Copt Against Copt

By: A. Dirlik

Part One.

Once upon several thousands of years ago, the fertile lands of the Nile Valley helped forge the ethos of a people who came to be known as Egyptians, the inhabitants of the flats of Egypt. These people tilled a narrow strip of land on either side of the river which carried silt from as far as Ethiopia and Uganda along the Blue Nile and the White Nile, 6.650 kilometers south of the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. We owe it to Ancient Greece to have named the country Land of Egypt. Greece’s most famous historian, Herodotus (484-425 BC), wrote that Egypt was a gift of the Nile: Η Αιγυπτος ειναι το δωρο του Νειλου. He referred to this slice of geography as Aegyptos, Egypt, and to its people as κοπτης, Copts.

Some derive the word Copt from the verb κοπτω, to cut, to circumcise. Today’s Copts were amongst the rare Christians who did practise circumcision which they inherited from Pharaoh times and from the initiation rites of the Hamitic People, the descendants of the Biblical Ham, from which they are said to have originated. A more probable etymology would be HET-KA-PTAH, the place where the protection of the god PTAH manifested itself, in the first Capital City of the Early Dynastic Period, Memphis, thirty one centuries before our era. HET-KA-PTAH, Copt.

La fuite en Egypte

The Hebrews, in their Scriptures,  referred to the inhabitants of the Land of Khemet, the fertile black soil, as MISRAIM, two thousand years ago. In more recent time, those who dwelt in the Arabian Peninsula referred to Egypt as MISR. In 640 AD, Arabs invaded the Nile delta under the standard of one ‘Amr ibn al-‘Aas from the Hijaz and wrested the land and its people from Byzantine rule. Ironically, the inhabitants of Egypt who, in their past histories, resisted foreign intervention, welcomed this time their Arab conquerors: they had been liberated from the throes of the Greek, first Alexander-the-Great who landed in the Delta in 330 BC, then his lieutenant, Ptolemy, whose dynasty, at the death of Alexander, lasted 275 years, till 30 BC, finally, by the bondage which the Christian Byzantine Empire imposed on its people. This was the longest foreign occupation of their land. To put it simply, Romans and Achaemenids had left no significant trace of their thrust into Egypt, in 525, 343 and 30 BC as the Greeks would.

Majestic Nile Photo M.Sharobim

When the Roman Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, in 313 AD, which legalized Christianity in the realm, he also envisaged moving his capital to Byzantium, on the Bosphorus. Nova Roma was renamed Constantinople after his death. It also became the Seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, head of all Oriental Churches. Byzantium, as the Eastern Roman Empire came to be known, inherited the Land of Egypt. Egyptians had already adopted Christianity as early as 42 AD, making their Church amongst the oldest among Christians.  The Patriarch of Alexandria, as senior most patriarch in Christendom, had traditionally been the one who fixed the date of Easter Day. The Copts had retained the Julian Calendar which started August 29^th. NI-YAROUOU is not to be confused with NORUZ, the first day of Spring for the Persians. The Coptic New Year celebrated the flooding of the Nile and a virgin was, customarily, offered alive to the waters to insure that the fields of the land be flooded during the following yearly cycle. The celebration of ‘Arusat al-Bahr is held till this day when all Egyptians buy candy dolls in memory of this important festival of renewal.

It is during the Council of Nicea, 325 AD, that the rift between the Coptic Church and the rest of Christendom came to the open: the Copts upheld that Jesus retained his human as well as his divine nature during his lifetime and until his crucifixion. Patriarch Athanasius was banished to Trier, in Germany. His Church was considered heretic and was, consequently, persecuted. Years later, at the Council of Constantinople in 553 AD, Emperor Justinian who reigned between 527-565 AD, and built Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, decreed that nothing could be done in Church matters which was contrary to the ruler’s will. As a result, the heavy handedness of the Byzantine Church, also known as the Greek Orthodox Church, was made felt throughout the entire Orient.

Coptic Cross

Egyptians had, also, resisted efforts by their rulers to spread the Greek language in their country and they succeeded in retaining the popular language of Pharaonic times, the Demotic Language, for their daily use. One will recall that the Rosetta Stone which was discovered, in 1799, during Napoleon’s Expedition to Egypt, and had an inscription written in Greek, in Hieroglyphic and in Demotic, assisted archeologists to decipher the languages of Ancient Egyptians. The stone carried the seal of Ptolemy V and was dated 195 BC. The deciphering of the stone allowed Jean François Champollion, after 1822, to unlock the secrets of Pharaonic times. And later, the study of the religious ritual of the Copts, chanted in Demotic speech, assisted the scholars in understanding how the languages of the Egyptians were pronounced. 

Returning to our story, meanwhile, it is claimed that the Prophet of Islam, who was also husband to Mariam-the-Copt, urged ‘Amr, one amongst the Sahaba, his Companions, and one who became a brilliant general soon after, to show compassion towards the People of Egypt. ‘Amr abolished the heavy taxes which the Byzantine levied on the Copts and replaced them by the Jiziyah which the conquered People of the Book, Christians, Jews and Sabeans, had to pay to the Muslim Treasury, the Bayt al-Maal. The Jiziyah allowed non-Muslims which Muslims referred to as Dhimmis,  to continue to practice their religion. Payment of the Jiziyah exempted from military service. Only free adults were to bare this fiscal burden. Slaves, women, children, old and sick people, monks and hermits, and the poor were spared its payment. It became therefore understandable that the illiterate Fallah, the peasant who stood at the bottom of the social ladder and whom the Coptic clergy did not reach in his field be inclined to convert to the new faith. Converts to Islam, the neophytes, were known as Mawali. They became the clients to prominent Arabs, borrowed their Arabic name and enjoyed their protection. They were, by the same token, socially elevated in rank. This process precipitated change and disruptions in Egyptian society as Arabization went hand in hand with Islamization. 

Sunset on Nile Photo M. Sharobim 

Upon the death of the Prophet Muhammad, in 632, the power struggle amongst his closest associates eventually led to the capital of the new State being moved from Madina, in Arabia, to Damascus, in Syria. It shall be recalled that the Umayyad dynasty (661-730) had helped consolidate its hold on Syria and on Egypt after the Battle of Yarmuk, in Syria, which weakened the Byzantine, in 636 AD, and allowed them to be defeated, once again, at the battles of Nikiou and of Heliopolis in 640 AD on Egyptian soil. The fall of the Fortress of Babylon, near where Fustat, to mean the encampment, caused the Arab capital of Egypt to replace the capital-city of Alexandria which had also fallen to the invading Arabs. The conquest of Misr was complete. Arab historiography noted that the letter which the Prophet had sent to Heraclius of Byzantium inviting him to convert to Islam had not been heeded by that emperor and that his downfall was, consequently, predicted.

One will have to wait until the collapse of the Umayyads, in 750 AD, when the centre of gravity of the Muslim Empire shifted away from Damascus to Baghdad to realize what was to occur in Egypt, a land where the Copts remained autonomous although ruled by Arabs. During centuries of Arab rule, the Patriarch of Alexandria led his flock according to the teachings of the Apostle Marc, patron of Egypt. And the Demotic language lingered as the language of administration. Yet, converts to Islam, the Mawalis, were steadily growing in number in spite of the fact that, under Umayyad rule, non-Arabs were being prevented from serving the Muslim State. East of the Tigris River, the Mawalis eventually brought the Abbasids to power and new rulers in Baghdad, having dislodged the Umayyads of Damascus, sent governors to run Egypt’s affairs. The policy of excluding Mawalis, wherever they were, from political and social privileges was naturally ended. Islam and the Arabic language spread from Iraq to the lands that stretched as far as the Atlantic Ocean and North Africa, reached Northern Sudan and the borders of Persia. In Egypt proper, Muslim Copts were growing in number at the expense of Christian Copts. What now distinguished the two groups was Faith and the adopted Names of the neophytes, the new converts. At the same time, the Demotic language was giving way to the Arabic language. In the second part of our story, it shall be argued that the Islamization of Egypt will have pitted Muslim Copt and Christian Copt against one another although much, in fact, ought to have brought them together. But then, is this not the story we often hear of cousins fighting over the same inheritance?

Copt against Copt.

Part two. 

It is remarkable that, during the Greek occupation of Egypt which lasted 971 years - if we date it to the landing of Alexander, in 330 BC, until the defeat of the Byzantines at the hand of the Arabs, in 641 AD - Egypt and the Egyptians did not surrender either to the language of the foreigner from not too far away or to his interpretation of Christianity. It is also remarkable that, after 641 AD, Muslim rulers governed, uninterrupted, the Nile Valley up till today. The centuries’ old Demotic language which Egyptians communicated with since Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt and wore the White and Red Crown, around thirty one centuries ago, was being replaced by Arabic. This shift from one civilization to another is unprecedented if one realizes that what nurtured the successful resistance of Egypt to change of faith, character and identity, during 971 years, became gradually eroded for the sake and the benefit of what is loosely referred to as Islamic Civilization after 641 AD.

Alexander, the young Macedonian general who was known in Egypt as AMUN’s Horns, the same Dhu’l Qarnayn of the Qur’an, consulted the Oracle of Siwa, in the Western Desert: he was assured that he would rule the world. Alexander left for the Indus River and his lieutenant in Egypt, one Ptolemy, governed from the city which bore the general’s name. The dynasty of Ptolemy lasted 330 years during which period the famous Library and the Lighthouse became wonders of their time. Alexandria also grew into an important centre for Hellenism in philosophy and law, in the arts and in architecture, and greatly contributed to the worldview which the Ancient Greeks helped propagate. Egypt had become the granary of an expanding Roman Empire and merchants, in Alexandria, grew rich and powerful as a result. The Ptolemys desperately attempted to ingratiate themselves to the indigenous people they ruled. They failed while, in Greece itself, fascination for things Pharaonic were rampant: Egyptian Thebes inspired Sophocles in his tragedies; the myth of Oedipus appears to have been related historically to the story of Akhenaton; and, in Greek Cosmogony, one Aegyptus was revered who descended of the Heifer Maiden and the River-God Nile. And, last but not least, the myth of Christ might have been inspired by the tale of Osiris.

 

Julius Caesar defeated Cleopatra VII on the battlefield and in love, in 30 AD, and Egypt fell to the Roman Empire. Constantine, who reigned from 306-337 BC and adopted Christianity as his State Religion, moved the seat of his power from Rome to Byzantium, on the Bosphorus, near the Straits of Dardanelles, the nexus between two continents. Nota Bene: the symbol of the city had been for millennia a Crescent and a Star long before the Ottoman Turks used that very symbol on their standards. Nova Roma was renamed after Constantine upon his death. His successor, Justinian who reigned from 518-527 AD, stood on the cusp between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Come Helena, mother of Constantine. She claimed to have found the True Cross in Golgotha, during her trip to Jerusalem. In Egypt, she commandeered the Monastery of Saint-Catherine to be built in Sinai near where it is claimed Moses received the Tables of the Law. Catherine was an Egyptian Martyr whom Greek Hagiology recuperated. Byzantine occupation, not unlike that of the Ptolemys, was not welcome to Egyptians. The Patriarch of Alexandria, leader of the Coptic Church, remained the head of Coptic resistance. When the Arabs raided the Nile Delta, Copts made their victories possible by opening their gates, in betrayal, to ‘Amr and his cavalcade of Bedouins.

It will be recalled that the Umayyads in Damascus were replaced by the ‘Abbassids of Baghdad in 750 AD. The Mawalis of Iraq and Persia, the new converts to Islam helped the ‘Abbassids  dislodge the Umayyads and revert the previous policy of excluding the Mawali from office. The Abbassids rewarded lavishly those who had brought them the Caliphate. In Egypt, Christian Copts converted, in droves, to the new religion in order to receive the same benefits as other Mawali. In the meantime, the Mongols prepared to sack Baghdad and Berbers from North Africa, the Fatimids, invaded Egypt from the West in 909 AD. The Fatimid Shi’ah dynasty which lasted till 1171 AD and built al-Qahira, Cairo, the Victorious, their capital, created an important centre of Arabic and Islamic learning and culture, in and around the Madrasah of al-Azhar which they founded to spread their ideology. The country prospered under their governance. Amongst the many mosques they built, one was erected within the precincts of the Monastery of Saint-Catherine, in Sinai, next to the Chapel of the Burning Bush. It is interesting to note that this mosque was never used because its Qibla, mistakenly, did not point in the direction of Makkah. After Shi’ism was defeated and the land reverted to Sunnism, the reputation of Cairo as the hub of Islamic Civilization grew worldwide. Cairo was referred to as the city of One Thousand Minarets. Next to each minaret, one could find a school or a library. The arts and crafts which were designed in Umayyad Syria and Spain and in ‘Abbasid Mesopotamia found yet another abode in Egypt.

When Salah ed-Din al-Ayyubi, Saladin, dislodged this new seat of Shi’ism and settled, in turn in Cairo, in 1171 AD, the Kurdish general who had wrested Jerusalem from the Crusaders, pursued the task of investing in Egypt’s Islamization and Arabization. The Ayyubids endowed al-Qahirah with many public and private structures until they were dislodged in their turn, in 1250 AD, by their own mercenaries, a slave-warrior class of Kipchak Turks and of Circassians from the Caucasus Mountains. The Mamluks, as they came to be called, were not Arabic-speaking as much as the Ayyubids had been before them yet they funded the on-going Arab revival in Cairo. In 1517 AD,  the Ottoman Turks were the last to conquer Egypt for themselves and incorporated this land to their far extending empire. The Ottoman Sultan, not an Arab from the Prophet’s House of Quraysh, nevertheless claimed the Caliphate, the highest office in Islam. The Ottomans respected the Arab and Islamic character of al-Qahirah and contributed towards its endowment in mosques and madrasahs, hospitals, water fountains and public baths, markets and palaces and gardens.

That is until the Ottoman governor in Cairo, Muhammad Ali Basha, declared his independence from his suzerain in Istambul in 1807 AD. Muhammad ‘Ali abolished the Jiziyah imposed of Christian Copts. He also invited them to share in the modernization of Egypt and they responded favourably. The dynasty of Muhammd ‘Ali was ended when a military junta of Muslim Copts usurped power in 1952 and decreed Egypt to be a Republic. They were the first Egyptians to rule since Alexander ended the Pharaonic era. The years of Monarchy had, meanwhile, been golden years for Christian Copts who took heartily to Western education and the liberal professions. Patriarch Kirilos IV was a great reformer who understood the value of learning for his flock. By that time, Christian Copts were now entirely Arabized to the extent that they adopted Arabic names and ought to have shared fully in the revival that lie ahead. But this was not to happen.

The Nile at Aswan - Photo M. Sharobim

A word about names. Early on, one should be reminded, the neophyte, the new convert, was expected to borrow a Muslim name. For a long time, Arabic name and Muslim faith went hand in hand. This changed when invaders from the East, essentially Mongol and Turkic, converted to Islam yet retained their Central Asian names. Gengiz, Orhan, Taymur, Babur or Humayun are today considered Muslim names. Not so Ramsis, Sesostris or Isis, either in Egypt or elsewhere. Furthermore, any early Muslim Copt would not name himself Mustafa al-Qibti, as did the Abbassid governor to Egypt, in 840 AD, whose name was ‘Ali ibn Yehiya al-Armani, the Armenian. The Pharaonic nature of Egypt forced the earliest converts to Islam amongst the Copts to want to turn their backs on what made Egypt the way it was, a land where the imprint of AMON was paramount. Fabrication of genealogies become important in such circumstances. And, as long as his new master questioned his motives and his sincerity, the neophyte tried harder to further distance himself from who he originally was. So one may adopt the name Muhammad Hijazi and wish to link with the Hijaz, in Arabia, along the Red Sea Coast, to further dissimulate his immediate roots. Antipathy, also, grew on the part of Muslim Copts for Christian Copts as the Muslims felt strong ties with the flourishing civilization of their Ummah, the Community of Believers.

Egyptian customs and mores, and Folklore, Superstitions, the Cult of Saints and the Visit of the Dead, more often than not, cross the religious divide and, indeed, blur differences between Muslims and Christians for the sake of their similarities. Both Christian and Muslim Copts also inherited great piety from their Pharaonic ancestry. Further indications are that, whatever their religious practice, they both belong to the same black soil, Khemet. Many learned Egyptians acknowledge that fact. One note of interest is that, in the villages of Upper Egypt, one would know one was in a Coptic Christian neighbourhood at the sight of swine foraging for food on the unpaved and dusty roads of the Balad. In olden days, no mosques were raised in rural communities to indicate that Islam was here predominant. Coptic churches, with their dovecot shape, were also absent in the countryside. Such are the observations of the keen eye of the anthropologist. They do not account for the history of the past sixteen centuries during which an Egyptian brand of Islamic behaviour was being forged by circumstances which drew Muslim Copts away from Christian Copts and forced the minority to entrench itself in attitudes that would insure its survival.

Nile view, Photo M. Sharobim

When the country and its Muslims reverted to Sunni Islam, after the fall of the Fatimids, Shafi’i Law was adopted and its Shari’ah became much stricter towards the Dhimmis, those who had not converted, Christian Copts that is. Documentary evidence found that the 11^th century Gueniza papers written in Hebrew and buried in the Jewish quarter of Old Cairo, near the Mosque of ‘Amr, attest that the burden of the Jiziyah was heaviest on the Egyptian poor. It should be seen as the primary cause for the rapid shrinking of the Dhimmi population in Egypt, after the Fatimids. That is until 1807 AD when Muhammad ‘Ali Basha wrested power from the Ottomans. Christian Copts were constantly being oppressed or ridiculed. ‘Admah Zarqa’, Blue Bone, is still used till this day in a defamatory sense to refer to Christian Copts. The origin of this epithet is not known to me. Their rights, as People of the Book, had been withering away as a result of the growing urge for Muslim Copts to justify their legitimacy. And so it is that Christian Copts ferociously cling to their identity, be it in terms of their faith and religious practices or to the pre-Christian Pharaonic past they identify with. Many Muslim Copts, on the other hand, have tagged Egypt’s past as Jahiliyyah, belonging to the Age of Ignorance which preceded Coranic Revelation.

In 1954, 20^th Century Fox released in Cinemascope the epic film, ‘Sinuhe the Egyptian’. Edmund Purdom played the role of the physician who would have practiced during the 18^th Dynasty of Akhenaton, in the fourteen century BC. The movie translated on the screen the magnificent novel by the same title by Mika Waltari (1908-1978). The magician of words and images which Waltari was had conveyed to our age a period of greatness in the saga of mankind. Already, ever since Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) and Gaston Maspero (1846-1916), the wonders of Pharaonic Egypt were put on display for us all to enjoy and reflect upon. In Egypt, Senuhi, Sinuhe is a name Christian Copts use till this day. The precious Coptic Museum, near the Church of Mar-i-Girgis, in what used to be Fustat and is now Old Cairo, indicated how the tradition of Saint Marc, who brought Christianity to Egypt and who lies buried in Alexandria, had made the link between Christian and pre-Christian creeds possible and desirable. One simply has to compare and contrast portraiture and the graphic arts to grasp that possibility. Christian Copts would therefore embark head on into modernity by way of education which provided them with contemporary knowledge as when they bridged from Pharaonic times to Christianity. Soon after 1882 AD, under British occupation, they seemed, for a while at least, to get ahead of Muslim Copts. The members of what is today referred to as the Lonely Minority found in discrimination towards them the necessary drive to excel against all odds. Muslim Copts barely took notice.

True, Christian Copts were often favoured by Muhammad ‘Ali and his descendants. When the British occupied Egypt, in 1882 AD, many were drawn close to the Infidel Occupier. Their use of names like Victor, Edward or White attests to that. The rise of Egyptian Nationalism, however, saw Muslim and Christian Copts march side by side when a prominent Christian Copt, Makram ‘Ebeid (1879-1961), joined forces with the Wafd Party of Sa’d Zaghlul and rose to become the Secretary-General of that party from 1936 till 1941. But, the honeymoon between Muslim and Christian Copts was not to last. In 1952, Gamal ‘abd al-Nasir ought to have instituted the Secular State in the footsteps of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Such a state is, in fact, the only logical and equitable solution to Egyptian communal dislocation. He did not. Moreover, he unfairly lumped Christian Copt and Foreign Resident together during his years of witch-hunt. Nasir’s successors have not proven wiser nor statesmanlike. And, now that the Muslim Brothers are in power and intend, at some point, to enhance the Islamic character of society, any application of Shari’ah Law which re-instates Dhimmah and Jiziyah is bound to exacerbate relations between Christian and Muslim in Egypt. The Muslim Brothers are much more responsible than the Salafis are in their considerations for Christian Copts. They are bound, unfortunately, by an ideology which, however liberal and fair, ought to put growing pressure on this significant and, after all, indigenous minority, thus either forcing them to convert further to Islam, to emigrate abroad or, worse still, to retrench in their ghettos and continue to have dark dreams. In the meantime, many Christian Copts are bound to sulk until some cataclysm that was sent by the Goddess HATOR come to alleviate their conundrum. That is not what one would have expected from two communities, heirs to the oldest civilization in human history, that daily quench their thirst in the waters of the Nile.

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Published with the consent of the author.