 Following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 , led by the Free Officers Movement of Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser , in which the Egyptian monarchy was overthrown , the university began to be separated from the mosque . A number of properties that surrounded the mosque were acquired and demolished to provide space for a modern campus by 1955 . The mosque itself would no longer serve as a school , and the college was officially designated a university in 1961 . The 1961 law separated the dual roles of the educational institution and the religious institution which made judgments heeded throughout the Muslim world . The law also created secular departments within al @-@ Azhar , such as colleges of medicine , engineering , and economics , furthering the efforts at modernization first seen following the French occupation . The reforms of the curriculum have led to a massive growth in the number of Egyptian students attending al @-@ Azhar run schools , specifically youths attending primary and secondary schools within the al @-@ Azhar system . The number of students reported to attend al @-@ Azhar primary and secondary schools increased from under 90 @,@ 000 in 1970 to 300 @,@ 000 in the early in 1980s , up to nearly one million in the early 1990s , and exceeding 1 @.@ 3 million students in 2001 . 
