Education And Culture in Egypt
The most famous educational institution in Cairo is the Al-Azhar
University, the oldest in the Islamic world. The institution has grown
up around the Al-Azhar Mosque, the oldest Mosque in Cairo. The Fatimid
founded both the university and Mosque in 970. Al-Azhar University is an
authoritative voice throughout the Islamic world, and its positions on
important issues are influential in Egypt and the Arab world. Other
institutions of higher education include Cairo University (Founded
in1908) and Ain Shams University (1950), which together enrols more than
100,000 students; and the American University in Cairo, founded in
1919, where the children of Egypt's elite mingle with students and
faculty from abroad. Egyptian history is displayed and preserved in the
city's numerous Museum collections. The Egyptian Museum (Founded in
1902) contains hundreds of thousands of artefacts, including more than
1700 pieces from the collection of Tutankhamen. The Museum of Islamic
Arts (1881) contains a vast collection relating to early Islamic
civilization, and the Coptic Museum (1910) traces the history of the
Coptic community in Egypt. Other Cairo Museums maintain collections
relating to more modern themes; these range from the El-Gawhara Palace
Museum, built in 1811 in the Ottoman style, to the Mahmoud Khalil
Museum, founded in 1963, which contains works by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul
Gauguin, Peter Paul Rubens, and other European and Egyptian painters of
renown