Coptic identity

Copts (Coptic: ⲚⲓⲢⲉⲙ̀ⲛⲭⲏⲙⲓ ni.Remenkīmi, literally: the Egyptians) are the native inhabitants of Egypt, and the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians whose ancestors embraced Christianity in the first centuries. After the Arab conquest of Egypt, Egyptians who converted to Islam ceased to call themselves by the demonym Copt, and the term became the distinctive name of the Christian minority in Egypt. Coptic Christians lost their majority status in Egypt after the 14th century and the spread of Islam in the entirety of North Africa. Today, Copts form a major ethno-religious group whose origins date back to the ancient Egyptians.
The Coptic Christian population in Egypt is the largest Christian community in the Middle East. Christians represent around 15% to 20% of a population of over 115 million Egyptians, though estimates vary (see Religion in Egypt). Around 95% of them belong to the native Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. The remaining (around 800,000) are divided between the Coptic Catholic Church and Coptic Protestant churches.
The question of Coptic identity was never raised before the rise of pan-Arabism under Nasser in the early 1950s. Up to that point, both Egyptian Muslims and Egyptian Christians viewed themselves as only Egyptians without any Arab sentiment. The struggle to maintain this Egyptian identity began as Nasser and his regime tried to impose an Arab identity on the country, and attempted to erase all references to Egypt as a separate and unique entity. Today, Copts and many Egyptian Muslims reject Arab nationalism, emphasizing indigenous Egyptian heritage and culture as well as their own unique ethnicity and genetic makeup, which are completely different from those of the Arabs. Persecution has become pivotal to the Copts' sense of identity.
Studies have shown the ancient Egyptians to be genetically intermediary between the populations of Southern Europe and Nubia (two frequently-used reference points). A study of the genetics of Copts has confirmed them to be the most ancient population of Egypt, sharing ancestry with North African and Middle Eastern populations. Thus, Copts have a genetic composition that resembles the ancestral Egyptian population, without the present strong Arab influence.
In Greco-Roman Egypt, the term Copt designated the local population of Egypt, as opposed to the elite group of foreign rulers and settlers (Greeks, Romans, etc.) who came to Egypt from other regions and established prominent empires.
The word Copt was then adopted in English in the 17th century, from Neo-Latin Coptus, Cophtus, which is derived from Arabic collective qubṭ, qibṭ قبط "the Copts" with nisba adjective qubṭī, qibṭī قبطي, plural aqbāṭ أقباط; Also quftī, qiftī, Arabic /f/ representing historical Coptic /p/. an Arabisation of the Coptic word kubti (Bohairic) and/or kuptaion (Sahidic). The Coptic word is in turn an adaptation of the Greek Αἰγύπτιος "Egyptian".
After the Arab conquest of Egypt, the term Copt became restricted to those Egyptians who remained adhering to the Christian religion.
In their own Coptic language, which represents the final stage of the Egyptian language, the Copts referred to themselves as rem en kēme (Sahidic) ⲣⲙⲛⲕⲏⲙⲉ, lem en kēmi (Fayyumic), rem en khēmi (Bohairic) ⲣⲉⲙ̀ⲛⲭⲏⲙⲓ, which literally means "people of Egypt" or "Egyptians"; cf. Egyptian rmṯ n kmt, Demotic rmt n kmỉ.
Copts take particular pride in their Egyptian identity. Over the centuries, they have always rejected and fought against other identities that foreign rulers attempted to force upon them, stressing their own Egyptian identity. While an integral part of their society, Copts remained culturally and religiously distinct from their surroundings. Their liturgical language is Coptic, which is the last stage of the development of the Egyptian language. Coptic music is a continuation of ancient Egyptian music, and Coptic culture is considered a continuation of that of ancient Egypt. For instance, Copts still use the same calendar and months that have been used by their Egyptian forefathers for thousands of years. Thus, modern Copts are not only genetically descendants of ancient Egyptians, but retain some tangible cultural Egyptian heritage such as language, music and more.
Egypt has always been one of the most populous lands of the ancient Mediterranean world, with a population of at least 3 million Egyptians in the first century BC according to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus. This large population has been undoubtedly always able to absorb and Egyptianize settlers who came to the country starting in the Third Intermediate Period. The power and distinctiveness of Egyptian culture was such that immigrants rapidly became part of Egyptian society and were often distinguishable only by names, if at all.
The Ptolemaic kings who ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great were of Greek origin. They respected the Egyptians and their local religion, and erected many temples for Egyptian gods, such as the Temple of Horus in Edfu and the Temple of Hathor at Dendra. The Ptolemies drained the marshes of the Faiyum to create a new province of cultivatable land, where some Greeks as well as some war prisoners from Syria and Palestine were settled. It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of non native Egyptians during the Hellenistic period because no full population census survives today. While 10% may stand as a very approximate figure for the total immigrant population in Ptolemaic Egypt, including both Greeks and non-Greeks, this figure has been challenged as excessive. The Faiyum mummy portraits reflect the complex synthesis of the predominant Egyptian culture and religion, with that of Hellenistic art, and were attached to sarcophagi of firmly Egyptian character. The dental morphology of the Roman-period Faiyum mummies was compared with that of earlier Egyptian populations, and was found to be "much more closely akin" to that of ancient Egyptians than to Greeks or other European populations.
Despite the presence of these immigrants and a foreign pharaoh, Egypt remained home primarily to Egyptians, by far the largest group within the population. In fact, most of the rural and urban native population that lived in towns, villages and hamlets the length of the Nile Valley continued their lives little changed during the rule of the Ptolemies. Even in Alexandria, the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt and the largest Greek city outside of Greece, the number of native Egyptians far outnumbered that of Greeks. In numbers and in culture, Egypt remained essentially Egyptian, even as foreign communities were incorporated into the life of the country. Over time, the small numbers of foreigners were integrated into the Egyptian population so that, when finally Rome took control of Egypt in 30 BC, the vast majority of Greeks in Egypt were essentially categorized by the Roman conquerors as Egyptians.
Egyptians continued to speak and write in their native Egyptian language. Egyptian hieroglyphs were used primarily in formal temple environments, while Egyptian demotic continued as the form more widely used by the people. Demotic, the third phase of development of the Egyptian language, was used by the native Egyptians during the Ptolemaic period in public and private law and administration, in private uses, and as a cultural medium for religious writings and narrative literature. Greek was employed for official administrative and legal purposes. Egyptian Greek is the variety of Greek spoken in Egypt from antiquity until the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century. Egyptian Greek adopted many loanwords from the Egyptian language, and there was a great deal of intracommunity bilingualism in Egypt.
By the Roman period, the use of Demotic slowly gave way to the fourth and last stage of development of the Egyptian language, known as Coptic, although the use of Demotic remained until the middle of the fifth century AD Coptic was simply the Egyptian language written mainly in Greek letters, with seven Demotic letters representing sounds in Egyptian that did not exist in Greek. It is noteworthy however to remember that Coptic is a term used to describe a script, not a language, and that the Egyptians themselves always called their evolving local language Egyptian. The Romans classified the entire population of the Egyptian countryside as "Egyptian". By the time of Roman emperor Caracalla in the 2nd century AD, ethnic Egyptians could be distinguished from Greeks in Egypt only by their speech.
The creation of Coptic as a coherent writing system to express the Egyptian language undoubtedly served to cement the distinction between the native population in Egypt and the ruling Byzantine Greeks. The earliest of such Coptic manuscripts date back to the third century AD, and became well established in the fourth century AD. The earliest Coptic texts were not only Christian in nature, but there were also many Manichaean and Gnostic manuscripts in circulation during that period. The most prolific writer in Coptic was Shenoute of Atripe who lived in Upper Egypt in the fourth and fifth centuries. In the period after Shenoute, Coptic writing significantly flourished, and the Coptic language became a rich medium for literary composition, moving closer to official status in Egypt, but not yet reaching it.
In the fourth and fifth centuries AD, the foundations were laid for the divergence in doctrine between the native Christian Church of the Egyptians, and that of the empire. The persecution and exile in the fourth century by emperor Constantine the Great of Athanasius, the native Egyptian patriarch of the Church of Alexandria, became the embodiment of the Egyptian character of the Church in Egypt. The persecution of Athanasius helped to create a type for the later patriarchs of Alexandria, who were repeatedly portrayed as defenders of the truth against outsiders and non-Egyptians. The official schism occurred at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. The council, which condemned, deposed, exiled and replaced the native Egyptian Patriarch of Alexandria Dioscorus I, was rejected by the Egyptian delegation to the council, and by extension by the entirety of the native Egyptian population. As a result of the Council of Chalcedon, the Church of Alexandria, which had jurisdiction over the entire country of Egypt, as well as all of continent of Africa, was divided into a church that accepted the decrees of the council, and one that rejected them. The church that accepted the council, became known as the Chalcedonian church, and survives today as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. On the other hand, the church that rejected the council of Chalcedon, to whom the vast majority of the native Egyptians adhered, became the predecessor of the Coptic Orthodox Church. The latter has been erroneously referred to as Monophysite, although it itself rejects that term and self-proclaims to be Miaphysite. The non-Chalcedonian Miaphysite doctrine became adopted as a badge of nationalism for the native Egyptians.
The process of identity-building for the native Egyptians emerged into view most clearly in the period after the reign of emperor Justinian I in the sixth century AD. That process became the foundation for the evolution of a distinctive Egyptian character for the Coptic Orthodox Church, with its distancing from the empire's official Chalcedonian Orthodoxy and its distinctive Greek character. In that narrative, the early centuries of the Egyptian Church were retrospectively interpreted as the start of a continuous development of what was to become the Coptic Church. During that period and until the Arab invasion of Egypt in the seventh century, the Byzantine emperors repeatedly deposed and exiled native Egyptian non-Chalcedonian patriarchs of Alexandria, and imposed pro-Chalcedonian ones, most of whom were non-Egyptian. This was never appreciated locally in Egypt, affording proof that the Chalcedonians were mere pawns of the emperor. Over the years, because of what they had construed as persecution of the imperial authorities, the Egyptians hardened their position and rejected all conciliatory efforts that fell short of a full condemnation of the Council of Chalcedon. This position coincided with the rise in the public visibility of the Coptic language in several areas of the Egyptians' daily life. For instance, from the year 575 A.D. onward, the bishops appointed by Damian of Alexandria substituted Greek for Coptic to write their theological commentaries, sermons and homilies. It is during that period that the work History of the Church, written in Coptic and later known as History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, began to take form. However, the use of the Coptic language in the sixth and seventh centuries was not restricted to religious compositions, but rather expanded to encompass private and secular official communication, such as legal documentary practice.
Sound Christological theology became the cornerstone of Coptic identity in the post-Chalcedonian period and later under the Arab Muslim rule. Copts viewed their Church as one with direct doctrinal continuity with such Egyptian patristic giants as Athanasius of Alexandria and Cyril of Alexandria, both of whom were Popes of the Church of Alexandria, and whose theology was the foundation of worldwide orthodox Christian belief. As the Copts always remember, the first time that a controversy involving the entirety of the Roman Empire broke out, namely Arianism, Athanasius did not hesitate to oppose the emperors because he realized they were wrong, paying for it by being exiled three different times, and was only able to return because later emperors realized that he was right. Nonetheless, the emperors that came after Chalcedon insisted on supporting a doctrine that was at odds with the teachings of Cyril. The Copts and their patriarchs remained loyal to their Egyptian predecessors. The acceptability and righteous of doctrine were measured against Cyril's uncontested and non-negotiable definition of the nature of Christ, and the theology of the Alexandrian patriarchs remain until today the yardstick of proper belief for the Copts, whose Coptic Orthodox Church could legitimately claim to be the most authorized interpreter.
Another important aspect of the Coptic community's self-perception was its ethnic and religious continuity with the community that produced the many local Egyptian martyrs. A vast number of hagiographies for these martyrs were written, insisting on the Egyptian origin of their main characters and on the foreign Roman origin of their persecutors. This martyristic character of the Coptic identity became so strong that the Copts redated the first year of their Egyptian calendar to the year 284 A.D., the year Diocletian became Roman Emperor, whose reign was marked by tortures and mass executions of Egyptian Christians. Ever since, the Coptic year has come to be identified by the abbreviation A.M. (for Anno Martyrum or "in the Year of the Martyrs"). Egypt's many martyrs provided the foundational sacrifice for the Egyptian church, and their indigenous identity provided its legitimacy. The blood of these Christian martyrs and their dense network of shrines across the country provided for the Copts a narrative of the sanctification of the Egyptian landscape, giving the country an especially holy character. Undoubtedly for the Copts, the Flight into Egypt by the Holy Family provided the ultimate sanctification for Egypt, making the country an extension of the holy lands trod by Jesus Christ. According to the Coptic Synaxarium, a young Egyptian man called Eudaimon recognized Jesus as the promised Messiah during the Holy Family's short stay in the country, and was killed for saying so. Thus, the first Christian martyr was an Egyptian, further justifying the identity of the Coptic Orthodox Church as the Church of the Martyrs, and linking it to the very time of Jesus Christ.
The rule of Byzantium in Egypt was briefly interrupted from 618 A.D. to 629 A.D. by the Persian invasion of Egypt. The Persians persecuted the Egyptians and committed many massacres, most notably in Alexandria and Enaton. The result was disappearance of the Egyptian highest elites, loss of leadership and resources, and a general weakening of the country that left the Egyptians unable to repel the Arab Muslim army that invaded Egypt in 641 A.D. The Arabs who invaded Egypt numbered only a few thousands, and the invading army included units from various Arab tribes, especially from Yemen. On the way to Egypt through northern Sinai and along the Mediterranean coast, numerous bedouins from Sinai and the Eastern Desert, Nabataeans, as well as bandits and vagabonds joined the foray. In total, the invaders numbered between twelve and fifteen thousand men.
The Copts viewed the Arab Muslim invasion and occupation of Egypt as a punishment from God against the Byzantines. Thus, for the Coptic bishop John of Nikiû who was contemporary of the Arab invasion of Egypt, the Muslims were sent by God to punish the rulers for their erroneous Chalcedonian doctrine, which ultimately cost the Roman Empire its eastern provinces in Egypt and the Levant. Byzantine officials in Middle Egypt were nonetheless accused by the Egyptians of providing assistance to the Muslim army in its invasion of the country. Later that year, a treaty concluded between the Byzantine prefect of Egypt Cyrus of Alexandria and between the leader of the Arab army Amr ibn al-As surrendered the city of Alexandria to the Arabs. The Arab invaders treated the native Egyptian Copts harshly, destroying the walls of Alexandria and burning many of its churches with fire. During the early years of the Rashidun Caliphate, the Egyptians were exploited by the Arabs for money due to the rich tax base and the wealth of the country's resources, for labor due to the large population with expertise in shipbuilding and irrigation, and for produce due to the high fertility of the Nile Valley and Delta. The first concern of the Arab conquerors was resource extraction from the Copts, and taxation was particularly heavy. Thus, one of the first things they did was to carry a census of the population, and subsequently use the human resources in a way that would ensure maximum control and wealth extraction.
By the early eighth century, Copts were being requisitioned for forced labor projects in Egypt and beyond, such as ships of the war fleet and imperial building projects like palaces and mosques in Fustat, Damascus and Jerusalem. Every Egyptian village was required by the Arabs to hand over a given number of individuals every year to provide forced labor and conscription, which weighed heavily on rural Egypt, and may have hit the country particularly heavily because its population had always been higher than that of other provinces. The fleet was the most dreaded of all, as it was unlikely that those conscripted would ever return to their villages. To escape forced conscription, persecution and heavy taxation, particularly the Jizya taxation levied only on non-Muslims according to Islamic Sharia law, Egyptians gradually began to convert to Islam. That taxation was demanded in gold, so that the Arab soldiers taking parts in naval raids in the Mediterranean could be paid in advance. Copts who converted to Islam became known as Mawali, and eventually simply as Muslims. The term Arab remained reserved for the invaders. Thus, the term Copt gradually changed meaning over time to eventually designate only those Egyptians who kept their Christian faith. Copts who chose to remain Christian tried to avoid forced conscription by buying out the requisitioned workers with a sum of money. The burden of taxation left many Copts in rural areas unable to meet their obligations. Oppressive taxation resulted in many revolts by the Copts against the Arab occupiers, the most famous of which were the Bashmurian revolts between 720 A.D. and 832 A.D. Another reaction to the heavy taxation was for poor Christian Copts to either borrow money from richer members of their communities, or to altogether flee their lands and escape to other parts of Egypt. The administrators were ordered to track down fugitives and the phenomenon became so difficult to control by the early eighth century that a system was devised of fines for those harboring fugitives and rewards for those turning them in, as well as restrictions on free movement outside one's home district. Solidarity networks functioned within and between villages to support these fugitives, which undoubtedly reinforced the Coptic identity in rural Egypt.
Under the Arab Muslim rule, the Coptic Orthodox Church was the most successful of all Christian denominations in Egypt in convincing the conquerors of its legitimacy, by arguing for its essentially native, and therefore solely legitimate, nature as opposed to that of the other groups, described as foreign and intrusive. By the second half of the seventh century, the non-Chalcedonian Coptic Church had a network of bishops that provided the best territorial coverage of the country, and commanded the loyalty of most of the local monasteries. This network connected the Coptic Church to the rural population in the Valley in a way no other group could achieve, and served to strengthen the Coptic identity of the Egyptians even in remote villages. A rival Chalcedonian patriarch appointed by the Byzantine emperor remained in Alexandria. However, these Chalcedonians were viewed by the Copts as usurpers who had obtained their positions through external support of the Byzantine emperors. That imperial support was construed by the Copts as theologically misguided foreign meddling, which used the prerogative of the imperial office to impose on the Egyptians a version of Christian dogma that was wrong. On the other hand, the native Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church came to be viewed by Egyptians as one with institutional continuity since the establishment of Christianity in Egypt by Saint Mark, and the non-Chalcedonian see of Alexandria was seen to form a long direct line that obtained its legitimacy from sound theological beliefs and internal Egyptian consensus. Texts and manuscripts from the seventh to ninth century underpin the formation of a distinct Egyptian Christian identity, separate from that of the rest of the Christian world, and predicated on the indigenous character of the Coptic Orthodox Church and the community it represented. For instance, in his discussions with the Arab invader of Egypt, Amr ibn al-As, Pope Benjamin I of Alexandria is shown to be speaking for the entire population of Egypt. The monastic hinterland of Alexandria remained the intellectual and theological powerhouse of the Coptic Orthodox Church. However, because of the need to be in proximity to the newly founded capital in order to fully participate in the life of the Caliphate's upper social stratum, Pope Cyril II of Alexandria ultimately moved the seat of the patriarchate to the Hanging Church in Cairo in the late eleventh century.
Under Islamic rule, Coptic identity continued to be defined against the backdrop of sound theology and Christology, in contrast to those of the Chalcedonians. However, with the presence of non-natives in the country, Coptic identity also began to stress the native Egyptian character of the Copts. As Muslims, mainly Egyptian converts and less commonly Arabs, slowly started settling in the countryside, they provided an other against whom this identity became better defined. The Copts' Egyptian Christian identity was thus formulated. It was then with the spread of Arabic beyond the big cities that the Egyptian Church became known as "Coptic" and that native Egyptian Christians became known as "Copts", a semantic shift that occurred in the eighth and ninth centuries. Nonetheless, in their own native Coptic language, Copts continue to refer to themselves today as ⲛⲓⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ (the Egyptians), and to their Church as Ϯⲉⲕ̀ⲕⲗⲏⲥⲓⲁ ⲛ̀ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ⲛ̀ⲟⲣⲑⲟⲇⲟⲝⲟⲥ (the Egyptian Orthodox Church).
Coptic converts to Islam were lured to the new religion by the prospect of paying less taxes, since they would no longer have to pay the Jizya taxation levied only on non-Muslims according to Islamic Sahria law. The History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria recounts the history of fiscal oppression imposed by the caliphate against Copts as driving conversions from Christianity to Islam. These converts changed their names to Muslim ones, or simply used the arabized versions of their Egyptian names while giving Muslim names to their children. Early converts had to attach themselves to Arab Muslim patrons as Mawali. While they had to adopt Arabic as their main language, they remained fluent in Coptic, thus creating a growing bilingual group among Egyptian Muslims. Nevertheless, Egypt remained a majority Christian country well into the Middle Ages. According to al-Maqdisi, in the 10th century, Christians were still the overwhelming majority in the Nile Valley. Many cities in Upper Egypt had no Muslim communities at all during that time.
Coptic monasticism played a crucial role in the preservation of Coptic identity in Egypt. Over time, monasteries had become central to Christianity everywhere, but nowhere as much as among Christians in Muslim-held lands, since they took on an increasing importance in the life of their surrounding Christian communities. As an institution, monasticism claimed Egyptian origin since its founder, Anthony the Great, was an Egyptian whose native language was Coptic. Egyptian monasteries not only collected and copied older works, but also continued to produce new literature in Coptic, thus creating a living and ever-evolving communal memory rooted in the country's Christian past. Most of the monastic biographies in Coptic that are preserved today date from the fourth to the seventh centuries A.D. A strong anti-Chalcedonian polemic continued to be expressed in monastic texts well into the eighth or ninth centuries, and the last really polemical text in Coptic is the Life of Samuel of Qalamun. The prestige of monasteries in Egypt grew over time, and the importance of monastic background proved especially relevant during the Fatimid Caliphate, where ecclesiastical elites were much closer to circles of power. These monastic elites played a significant role in enhancing the status of monasteries by providing institutional, financial and intellectual support.
Coptic continued to flourish as a literary and private language in Egypt in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. However, by the tenth century and certainly as a result of the Arabization of the government's Divans by the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and his son al-Walid I earlier in the eighth century, Copts became increasingly bilingual, speaking both Coptic and Arabic. Forced labor of native Egyptians who were sent to building sites in Fustat, Damascus or Jerusalem, or at shipyards were the orders were given by Arabic-speaking commanders, were other reasons why Copts had to learn Arabic in addition to their native Coptic language. The arabization of the administrative documents accelerated under the Abbasids. Local Coptic elites with ambitions of rising in the administrative structure had to learn Arabic because of its exclusive use by the chancery, and Arabic became a means of upward social mobility. Throughout the eighth century, private transaction documents were invariably drafted in Coptic, but these documents became increasingly written in Arabic in the ninth century. By the tenth century, the renowned Coptic bishop of Hermopolis, Severus ibn al-Muqaffa, had sufficiently mastered the language of the invaders that he was already debating theology and participating in court debates in Fustat using Arabic. It is noteworthy however that these Copts still spoke Coptic as their first language and only mastered Arabic during their years in the administration. Christian Copts from well-to-do families with a good education continued to serve in the country's administration until the Fatimid period and beyond. The Coptic Christian Isa ibn Nasturus ibn Surus served as vizier of the Fatimid Caliphate in 993–996 under al-Aziz Billah before being executed by the Caliph al-Hakim in 1000 A.D. The latest known documentary texts in Coptic date from the eleventh century. A slow arabization of the country's tongue took place that by the end of the Fatimid period (1171 A.D.), Arabic was the only language in common use, even though Coptic remained the local vernacular of native Egyptians, particularly in the Valley of the Nile. The majority of the population remained Christian during that time, particularly in Middle and Upper Egypt. The adoption of Arabic as a second official language by the Coptic Church in the 12th century during the papacy of Pope Gabriel II of Alexandria was a turning point in the arabization of Egypt. Since that time, all Coptic churches have been reading the Gospel and other sermons first in Coptic and then in Arabic, since many Copts began losing their native tongue in favor for Arabic during that period. Henceforth, the liturgy itself remained in Coptic, but historical, hagiographical and theological works came to be composed in Arabic, and many older works were translated. The systematic translation of Coptic religious texts into Arabic was carried out between the mid-eleventh and the late thirteenth century, thus transferring into the new language almost the entire textual tradition of the Egyptian church. Coptic monks did not view the translation movement in a positive light, and criticized the adoption of Arabic as a form of assimilation to the Muslims. It was further castigated because it entailed the loss of communal memory and of the specifically Christian understanding of God. The most notable of such works against the arabization of Egypt and the Coptic Church is the Apocalypse of Samuel of Kalamoun, ascribed to the famous Coptic saint Samuel the Confessor who lived in the seventh century, although it may have been authored at a much later date. Despite the resistance, Gabriel II's approach was ultimately successful and Arabic eventually became the language of all ecclesiastical institutions, including the monasteries. It is difficult to assess whether the Church was acting in response to the arabization of the population, or whether it led the way by influencing the language choices of local communities in Egypt.
After inter-fights between Muslims, the Umayyads managed to kill Ali and emerged triumphant. They established their caliphate in Damascus in 661, and Egypt became part of the Umayyad Caliphate. The Umayyads persecuted the Copts and their church. During the reign of Yazid I, the Arabs killed and looted the Copts. Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan imprisoned and tortured the Coptic Pope John III until he paid him one hundred pieces of gold. Abd al-Aziz also sought to humiliate the Copts by ordering the destruction of all crosses in the land of Egypt, and by writing scraps that read "Mohammed is the great prophet of Allah, and Issa also is a prophet, and Allah neither begets nor is born", and which he nailed on the doors of the churches.
Studies of the overall distributions of religious groups over the long term show that, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, conversions of Copts from Christianity to Islam occurred mainly among the least prosperous. Copts of higher status hardly needed conversion for their advancement. By remaining within their own community, they kept control over it, which gave them more negotiating power with the rulers. It was for the weaker portion of the Christian population of Egypt that conversion to Islam represented a real progression, not only financially but also in terms of independence.
Coptic continued to flourish as a literary language in Egypt until the 13th century. It was supplanted by Egyptian Arabic toward the 16th century but remained part of the education of well-bred Copts until the middle of the 17th century, and was still taught regularly in Coptic schools. In the early 19th century, Coptic was instrumental in Champollion's success in deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphs. In 1809, Champollion wrote to his brother: "I give myself up entirely to Coptic [...] I wish to know Egyptian like my French, because on that language will be based my great work on the Egyptian papyri." A Coptic priest and scholar, Youhanna Chiftichi, taught Champollion how to read and write Coptic until he became fluent, to the point of composing his famous Coptic grammar and dictionary, which was submitted for publication in 1815.
The persecution and harassment of Christian Copts by their Muslim rulers continued throughout the Middle Ages and well into the Early modern period. When Napoleon conquered Egypt in 1798 as part of the Napoleonic wars, a military unit known as the Coptic Legion was created out of necessity for self-defense by the Coptic community for protection against the Mamluks, Ottomans and Egyptian Muslims. At that time, the Copts were accused of alleged complicity with their Christian European coreligionists. The Coptic Legion was headed by a Coptic general, General Yaqub, who recruited young Copts from Cairo and Upper Egypt for the Legion. These were trained by instructors from the French army. Together with the Greek Legion, the Coptic Legion formed the Bataillon des Chasseurs d'Orient. Members of the Coptic Legion returned with the French army to France in 1801 after the defeat of the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt.
General Yaqub is considered to be the founder of the first project for Egypt's independence in modern times. On his way to France in August 1801, he had conversations with the captain of the British ship carrying him to Marseille and with a French officer of Maltese origin. Both provided letters documenting their conversations with Yaqub, which are currently held at the British archives. After reaching France, Yaqub's companions addressed two more letters to Napoleon in the name of the Egyptian people. In these letters, Yaqub is presented as the head of an Egyptian delegation seeking to contact European powers to achieve Egypt's independence from the Ottoman Empire. The tone of these documents is one of Egyptian nationalism, highlighting the past glory of the country, lamenting its current state unworthy of a people who built a great civilization, and stressing the debt that humanity owes to Egypt's ancient culture. Together those four documents represent the earliest known project for the independence of Egypt, and highlight the Copts' adherence to an Egyptian identity that traces back to their ancient Egyptian forefathers. Because of the failure of the French expedition in Egypt and the sudden death of General Yaqub on his way to France, the independence of Egypt never materialized.
Egypt's struggle for independence from both the Ottoman Empire and Britain was marked by secular Egyptian nationalism, also referred to as Pharaonism. When the Egyptian nationalist leader Saad Zaghlul met the Arab delegates at Versailles in 1919, he insisted that their struggles for statehood were not connected, stressing that the problem of Egypt was an Egyptian problem and not an Arab one. When Zaghlul was exiled by the British to Malta in 1919, a number of prominent Christian Coptic figures who joined him in resisting the British occupation of Egypt were also exiled with him, including Wissa Wassef and George Khayat, both key members of the Egyptian nationalist movement. When Zaghlul returned from his first exile, he was joined by the Copts Wissa Wassef, Sinout Hanna, Wassef Ghali, Morcos Hanna and Makram Ebeid in forming a strong opposition against British colonialism in Egypt. Later in 1921, when Zaghlul was exiled to the Seychelles, the prominent Copt Makram Ebeid was exiled with him. The exiles were part of the larger Egyptian nationalist response to British colonial rule and represented a unified effort across religious lines in Egypt. They galvanized widespread protests in Egypt that culminated in the famous 1919 revolution, which further emphasized the shared desire for independence among Egyptians of all faiths. This unity became a hallmark of the early 20th-century Egyptian nationalism. In his memoirs, Fakhri 'Abd al-Nur, one of the most recognized Coptic figures of the 1919 Revolution, recalls the positive impact of the statement made by Saad Zaghlul at the onset of the revolution, declaring "equal responsibilities and equal rights" of Egyptian Copts and Muslims. In fact, the preacher of the 1919 Revolution was a Coptic priest, Father Morcos Sergius, who had been previously exiled by the British in 1915. In April 1922, the British ordered the execution of seven Egyptian nationalists, four of whom were Copts: Wissa Wassef, Wassef Ghali, George Khayat, and Morcos Hanna. As a result of their struggle, Egypt gained its independence from both Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire on 28 February 1922. This struggle of Copts against the British and the Ottomans within the framework of Egyptian nationalism highlighted the Copt's (as well as the Egyptian Muslims') self-identification as Egyptians first and foremost with little attention to religious affiliations.
Egyptian nationalism rose to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s. It looked to Egypt's pre-Islamic past and argued that Egypt was part of a larger Mediterranean civilization. This ideology stressed the role of the Nile River and the Mediterranean Sea. It became the dominant mode of expression of Egyptian anti-colonial activists of the pre- and inter-war periods. There was no place for an Arab component in the Egyptian personality at that time, and Egyptians had no Arab orientation as they saw themselves as Egyptians regardless of religion. Foreigners visiting Egypt noted that Egyptians did not possess any Arab sentiment in the first half of the 20th century. As one Arab nationalist of the time put it "Egyptians did not accept that Egypt was a part of the Arab lands, and would not acknowledge that the Egyptian people were part of the Arab nation." Many of the champions of Egyptian 20th-century liberalism were Copts, such as Salama Moussa and Makram Ebeid.
Virtually no Egyptian, and certainly no Copt, before the second half of the twentieth century self-identified as "Arab". Egyptians up to that point were always very aware of the direct connection to their ancient Egyptian ancestors. Many prominent Egyptian figures in the first half of the twentieth century adopted Egyptian nationalism, self-identified as Coptic Muslims, and rejected pan-Arabism. Taha Hussein, the Dean of Arabic Literature, stated in his book The Future of Culture in Egypt, published in 1936, that "For Egyptians, Arabic is virtually a foreign language; nobody speaks it at home, school, in the streets, or in clubs. [...] People everywhere speak a language that is not Arabic, despite the partial resemblance to it." Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, the first director of the Egyptian University, the director of the Arabic language assembly, and the director of House of Books, insisted that Egyptians are Egyptians and not Arabs. He believed that Egyptians were different from Arabs and had their own separate beliefs, identity and cultural aspects.
Arab nationalism began to gain grounds in Egypt in the 1940s following efforts by Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese intellectuals. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1940s and even after the establishment of the Arab League, historian H. S. Deighton was still writing that "Egyptians are not Arabs, and both they and the Arabs are aware of this fact".
It was not until the Nasser era starting in the 1950s – more than a decade later – that Arab nationalism, and by extension Arab socialism, became a state policy imposed on the Egyptians by the new dictatorship. Under Nasser, Egypt united with Syria to form the United Arab Republic in 1958, then became known as the Arab Republic of Egypt in 1961. The Egyptians' attachment to Arabism, however, was particularly questioned after the 1967 Six-Day War. Nasser's successor Sadat, both through public policy and his peace initiative with Israel, revived an uncontested Egyptian orientation, unequivocally asserting that only Egypt and Egyptians were his responsibility. The terms "Arab", "Arabism" and "Arab unity", save for the new official name, became conspicuously absent.
While some non-Coptic authors claim that Copts in Egypt have an Arab identity while Copts in the West tend to identify as "non-Arab", other non-Coptic scholars disagree, stating that "Copts are not Arabs" and that they predate the Arabs' arrival to Egypt.
They viewed Arabs as invaders and foreigners, and glorified the struggles of their ancestors against the Arab invaders between the 7th and the 9th centuries AD. Indubitably, the struggle against these foreign ideologies centered around the Coptic language:
In addition, some Copts resisted Arab nationalism by stressing their pre-Arab identity. They saw themselves as the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians, and their language as a bridge linking the Copts to their Ancient Egyptian roots and their civilization that span over 6,000 years.
The strongest statement regarding Coptic identity came in 2008 from a prominent Coptic bishop, namely Bishop Thomas of Cusae and Meir, who gave the following speech at the Hudson Institute:
Bishop Thomas' words gained widespread approval within the Coptic community. One other Coptic bishop, namely Bishop Picenti of Helwan and Massarah commented on the issue saying:
Other prominent Coptic figures who supported Bishop Thomas' statement included the Coptic writer Magdy Khalil who wrote in el-Dostoor newspaper:
Several sources, including academics, historians, Coptologists, journalists, religious figures, nationalists, and activists, assert that Copts are the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians, characterizing them as the heirs of ancient Egyptian heritage. These assertions emphasize cultural, linguistic, and historical continuity, framing Coptic identity as distinct from the Arab and Islamic influences that later shaped Egypt. Examples of such assertions include: