A History of Protestant missions in the near East

Egypt and Abyssinia 349
sion in the election and recognition of a Kopt, Gergis Barsum,
as agent of the Protestants, and as their representative at the
Khedivial Court. The mission was put to much trouble and
expense before the small congregations could be provided
with modest meeting-houses. Special permission from the
central government had to be obtained before a church might
be built, and, since each such building was a visible sign of
the progress of Christianity and particularly of Protestantism,
so hateful to the ruling Muhammadans, a hundred obstacles
were put in the way so as to dela}^ if not actually to prevent,
the church's being built. School problems were equally
great. The Egyptian schools were miserable at the beginning
of this period, and, such as they were, Christian children
were excluded from them. Though under the English
protectorate public instruction was immensely improved, it
was undesirable to send the children of Protestant families to
the government schools, since instruction in the Koran was
compulsory there. The old practice had been that every
denomination provided
its own schools, and the missionaries,
with American energy, undertook to do this for the children
of their congregations. Accordingly many of the primary
schools, which had been founded as a mission agency among
non-Protestants, were turned into church schools, every
in so far as it was possible, being provided with
congregation,
one. By the year 1896 there were 216 of these Protestant
schools, 133 of them for boys, with 7,976 pupils, and eightythree
for girls,
with 3,038 pupils. At the mission stations
there were, in addition, higher bparding-schools, the missionaries
themselves giving part of the instruction. On this
foundation a higher educational system was built, to which
belong a training college in Assiut (1870), which expanded into
a general college in 1875 ;
two boarding-schools for girls in
Assiut and Cairo respectively,
in which teachers and Biblewomen
could also be trained ;
and a large girls' boardingschool
in Luxor, attended by 250 girls.
There was also a
theological seminary, unhappily of a rather interrupted
existence, first in Cairo, then for twenty years in Assiut,