Education And Culture in Egypt

 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