Egyptian rural authority was reproduced through al-Azhar-educated family judges and preachers.

Evidence

In the nineteenth century it was breaking down in the same way. Law was the profession in which important Egyptian families, from every region of the country, acquired and protected positions of rural and urban authority. After a number of years at al-Azhar or one of its sister institutions, the sons of the leading families might return to their districts and take up positions of local authority, serving as leaders of the community, preachers, interpreters and judges. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 294