ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the authorities allow the reforms of Muhammad ‘Ali in so far as they affected education and intellectual life, whether applied to his military organisation or to the civil population. The French invasion in 1798 is the turning point in the history of modem Egypt. This event suddenly brought the Egyptians into contact with a disciplined Western military organisation with up-to-date equipment and accompanied by the pick of France’s scholars and experts. The invasion was an act of aggression and it was not in the nature of things that the Egyptians should take an interest in any of their aggressors’ institutions, most of which, were bound up with military life or were thought by the Egyptians to be so. The School of Medicine has been the subject of much controversy especially with a group of French writers who wrote during and just after Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign.
