Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt

Late in December 1950, Fuad I University celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in lavish style. Soon to be renamed Cairo University by the Free Officers who swept away the monarchy, it had begun as the private Egyptian University in 1908 with Prince Ahmad Fuad as its first rector. In 1925 Fuad as king had the satisfaction of refounding the Egyptian University as a full-fledged state institution; after his death it was renamed in his honor.

Palace officials intended the 1950 ceremonies to present thirty-year-old King Faruq as the worthy heir of his father Fuad and his grandfather Khedive Ismail, the respective founders of the university and of the Royal Geographical Society, which was simultaneously celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary. Everyone knew that this image of King Faruq was contrived. Ismail and Fuad, for all their shortcomings, were able and dignified men; Faruq was a playboy and a national embarrassment.

For unknown reasons, one founding father of the university, Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, was not in evidence at the jubilee. It seems unlikely that even King Faruq's desire for the limelight could have pushed this mentor of a generation of secular liberal nationalists offstage. Lutfi was a disciple of reformist shaykh Muhammad Abduh and had come to national prominence as editor of the newspaper al-Jarida before World War I.