4 - The transition to a state university

Summary

The Renaissance prince and the Wafdist tribune

When Prince Fuad abandoned the Egyptian University to its fate in 1913, few would have believed it would survive or that its ex-rector would one day be king. But Fuad knew how to scheme and how to wait. Sultan Husayn Kamil died in 1917, his son declined the throne, and the British judged Fuad innocuous enough to reign. In 1925 — the year Muhammad Reza became shah, Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk] banned the fez and turban, and uprisings challenged France in Syria and the Moroccan Rif — King Fuad refounded the Egyptian University as a state institution.

To his regret, the king had to share the limelight, both at the university and in national politics. High Commissioner Viscount Edmund Allenby spoke for a weakened England which still dreamed imperial dreams. Unlike many Englishmen, the conqueror of Jerusalem was realist enough to see that England must loosen the reins and seek Egyptian allies in order to preserve her vital interests. Saad Zaghlul emerged as Egypt's tribune, reaching out beyond his own upper class to all his countrymen and boldly calling for immediate independence. Lutfi al-Sayyid, the first rector of the state university, spoke as one of the intellectuals and wealthy landowners who broke with Zaghlul to form the Liberal Constitutionalist Party.