A Sword Over the Nile: A Brief History of the Copts Under Islamic Rule

A Brief History of the Copts Under Islamic Rule

Adel Guindy

• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781643787602
• eBook ISBN: 9781645365099
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

"With Egypt's Copts targeted as part of a bloody and systematic campaign of genocide against the ancient churches of the Middle East, Adel Guindy has produced a timely and authoritative account of their story. It deserves to be widely read."
* -- Professor Lord Alton, Professor of Citizenship at Liverpool John Moores University

Appendices

1. The Impact of the ‘Forgotten of History’ on Civilization1

Péroncel Hugoz2 once called the Copts, ‘the forgotten of history.’ One of the reasons for that unfortunate fact is the conscious neglect of that history by the educational system of Egypt where history seems to jump from the Pharaonic phase all the way to the Islamic age, with hardly any mention of a thousand years deemed insignificant.

But in fact, were it not for the Copts and Alexandria, the history of Western civilization would have been totally different. The Copts’ influence, though pervasive, is sometimes difficult to discern because during the better part of two millennia, they were either a subject people or a Dhimmi minority. Examples of the Copts’ impact are:

1. Doctrinal Differentiation of Christianity

Following the war between Mithridates of Pontus and Rome (89 B.C.), Athens ‘witnessed an exodus of philosophers’ to Alexandria which continued to be the undisputed cultural queen of late antiquity, where the ‘Greek genius was deflected’ from Athens. Alexandria was also the first and most important city of Jewish biblical scholarship of late antiquity. It utilized Greek and produced the first translation of the Hebrew Bible that became known as the Septuagint (because of the 70 Jewish scholars who worked on it).

The stage was thus set for Alexandria to become the leading Mediterranean center of Christian theology and philosophy. For it is out of this milieu that the first major Coptic achievement occurred, namely the growth of the first theological university in antiquity (c. 180), which became known as the catechetical school of Alexandria. It is also important to remember that it is that school that was responsible for the indubitable ascendance of the Coptic Church during the first major ecumenical councils.

It was that school where the Christian beliefs, that were eventually adopted by the Universal Church throughout the globe, were explained, codified, and crystallized. It was the young Athanasius who was influential in producing the most basic document in church history, namely, the Nicene Creed.

The Chalcedon schism (451) deprived the Coptic Church of its universal leadership and restricted it to a national institution increasingly persecuted and marginalized.

2. Monasticism and the Western Civilization

When Rome succumbed first to the assault of the Barbarians and then to chaos and de-urbanization by the end of the sixth century, Western civilization seemed about to expire. Civilization was saved, by reiterating the universally accepted answer that gives most of the credit to Europe’s monasteries. Yet, that institution may never have appeared in the west, were it not for St. Athanasius’ biography of St. Antony, the founder of monasticism in Egypt, as well as his visit to Rome (in the fourth century). Up to the eighth century, Athanasius’ Life of St. Antony was not only the most read, but also the most imitated book in the west after the Bible. A great part of the Hellenic heritage was thus, jealously preserved for future generations to utilize, and create the radiance of the Middle Ages that was to flower in the glorious renaissance which eventually evolved into the most advanced civilization the world has ever known.

The Egyptian origin of European and Irish monasticism is well-documented. Moreover, the books that kept civilization alive traveled from the workshops of Egypt and Syria by way of Ireland and Britain and, finally to the continent of Europe.

Coptic influence on Celtic Christianity in both Ireland and Scotland is illustrated through the Celtic wheel cross which is a Coptic invention. The Irish litany of Saints remembers the seven Coptic monks of Desert Uilaig and the life of (the Coptic) St. Paul the Hermit is still depicted on a Pictish stone at St. Vigeans near Dundee (in Scotland). The role of the Copts was also acknowledged by the famous monk Alcuin (c. 735–804), advisor of Charlemagne, who described the Celtic Culdee (servants of God, or monks of Ireland and Scotland) as ‘pueri Egyptiaci,’ the children of Egypt.

The fact that Christian civilization was saved for Europe by the Irish and the European monastic institutions, (and hence, by the Copts!) was to assume momentous importance in the eighth century at Poitier, when Islam’s advance was checked by Charles Martel (732). The Saracen forces would have encountered little resistance if Europe did not benefit from the cohesiveness of its Christian heritage and its resurrected Greco-Roman culture; both kept alive by unnamed monks copying manuscripts, and preserving all the treasures of civilization they could salvage from the ruins and devastation left by the barbarians. It is thus, possible to assert that even though the Copts were defeated by the Arabs in Egypt in 642, they were present in force at Poitier, armed only with books!

3. Philosophy

In that all-embracing discipline, the uniqueness of Origen has been an intellectual light not only for the church, but also for the way the Mediterranean mind evolved. In Science and Creation, Stanley Jaki, a Jesuit priest and physicist, advanced the very convincing thesis that the cyclic cosmogonies of the Far East, Pharaonic Egypt and even Greece were the major reasons for stifling the intellectual development of antiquity. But in Coptic Egypt, Origen, following in the footsteps of Clement of Alexandria and preceding Augustine of Hippo, insisted that reality is the intellectual highway to knowledge, and that can only be reached by breaking through the cycle of eternal recurrences and pantheism, and transforming history into an evolving linear progression that demands ameliorative culture.

Most authorities agree that no one did more to ensure the spiritual and intellectual victory of Mediterranean Christianity and culture than did Origen. It could also be argued that the intellectual maturity of Christianity thus achieved elevated the followers of Jesus from a mere sect into a cohesive social religious force that was soon felt to be a threat to the Roman Empire. In other words, the Church became ‘a universalistic alternative’ to the empire itself and actually ‘a far more dynamic and better organized alternative,’ and thus, it ‘had to be exterminated or accepted.’ That climate was to usher the age of martyrs.

To better understand the Coptic philosophic contribution to the Mediterranean culture, it is important to realize that Egyptian Christianity managed to preserve what was best in its Pharaonic inheritance, and at the same time, shed its archaic superstition and its sterile concepts.

Christianity did not bring material prosperity or national pride to the people of Egypt, nor was Christianized Egypt ever to shine again as an independent power. Yet, the Copts were about to offer the world spiritual and cultural trea...

Table of contents

• Adel Guindy
• Copyright Information©
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Who Are the Copts?
• A Peaceful or Forceful Conquest?
• Rapacious Umayyads
• The Abbasids Squelch the Resistance
• The Turkish Walis: More Sorrows
• The Fatimids and the Adventures of Al-Ḥakem bi-Amr Allah
• The Decay and Demise of the Fatimid State
• The Wars of Ṣalaḥ Al-Deen Against the Kuffar
• The Copts in the Ayyubid Mill
• Harassed from All Directions
• The Slaves’ State and Its Dark Days
• An Ottoman Paradise
• Bonaparte Knocks at the Door
• Mohammed Ali’s Attempts to Exit the Dark Tunnel
• Fake Liberals, Real Fascists
• Dhimmis in the Republican Umma-State
• Overview and Analysis: The Copts Under Arab Islamic Rule
• Conclusion: Triumph of ‘Islamocracy’©
• Afterword
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Notes