The Copts of Egypt, who consist of 10-15 per cent of the population, have traditionally been viewed as a 'beleaguered and persecuted minority'. Using newly discovered Coptic archival sources Vivian Ibrahim presents a fresh and vivid alternative reading of the community during the twentieth century. Avoiding the established portrayal of a monolithic entity headed by the Coptic Pope, Ibrahim examines the multifaceted dimensions of the Coptic community, assessing Coptic-State relations on one hand and Coptic intra-communal dimensions on the other. Examining the impact of the British Occupation of Egypt on the making of new national identities, she explores the emergence of a new politically active Coptic class; highlighting popular Coptic grassroots mobilisation during the 1919 revolution through the case-study of the Coptic priest Qommus Sergius. She discusses the centrality of the Copt and Wafdist, Makram Ebeid, on constitutional politics, and his role as a whistleblower during the 'Black Book Affair'. Breaking with the portrayal of a defenceless community, Ibrahim also reveals a strong Coptic response to the emergence and threats of Political Islam through the press. She presents and analyses for the first time, the unique satirical 'Ode to the Fezzed Shaykh', aimed at Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan al-Banna. In 'The Copts of Egypt', Ibrahim also reveals fierce factionalism within the Coptic community in its struggle for modernisation. Examining mass corruption in monasteries and in the run-up to papal election campaigns, she analyses the ways in which the Church used the Egyptian State to bolster its claim to political as well as religious representation over the community. Through the establishment of benevolent and philanthropic societies, Ibrahim argues that Coptic youths were amongst the first to negotiate a role for themselves in post-revolutionary Egypt. Adopting President Nasser's revolutionary rhetoric of tathir, or cleansing, Ibrahim examines how a group of Coptic youths abducted their Pope and forced through their own agenda of religious and political reform. This book will be essential reading for scholars of the Coptic community and Middle East Studies.

This book deals with the relationship between historical scholarship and politics in twentieth century Egypt. It examines the changing roles of the academic historian, the university system, the state and non-academic scholarship and the tension between them in contesting the modern history of Egypt. In a detailed discussion of the literature, the study analyzes the political nature of competing interpretations and uses the examples of Copts and resident foreigners to demonstrate the dissonant challenges to the national discourse that testify to its limitations, deficiencies and silences.

This book explores the political relationship between the Muslim majority and Coptic minority in Egypt between 1918 and 1952. Many Egyptians hoped to see the collaboration of the 1919 revolution spur the creation of both a new collective Egyptian identity and a state without religious bias. Traditional ways of governing, however, were not so easily cast aside. Some Egyptians held tenaciously to the traditional arrangements which had both guaranteed Muslim primacy and served relatively well to protect the Copts and afford them some autonomy. Differences within the Coptic community over the wisdom of trusting the genuineness and durability of Muslim support for equality were accentuated by a protracted struggle between reforming laymen and conservative clergy for control of the community. The unwillingness of all parties to compromise hampered the ability of the community both to determine and to defend its interests. The Copts met with modest success in their attempt to become full Egyptian citizens. Their influence in the Wafd, the pre-eminent political party, was very strong prior to and in the early years of the constitutional monarchy, and their formal representation was generally adequate and, in some parliaments, better than adequate. However, this very success produced a backlash which caused many Copts to believe, by the 1940s, that the experiment had failed: political activity has become fraught with risk for them. At the close of the monarchy, equality and shared power seemed motions as distant as in the disheartening years before the 1919 revolution.

Egypt's lack of a common national identity is the basis for much of its internal conflict--Coptic Christians have been particularly affected. Once major contributors to Christian civilization, their influence ended with the fifth century Council of Chalcedon and they endured persecution. With the seventh century Arabization of Egypt, Copts were given dhimma or "protected persons" status. The 1919 Revolution granted them greater political participation, but the 1952 Revolution ended liberal democracy and established a military regime that championed Arab identity. Secular Egyptians rebelled against the Mubarak regime in 2011, yet his successor was the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first Islamist president. In yet another revolution over national identity, secular factions ousted Morsi in 2013 while in the chaos that followed, the Copts suffered the brunt of violence.

The history of the struggles for control over Egypt's antiquities, and their repercussions, during a period of intense national ferment The sensational discovery in 1922 of Tutankhamun’s tomb, close on the heels of Britain’s declaration of Egyptian independence, accelerated the growth in Egypt of both Egyptology as a formal discipline and of ‘pharaonism'—popular interest in ancient Egypt—as an inspiration in the struggle for full independence. Emphasizing the three decades from 1922 until Nasser’s revolution in 1952, this compelling follow-up to Whose Pharaohs? looks at the ways in which Egypt developed its own archaeologies—Islamic, Coptic, and Greco-Roman, as well as the more dominant ancient Egyptian. Each of these four archaeologies had given birth to, and grown up around, a major antiquities museum in Egypt. Later, Cairo, Alexandria, and Ain Shams universities joined in shaping these fields. Contesting Antiquity in Egypt brings all four disciplines, as well as the closely related history of tourism, together in a single engaging framework. Throughout this semi-colonial era, the British fought a prolonged rearguard action to retain control of the country while the French continued to dominate the Antiquities Service, as they had since 1858. Traditional accounts highlight the role of European and American archaeologists in discovering and interpreting Egypt’s long past. Donald Reid redresses the balance by also paying close attention to the lives and careers of often-neglected Egyptian specialists. He draws attention not only to the contests between westerners and Egyptians over the control of antiquities, but also to passionate debates among Egyptians themselves over pharaonism in relation to Islam and Arabism during a critical period of nascent nationalism. Drawing on rich archival and published sources, extensive interviews, and material objects ranging from statues and murals to photographs and postage stamps, this comprehensive study by one of the leading scholars in the field will make fascinating reading for scholars and students of Middle East history, archaeology, politics, and museum and heritage studies, as well as for the interested lay reader.