Egypt’s first medical school taught a hundred Arabists through foreign translators

Evidence

It was a most curious situation; a hundred Egyptian students from al-Azhar who knew only Arabic and who had never received any training but in Arabic grammar, Koranic Exegesis, Fikh, etc. gathered together in order to be trained in medical and scientific subjects of which they had not the slightest idea by a number of European teachers who did not know the language of their students and who themselves were not homogenous [four being French, three Italians, a Spaniard], a Piedmontese and … a Bavarian. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1125

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• DEFINE: Vividly captures the origin of Egypt’s modern medical education: a polyglot European faculty lecturing through simultaneous translators to al-Azhar grammarians.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in the birth of the modern Egyptian army — this is the institutional root of its medical corps, which parallels the earlier military modernization.

Related

• Egyptian medical students were taught through simultaneous translation from European lecturers (similarity 0.89)
• The new Egyptian medical school taught through live simultaneous translation (similarity 0.88)
• Al-Azhar graduates trained as army doctors under multilingual European teachers (similarity 0.88)
• Egypt’s medical education was fully Arabized within a generation (similarity 0.84)
• The army medical school taught through simultaneous live translation (similarity 0.83)
• Egyptian military medical education was progressively Arabized but slowly (similarity 0.83)
• Muhammad Ali built a military medical corps staffed by Egyptian-trained Arab doctors (similarity 0.82)