Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/149

Rh the hem of his bournous as often as it could be gracefully done.

My new-found friend answered my questions with the information that the university has fifty-two ulema, or teachers, and six hundred tholba, or students, from every part of North Africa. Though most of these are from seventeen to twenty years of age, some much older men also come to the institution to study. As there is no fixed period for a course and no restrictions upon the length of time a student may remain, a thaleb often continues in the institution from fifteen to twenty years and sometimes even longer. With the exception of the rich seekers after knowledge the students dwell together in dark, dirty cells, receive a small daily allowance of bread from the administration and live the life of beggars, almost always hungry and in rags both winter and summer. They work in shops or cafés and with tanners, weavers, carpenters and dyers, struggling with the phantom of death by starvation, which ever hovers round them. This seems to be the inevitable fate of students the world over, yet it does not prevent these beggars from becoming rich in wisdom, as witness Copernicus, Newton, Pasteur, Helmholz and Metchnikoff; or from becoming saints, like Abu Median el-Andalosi of Tlemsen.

In support of the persistence of this idea of student poverty in Fez, Hafid, laughing gaily over the fate of his kind, told us of the visit of a student to a merchant

"Who is knocking?" asked the master of the house.

"It is I, Ibrahim ben Ibn, a student," answered the guest. "I bring a letter from the worthy Sidi's partner."