Egyptian military medical education was progressively Arabized but slowly

Evidence

Eventually this problem was surmounted. On his return from Paris Shaykh Rifā‘a al-Ṭahṭāwī was intended to be attached to the School of Medicine in Abū-Za‘bal and to have twenty students working with him on translating medical books from French into Arabic and to compile a French–Arabic dictionary. When it was deemed more suitable to employ Shaykh Rifā‘a elsewhere, the first batch of graduates of the Medical School were themselves employed to teach another generation of students, and this time instruction was conducted in Arabic. In due time Arabic lexicons were compiled and medical books were translated and even written in Arabic. Eventually the entire process of medical education was Arabized. These measures, however, because of their very nature, needed time to come to fruition, and during the Syrian campaign the language problems encountered in instruction were reflected in the low standard of the early graduates. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1127

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader reader interest in how inherited ‘modern’ institutions (here French-modeled medicine) were adapted into Egyptian practice.