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.
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| 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.
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| 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 29th. 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 11th 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, 20th 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 18th 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.
AD
Published with the consent of the author.
