History of the State during the Coptic Age
Roman Period (31 B.C.-323 A.D.)
At the time of its annexation to Rome, Egypt had a population of about eight million. Its capital was at Alexandria and as such, belonged more to the Mediterranean world than the Orient. Although the majority of the population was indigenous Egyptian, who spoke Egyptian and belonged to a culture that was about 3000 years old, the ruling elite consisted of Greeks and Jews, who spoke Greek and probably had little social contact with the native Egyptians. Rome had already had longstanding contact with the Greek world and thus had little difficulty in managing the ruling elite, who in their turn would control the native population, in time-honored colonial tradition.
Among the many riches Egypt had to offer, the most valuable to Augustus was its abundant grain harvest: with it he could ensure that the continually expanding population of Rome (at that time about one million) would not go short of bread. Food storages in the imperial capital might have led to riots and the consequences could have been politically dangerous for the emperor. He therefore organized an annual grain shipment to Rome, which averaged about 170 million litres during the 1st century A.D.
The principal aim of Roman policy in Egypt was to make the country as profitable as possible. This meant improving agriculture, industry and trade. At the same time, an army of 20,000 soldiers was installed in various parts of the country to ensure stability. Private ownership of land and industry was encouraged, while the costs of administering the country were kept to a minimum by the simple expedient of making local volunteers do most of the work unpaid. However, the rising costs of much of this work brought financial ruin to some and in some parts of the country special funds had to be setup for officials who had gone bankrupt.
Although Roman emperors were automatically adopted by the Egyptians as their kings, only a few of them actually visited Egypt. One of these was Hadrian, who arrived in Egypt in 138 A.D. during the course of his tour of the Empire. A contemporary document mentions some of the items requisitioned to provide for his visit to a certain place: 1000 litres of barley, 3000 bundles of hay, 372 suckling pigs and 200 sheep. His great friend Antinous was drowned in the Nile in Middle Egypt and Hadrian founded a city in his honour at this spot-Antinoupolis.
In 200 A.D. Emperor Septimius Severus also visited Egypt; as a result of his visit, certain administrative changes were made in response to local demands, e.g. the establishment of a boule (local council) in Alexandria.
The 3rd century A.D. was a period of anarchy in imperial politics; 30 emperors came and went in almost half a century. The one who had the most impact on Egypt was Decius, an Illyrian soldier, who unleashed a vicious persecution of Christians throughout the Empire in 250 A.D. In fact, all the emperors between 235 and 284 were soldiers who had come to power with the support of their troops. The last of this line, Diocletian, was proclaimed emperor by his troops on November 17, 284. Among his various military campaigns to restore order in the Roman Empire, he was responsible for brutally crushing an uprising in the upper Egyptian city of Thebes (now Luxor), and a faded where he stationed a legion. The shrine of this legion was made in the temple built by Amenophis III and a faded portrait of Diocletian and his three imperial colleagues (known as the Tetrarchy) can still be seen in the niche that was constructed in the middle of the temple.
Like Decius, Diocletian is remembered in Egypt most of all for his persecution of Christians during the years 304-5. The persecution proved to be a failure and subsequent emperors did not repeat the mistake. Ironically, only six years later there were moves towards an imperial policy of religious toleration and these culminated in the Edict of Milan in 313, which officially made Christianity a legal faith that could be professed openly. In the ten years after this decision there was an energetic power struggle in the Roman Empire, the eventual winner of which was Constantine the Great.
Byzantine Period (324-640)
The word Byzantine derives from the name of a town on the Black Sea coast-Byzantium. It was to be the site f a new metropolis founded by the Emperor Constantine and to be named after him, Constantinople. In effect, it was to become the New Rome in an empire that had for some time been evolving into two separate halves-East and West. Like Rome, Constantinople was fed by Egyptian grain; but the Egyptians soon came to realize that the new imperial residence was to take more than just its grain-it was to overshadow Alexandria and become the leading city of the Eastern Empire, which came into existence officially in 395.
The 4th and 5th centuries witnessed the spectacle of native Egyptians for the first time in centuries rising to positions of great prominence in public life as leading figures of the Church. In practice, they also achieved the status of popular leaders, representing the country and its people on an international level. The major international assemblies of the day were Church Councils, convened by the emperor to settle matters of Christian doctrine. The head of the Egyptian came as something of a shock to discover that the head of the church in Constantinople was gradually to usurp his authority. The tension that had been developing between Alexandria and Constantinople came to a head at the Council of Chalcedon in 451: the Egyptians found in their astonishment that a major doctrinal issue was to be settled with complete disregard for the statements previously made on the subject by Egyptian church leaders. This was enough to cause them to break off relations with the Church in Constantinople.
Coptic Period (451-640)
The emperor in Constantinople was reluctant to allow Egypt to drift out of his control. He therefore sent an imperial representative to Alexandria to take charge of the Egyptian church: this patriarch received the name Melkite (from the Syriac word meaning ‘royal’). The Egyptians however did not want a foreigner as the head of their Church and, in proof of the seriousness of their intentions, lynched the first Melkite patriarch to set foot on Egyptian soil.
The political repercussions of this rift were serious for the emperor. Morale among the troops stationed in Upper Egypt became so poor that monadic tribes from Nubia found it relatively easy to invade the southern regions of the country. Imperial troops found it impossible to use Egypt as a strategic base from which to challenge the Germanic tribes for supremacy in the Mediterranean. Constantinople tried various methods of re-establishing its authority in Egypt that alternated between persuasion and persecution but none of them was very successful. In the 6th century the Emperor Justinian managed to re-establish some order in this increasingly chaotic situation by securing the defenses of Egypt and reorganizing the administration of the country. By the beginning of the 7th century, however, the bureaucracy in Egypt had become so complicated that it was eventually unable to coordinate defense against internal or external attack.
Throughout the 5th and 6th centuries the Eastern Empire had to face a number of threats on its borders; the most persistent of these was posed by the Persians, who finally broke through the Byzantine defenses at the beginning of the 7th century. In 619 they swept into Alexandria and remained masters of Egypt for ten years. By 629 the Eastern emperor had managed to remove the Persians from all parts of the Empire. However, his precarious control of the territories in the Levant and North Africa disintegrated with the emergence of the Arabs. In 641, after a campaign lasting about a year, the Byzantine governor of Egypt was compelled to relinquish control of the country to the Arab general, Amr Ibn Al-As.
Islamic Period to the Ottoman Conquest (641-1517)
The Arabs invaded Egypt with a new religion: Islam. Indeed, it was to spread Islam that they left the Arabian Peninsula in the first place. There was, however, no question that they would force non-Muslims to embrace the new religion by sword or pay ransom “Gezia” or be killed. : it was expected that the non-believers would in time come to accept the word of God as revealed to the Prophet Mohamed.
Egypt became a province of the Arab Empire, which in 641 was still governed by a caliph (a successor of the Prophet) residing in Medina. Non-Muslims were not allowed to bear arms and thus came to be classified as ‘protected people’ (dhimmi); in return for this protection they were obliged to pay a higher rate of taxation. The principal concern of the caliphal government was, in fact, to collect taxes from non-Muslims and regulate their relations with the Muslim community, otherwise the non-Muslims were left to look after their own affairs.
The Arabs settled first a short distance to the north of the Roman fortress at Babylon (Old Cairo). Their camp (called Fustat, from the Latin word fossatum) was made around the first mosque to be built in Egypt-the mosque of Amr Ibn Al-As. In 710 the governor, Kurrah, built a palace for the caliph in Fustat which become a sort of Government house. Like the Romans and the Byzantines before them, the Arabs used Egypt as a source of food and regular shipments of grain were made from the Nile Valley via Suez to Medina.
The centre of caliphal government shifted from Medina to Damascus in 661; and from Damascus to Baghdad in 750. None of these changes affected Egypt very much. It was not until near the end of the Baghdad caliphate that a certain Ahmed Ibn Tulun, a governor appointed by Baghdad, made himself independent of the caliph and setup a brief dynasty of his own. He built another camp for his troops, known as the Divisions (qata’i), and a mosque bearing his name still stands. Though short-lived, his dynasty (870-905) was an indicator to others that Egypt could be independent of the caliph.
In 935 another governor set himself up as independent ruler of Egypt, retaining power until the arrival of a family from Tunisia who installed themselves as rulers in 969. It was this family, known as the Fatimids, who built Cairo to the north of Fustat and the Divisions, all three areas being connected to each other by thoroughfares. The wealth of the Fatimid era is visible in the monuments with which they adorned their new city. Thanks to the presence of a strong Egyptian navy in the Mediterranean which protected merchant vessels from piracy, trade was able to prosper. This happy state of affairs lasted until the middle of the 11th century, when the Fatimids began to lose control of their empire.
By the end of the 12th century a new ruling family established itself in Egypt under the leadership of a soldier called Salah El Din (better known in the West as Saladin). His uncle had been summoned by the Fatimids to help them repel the Crusaders and Salah El Din had been made second-in-command. Having successfully blocked the Crusaders, they then turned their army with equal success against the Fatimids. From Salah El Din, Cairo received one of its most distinct architectural complexes: the Citadel. Built as a fortress on the highest point near to the city, the Citadel served as a centre of government for the next 700 years. The downfall of the dynasty founded by Salah El Din (known as Ayyubid) was due to the increasing use in the army of Turkish slaves, known as Mamelukes (the Arabic word for ‘slave’). By the end of the 13th century they had formed themselves into military elite which was able to seize political power.
Mameluke Egypt is something of a paradox. It was a period of the most appalling violence and the most exquisite artistic production. Perhaps the greatest Mameluke contribution to the state was to keep the Mongol hordes, which had already devastated Persia and Iraq, out of Egypt, their dynasty was divided into two periods when distinct military groups ruled the country. Those stationed on Roda Island (opposite Old Cairo) and known as the Bahri (river) Mamelukes, ruled Egypt from the mid 13th to the end of the 14th century; while those stationed in the Citadel, and known as the Burgi (tower) Mamelukes, held power thereafter until the Ottoman conquest in 1517.
Broadly speaking, Egypt prospered under the Bahri Mamelukes, whereas a slow decline set in under the Burgi rulers. This was caused by several factors: political instability, famine, bubonic plague and diminishing revenues from trade (the discovery of a maritime trade route to India via the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama at the end of the 15th century meant that Egypt could be bypassed by European vessels). Oddly enough, the Ottomans did not seem particularly keen on a military conquest of Egypt: they twice offered the Mamelukes the opportunity of retaining semi-independent status as rulers within the Ottoman Empire (which was expanding rapidly at the time), but the Mamelukes refused, preferring to fight for complete autonomy. The matter was settled in favor of the Ottomans in April 1517 at Giza.
SOURCE : Cairo: The Coptic Museum & Old Churches
BY : Gawdat Gabra