remaining 4,283 and 99,814 being scattered tlironghout
tlie other fourteen provinces. About lialf these primary
schools have, or originally had, small endowments ; but
between these and the others which depend whoUy on
the voluntary contributions of the pupils — averaging a
piastre a week each for those who pay anything at all —
there is little or no difference in either the method or
quality of the instruction given. The chief aim and
limit of the whole are to teach the reading and learning
by heart of the Koran, supplemented or not by writing
and the most elementary arithmetic, beyond which
modest range the scholarship of the fiki (teachers,
plural properly /bg'Ma^) seldom or never extends. Many
of them, indeed, are not merely illiterate, but blind to
boot, and depend on their great powers of memory and
the adroitly used help of an arif, or monitor, for at aU
decently acting their part. Their emoluments however
are, as a rule, on a par with their qualification, averaging '
commonly not more than an Egyptian pound (205. Qd.) a
month.*

In the case of schools with endowments, this modest
wage is supplemented during the month of Ramadan
with gifts of a tarboosh, a piece of white cotton for a
turban, and another of blue stuff for the usual long
blouse, from the funds of the toaJcf ; to which the
wealthier parents add gratuities of a few piastres as
Boon as their children can read or have learned by heart
one or more of the 114 chapters of the Koran. As the
office of schoolmaster, too, of whatever grade, is looked
upon as semi-clerical, the JiM further adds to his
earnings by reciting the sacred book at funerals, mar-

* The maximum salaries of the teachers in the secondary schools vmdej
Government control are 750 piastres (about ^l. 14«.), and the minimum 300
jiastres (3? 1«.) a month..
