACK]

6. Cromer, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1907, vol. 100, pp. 714–15. [BACK]

7. Gorst, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1909, vol. 105, p. 42. [BACK]

8. Cromer, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1906, vol. 137, p. 569. [BACK]

9. Gorst, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1911, vol. 103, p. 36. [BACK]

10. Gorst, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1909, vol. 105, p. 39. Kitchener stressed the same fear of migration three years later:

What seems most required for progress in this direction is to evolve the best type of rural school, adapted to the special practical needs of agricultural districts, and when this has been done we may confidently hope to see a considerable increase in the number of boys educated. It must not be forgotten that any hasty or unthought-out development of education in rural districts, unless it is carefully adapted to rural necessities, may imperil the agricultural interests on which the prosperity of the country so largely depends. A rural exodus in Egypt would be an economic and social disaster of considerable magnitude. (Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1912, vol. 121, p. 4)

11. Cromer, “Reports on the State of Egypt and the Progress of Administrative Reforms,” Parl. Pap., 1898, vol. 107, pp. 664–65. [BACK]

12. Cromer, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1903, vol. 87, p. 1009. The real problem arose in the primary system, in which the Qur’an was one of the required subjects, and yet Muslims formed less than 80 percent of the school population as a whole. Among the students who passed the primary certificate examination in 1903, there were 383 Muslims, 227 Copts, and 4 Jews. Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1904, vol. 111, p. 266. The primary curriculum was rewritten in 1907 and, in addition to the beginning of a conversion of all instruction to Arabic from English and French, religion was moved to the last school period so that Coptic students could leave. If there were more than 15 Coptic students in a school, they could be provided with a religion course by an unpaid visiting teacher, or, later, by a paid Coptic teacher. In 1908, 875 Coptic students attended religious instruction by designated Coptic teachers (not priests) in fifteen of the government primary schools. Gorst, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1909, vol. 105, p. 42. [BACK]

13. Gorst, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1910, vol. 112, p. 42. [BACK]

14. In Britain, Dissenters and Non-Conformists as well as Roman Catholics were substantial opponents of many educational schemes proffered by adherents of the official Church of England; in Iraq after the First World War, British colonial authorities had to consider the complex and often contrasting interests of Sunnis and Shi‘ites, Kurds, Jews, and various denominations of Christians, and how to deal with the looted remains of a small Europeanized educational system that heretofore had delivered instruction largely in Turkish. See Gertrude Bell, “Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia,” Parl. Pap., 1920, vol. 51, pp. 10–13, 56–57, 103–7. The Commission on Elementary Education in Egypt noted that government schools were strictly secular, in Ministry of Education, Report of the Elementary Education Commission, p. 19. [BACK]

15. Kitchener, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1911, vol. 103, p. 7. [BACK]

16. Kitchener, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1911, pp. 37–38. [BACK]

17. Kitchener, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1911, p. 57. [BACK]

18. Kitchener, Annual Report, Parl. Pap., 1911, p. 38. [BACK]

19. Ministry of Education, Report of the Elementary Education Commission, p. 20. [BACK]

20. Quoted in Salama, L'Enseignement islamique, p. 303. [BACK]

21. Ministry of Education, Report of the Elementary Education Commission, appendix, p. 41. [BACK]

22. Egyptian Constitution of 1923, Article 149: “The Religion of the State is Islam. Arabic is the official language.” In Nasser's 1964 Constitution, Article 5 reads, “Islam is the religion of the State and Arabic its official Language.” [BACK]

23. Boktor, School and Society, p. 122. [BACK]

24. Salama, L'Enseignement islamique, p. 316. [BACK]

25. F. O. Mann, Report on Certain Aspects of Egyptian Education, Rendered to His Excellency, the Minister of Education at Cairo (Cairo: Government Press, 1932). [BACK]

26. For a good example, see Isma‘il Mahmud al-Qabbani, Siyasa al-ta‘lim fi Misr (Cairo: Lajnah al-ta’lif wa al-tarjama wa al-nashr, 1944). [BACK]

28. Galt, The Effects of Centralization, p. 120. [BACK]

29. Boktor, School and Society, p. 203. [BACK]

30. Galt, The Effects of Centralization, p. 120. [BACK]

31. Eickelman, “The Art of Memory.” [BACK]

32. Boktor, School and Society, p. 204. [BACK]

33. Boktor, School and Society, p. 131. [BACK]

34. From an article by “a prominent writer and educator” in al-Ahram, 8 March 1933, quoted in Boktor, School and Society, p. 154. [BACK]

35. Quote from “a large landlord, perhaps the wealthiest in Egypt,” in Charles Issawi, Egypt: An Economic and Social Analysis (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 149. [BACK]

36. Neguib el-Hilali, Report on Educational Reform in Egypt (Cairo: Government Press, Boulaq, 1943), pp. 1–2. [BACK]

37. El-Hilali, Report on Educational Reform, pp. 42–43, 49. [BACK]

38. El-Hilali, Report on Educational Reform, p. 69. [BACK]

39. El-Hilali, Report on Educational Reform, p. 75. [BACK]

40. El-Hilali, Report on Educational Reform, p. 50. [BACK]

41. El-Hilali, Report on Educational Reform, p. 52. [BACK]

42. El-Hilali, Report on Educational Reform, p. 52. [BACK]

43. Al-Qabbani, Siyasa al-ta‘lim, pp. 25–28. [BACK]

44. Al-Qabbani, Siyasa al-ta‘lim, p. 28. See also Durkheim, Moral Education, pp. 125, 148. [BACK]

45. Al-Qabbani, Siyasa al-ta‘lim, pp. 28–9. [BACK]

46. Abu Al-Futouh Ahmad Radwan, Old and New Forces in Egyptian Education (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1951), p. 138. [BACK]

47. Radwan, Old and New Forces, pp. 138–39. [BACK]

48. Radwan, Old and New Forces, p. 159. [BACK]

49. Radwan, Old and New Forces, pp. 128–29. [BACK]

50. Radwan, Old and New Forces, p. 113. [BACK]

51. A biographer of Hasan al-Banna, citing the latter's criticism of al-Azhar graduates; cited in R. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, p. 213. [BACK]

52. Brown, Peasant Politics, pp. 42–43. [BACK]

53. Hamed Ammar, Growing Up in an Egyptian Village (New York: Octagon Books), p. 78. [BACK]

54. Ammar, Growing Up, p. 212. [BACK]

55. Ammar, Growing Up, p. 220. [BACK]

56. Carré, Enseignement islamique, pp. 8–9. [BACK]

57. Carré, Enseignement islamique, p. 33. [BACK]

58. Rif‘at Sayyid Ahmad, Al-Din wa al-dawla wa al-thawra (Cairo: al-Dar al-sharqiyyah, 1989), pp. 269, 274. [BACK]

59. Hasan al-Hariri, Muhammad Mustafa Zaydan, Alyas Barsum Matar, and Dr. Sayyid Khayr Allah, Al-Madrasa al-ibtida’iyya (Cairo: Maktaba al-nahda al-Misriyya, 1966), pp. 17–18. [BACK]

60. Al-Hariri et al., Al-Madrasa al-ibtida’iyya, p. 3. [BACK]

61. Richard Tapper and Nancy Tapper, “Religion, Education, and Continuity in a Provincial Town,” in Islam in Modern Turkey: Religion, Politics and Literature in a Secular State, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1991), p. 73. [BACK]

62. James Mayfield, Rural Politics in Nasser's Egypt: A Quest for Legitimacy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), pp. 152–53. [BACK]

63. R. Ahmad, Al-Din wa al-dawla, p. 271; Hobsbawm, “Mass-Producing Traditions,” p. 271. [BACK]

64. Ilya Harik, The Political Mobilization of Peasants (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974), pp. 180–83. [BACK]

65. Article 19 states, “Al-Tarbiya al-diniyya madda asasiyya fi manahij al-ta‘lim al-‘amm” (Religious education is a basic subject in the general education curricula). [BACK]

66. Anwar Sadat, “Meeting by President Mohamed Anwar el Sadat with the Moslem and Christian Religious Leaders, Cairo, February 8, 1977” (Cairo: Arab Republic of Egypt, Ministry of Information, State Information Service), pp. 14–15. [BACK]

67. Educational Planning Unit, Ministry of Education, Government of Egypt, “Reform of the Educational System of Egypt: A Sector Assessment,” draft, USAID Development Information Center, 8 January 1990, p. 18. [BACK]

68. R. Ahmad, Al-Din wa al-dawla, pp. 265–75. [BACK]

69. Ahmad Hechmat Pacha, Questions d'education et d'enseignement (Cairo: 1914), pp. 148–265. [BACK]

70. Wizara al-ma‘arif al-‘umumiyya, Manhaj al-ta‘lim al-thanawi lil-madaris al-banin wa al-banat (Cairo: al-Mutaba‘a al-amiriyya, 1930), p. 1. [BACK]

71. Boktor, School and Society, p. 126; Galt, Effects of Centralization, p. 127; R. Ahmad, Al-Din wa al-dawla, p. 269. [BACK]

72. R. Ahmad, Al-Din wa al-dawla, p. 270. [BACK]

73. Carré, Enseignement islamique, p. 6. [BACK]

74. Quoted in Carre, Enseignement islamique, p. 72. [BACK]

75. R. Ahmad, Al-Din wa al-dawla, p. 272. [BACK]

76. Ried, “Turn-of-the-Century Egyptian School Days,” p. 383. [BACK]

77. Ronald G. Wolfe, trans., Egypt's Second Five-Year Plan for Socio-Economic Development (1987/88–1991/2), with Plan for Year One (1987/88) (Cairo: Professional Business Services Ltd.), p. 131. [BACK]

78. Wolfe, trans., Egypt's Second Five-Year Plan, p. 142. [BACK]