Ain Shams University

Ain Shams University, founded in 1950, is a public university in Cairo, Egypt.

Originally called ‘Ibrahim Pasha's University’, it was the third higher education institution to be founded in Egypt and was built on the site of a former royal palace – the Zaafarana Palace – so named because the area surrounding it was famous for saffron plantations (‘zaafaran’, in Arabic).

Today, the university is organised across seven separate campuses, all located in the Greater Cairo area, and it also comprises 15 faculties along with several research institutions. There are living facilities for students provided on campus as well as sports and recreational facilities

The university administration and its faculties of Arts, Law and Science are all located on the main campus in the Abassia area of Cairo. Its other faculties, namely Commerce, Engineering, Medicine, Agriculture, Education, Pharmacy, Dentistry, Computers and Information Sciences, Education, and Nursing, are sited elsewhere.

Ain Shams encourages study abroad opportunities for students and has a number of academic partnerships in place with international institutions, including the University of Birmingham and Imperial College London in the UK, Monash University in Australia and McGill University in Canada.

Famous alumni of Ain Shams include Egyptian Prime Ministers Abd El Aziz Muhammad Hegazi and Serif Ismail, as well as the American philosopher Charles Butterworth.

The university’s emblem depicts an obelisk and two hawks, connecting Ain Shams University to O’n University of ancient Egypt, said to have existed about 5000 years ago as a renowned centre of knowledge in astronomy, engineering and medicine.