The Copts in modern Egypt

Abstract

The Copts are the largest Christian community in the Middle East. Recent events in Egypt have brought them, untypically, into the news. An account of their contemporary history and position in modern Egypt may therefore be timely. The word Copt derives from the Greek for an inhabitant of Egypt (Aiguptos), arabised into 'Qibt' and thence anglicised as 'Copt'. The conversion of the ancient population of Egypt to Christianity was begun by the evangelist St Mark. During the Roman period Egyptian Christians suffered several savage persecutions, among them that of the Emperor Diocletian in 284 A.D. in which hundreds of thousands are said to have died. ' Repression did not end with the Empire's official conversion to Christianity; the Egyptian Church's support of the monophysite doctrine of the nature of Christ2 brought it into sharp conflict with Byzantium; and the monophysites, representing the great majority of the people, were subject to repeated persecutions. With this background it is not surprising that in 641 A.D. they welcomed the invading Arabs, at first at any rate, as deliverers. The initial honeymoon however did not last long the early history of the Arabs in Egypt is marked by a series of Coptic revolts which were supressed with increasing severity. By the end of the ninth century, the Christians had ceased to be a majority, and the decline in the proportion of Copts in the population continued in subsequent centuries. In accordance with Islamic law Copts were subject to special taxation (al-Jizya). They suffered discrimination and, occasionally, violent persecution. They were compelled to wear distinctive clothing. Some rural communities lapsed partly through neglect by the church. The Coptic language, derived basically from that of the Ancient Egyptians, died out as a spoken and literary language during the Middle Ages (though it continues to be used, alongside Arabic in the Coptic liturgy). It is difficult to establish anything hard and fast about the present number of Christians in Egypt. The last Egyptian census, conducted in November 1976, reported a total of 2,315,560 Copts, or 6.31 per cent of the total population. This figure met with incredulity and protests from the Copts themselves, who threatened to launch their own head count. They were dissuaded by the government, but Coptic sources continue to speak of a much higher figure. Coptic groups in the US talk of eight million, or roughly 20 per cent of the total population, a figure which has gained wide currency outside Egypt. Coptic activists in Egypt refer to seven to eight million Copts.3 In defence of these higher estimates, they claim that the government has an interest in minimizing the proportion of Copts in the population in order to justify what would otherwise clearly be seen as discrimination in areas such as government jobs and scholarships; and that those who conduct the census invariably record many Christian names automatically as Muslims. Apologists for the