that girls should receive an education so as to afford them better marriage prospects, and more importantly, to provide them with adequate means in which to educate their children. At this point in time, the range of subjects offered to women was limited. However women seized these opportunities to learn, and showed admirable drive and determination. By the middle of the century, a sense of "...awareness and obligation for intellectual and social consciousness, especially the appreciation of women's plight, and the struggle for a voice in society became visible and public." A notable example of the contribution of Western missionaries to increasing educational opportunities for women was the work of Daniel and Abby Maria Bliss, an American couple who moved to Beirut in 1866 and subsequently set up the Syrian Protestant College (which later became the American University of Beirut). In 1905, a nursing programme that accepted applications from women was established, and in 1924, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences opened its doors to female students. The rumblings of reform taking place within Ottoman society reached the Sultanate, and were eventually echoed at an institutional level. The Ottoman regime, in order to counteract the threat of political and religious influence from the Christian missionary schools and due to the realisation that the empire could not hope to survive without learning the modern natural sciences, began to implement its own reforms (tanzimat). According to the Arab historian, Eugene Rogan, the reforms introduced by the Sultanate had little effect on the subjects of the empire. However, by the 1850s and 1860s, the fruits of reform were visible in the daily life. The third (and arguably the most important) current that led to the existence and improvement of women's education in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was due to European colonialism and its legacy. Napoleon's short-lived occupation of Egypt (1798–1801) was relatively unsuccessful by French standards. However, their revolutionary ideas and imports in the field of technology and education were to prove more durable in Egypt and the rest of North Africa. Under the leadership of Muhammad 'Ali, an admirer of French innovation and technology, interactions and exchanges between Egypt and France in the cultural, academic and scientific fields increased during his reign Indeed, it was not just male students who spent time abroad. Notable Arab hostesses or salonnières such as Mayy Ziyadah spent time in France, and the Egyptian feminist