The Mellette County pioneer. [volume] (Wood, Mellette County, S.D.) 19??-1971, 1923-04-06

wearing the Black burko.
affair Of the b~oulevards of Paris. Side
walks and streets in certain sections
overflow with seemingly innumerable
chairs and tables until often a single
file Of pedestrians can hardly force It's
way through. One gets the impression
that few people need to work in
Cairo. Even in the mornings the
chairs are filed with apparently pros
porous men slipping coffee or sweetened
water, putting cigarettes, and talking.
Toward noon they disappear for their
S~ieStas, out again at four or five
o'cOlck they are out in force and re-
main far into the night. Among them
circulates a stream Of peddlers offer
ing Tor sale almost every conceivable
ware from sWeetmeatS to mouse traps
and underwear.
The dweller in Cairo who has not
his servant or his group of servants
is low indeed in the economic scale.
These serving men carry tiny bundles
for their emplOyers-mastcrS, one
miC..; say. They run ahead Of car
IiageS 10 clear the way: they fan
away the flies; and one otter another
they come in troops into the presence
Of the prosperous to bring smoking
materials or to offer a bewildering
succession of drinks and foods. Life
is hard and Il few cents Il day salts
tles them. Even the porters who carry
heavy bundles and the boatmen who
laboriously pole the Nile craft against
The current work twelve or fifteen
hours for little more than rs many
cents.
The Oxford of islam.
In Cairo is the Oxford of the Mo
hammedan world, the University of FL
Azhar. 1t seems a queer university"
to those familiar with the higher insti-
tutiOns of learning Of the West. Its
classrOOms are the halls and inches
of q mosque. It's professors receive no
salaries but are primarily religious Of
ficials, government employees, lawyers
and the like who teach I'm addition to
performing their regular duties. The
pupils, who at times number more than
o,OOO, SuuuI vi IHdtS Willie lltlT III
structors lecture. This premier college
of the Moslem world has been in
existence for nine hundred and fifty
years and hundreds of thousands Of
students have passed through its doors.
1t has been the center of the National
ist propaganda which has sought entire
freedom for Egypt. Moreover, it Is
the hotbed Of Pan-Islamism, which, like
its companion movement i'm the past
Pan-Germanism-wOuld combine it's
own culture with m~ilitarism to dom
mate the world. But Pan-Islamism
would go further. and would bring the
world, as well, under the religion Of
Mohammed.
At the dawn Of history Il city is
known to have existed near the site Of
modern Cairo called Khere-ohe, place
Of combat, because HOrus and Seth. of
mythlogical fame, fought there. Seth
found the body Of his brother Osiris,
cut it into fourteen parts, and scat
tered the pieces; w%hereupOn Isis. wife
of Osiris. hunted the fragments so
that she might erect a monument for
each. That Is why references To so
many tOmbs of Osiris are encountered
in history.
Not until a century before the Nor
man conquest, a modern period Of
Egyptian history, was the present
Cairo founded by Gonar, leader of the
troops Of the Fatimite Caliph Mu'izZ,
following the Egyptian conquest.
In the year that Columbus discovered
America Il plague swept Cairo which
is said to have killed 1900 citizens
in II day. 1t was a century before that
when Cairo may be said to have at
tanned its zenith. After the plague
a period of violence, rapine and MUIR
der set in, and sultans were enthrOned
and assassinated with dlzZying speed
and lnformality. AS early rs the
Thirteenth century Christian persecu-
tons took place. Since then the city
has been Islam. Only Il dozen years
ago an excuse Of the Grand Mufti for
!cc'lning to approve execution VI n
murderer was that the crime was com
United with u revolver. a weapon not
mentioned in the Koran.
Napoleon's headquarters were at
Cairo in 179S. following the Battle of
the Pyramids" The commander whom
Bona urte left behiud was murdered.
In lf'l the French family were dis
lodge, and Calro's indeupndence was
! re-establislled.