The students mostly obtain their livelihood by the same means as the professors, or by reciting the Kur-án in private houses, and at the tombs and other places. When sufficiently advanced in their studies, some of them become kádees, muftees, imáms of mosques, or schoolmasters, in their native villages or towns, or in Cairo; others enter into trade; some remain all their lifetime studying in the Azhar, and aspire to be ranked among the higher ’Ulama. Since the confiscation of the lands which belonged to the Azhar, the number of that class of students to whom no endowed riwák is appropriated has very much decreased. The number of students, including all classes excepting the blind, is (as I am informed by one of the professors) about one thousand five hundred.[334] There is a chapel (called “Záwiyet el-’Omyán,” or the Chapel of the Blind), adjacent to the eastern angle of the Azhar, and one of the dependencies of that mosque, where at present about three hundred poor blind men, most of whom are students, are maintained from funds bequeathed for that purpose. These blind men often conduct themselves in a most rebellious and violent manner; they are notorious for such conduct and for their fanaticism. A short time ago, a European traveller entering the Azhar, and his presence there being buzzed about, the blind men eagerly inquired, “Where is the infidel?” adding, “We will kill him!” and groping about at the same time to feel and lay hold of him; they were the only persons who seemed desirous of showing any violence to the intruder. Before the accession of the present Básha, they often behaved in a very outrageous manner whenever they considered themselves oppressed, or scanted in their allowance of food; they would, on these occasions, take a few guides, go about with staves, seize the turbans of passengers in the streets, and plunder the shops. The most celebrated of the present professors in the Azhar, the sheykh El-Kuweysinee,[335] who is himself blind, being appointed, a few years ago, Sheykh of the Záwiyet el-’Omyán, as soon as he entered upon his office, caused every one of the blind men there to be flogged; but they rose against him, bound him, and inflicted upon him a flogging far more severe than that which they had themselves endured, and obliged him to give up his office.