For Ramses99 and the history that they do not teach you in Egypt!

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jan 21, 2007 at 16:55

My dear Ramses99, you do not seem to be aware that when the Arabs invaded Egypt in 632CE, Egypt was the bread basket of the Levants, Greece and Italy (Rome included) and the city of Alexandria was a great center of education, trade, commerce and learning. It was a city that had a population of 600,000. Then the barbarian Arabs came to Egypt and with this jizya tax (and later on the kharj tax) within 100 years Egypt was in economic ruins .

And then we have the Coptic revolt against the Arabs in 735CE and this led to massive destuction of the economy of the country and the poor falahin that were the poducers of so much wealth had to abandon the land and it was the begining of the decline of the real Egypt and the emergence of Islamic Egypt (for a great book to read about such tragedy is "The Women of Jama" which was a Coptic village in the area of the valley of the kings in Upper Egypt that was abandoned by its inhabitants in 785CE thanks to the Arabs that were nothing but a bunch of barbarians) and the end results were:

1. The population declined from a high of 5 million in the late antique period to about 1.5 million and was not to recover until the time of Muahmmad Ali in the early 1800's.

2. The city of Alexandria that was the pride of Egypt was reduced to being a miserable place with a population of 5000 and it became another victim of the religion of peace aka Islam.

3. There was a mass migration from the land in-order to avoid the jizya and the kharj and the end reuslt was more taxes imposed on the few that decided to stay and much of the land was taken over by Arab war lords and by a new class of Egytptians that elected to convert to islam and became known as: al-mawali

And the dark ages for the people of Egypt was to begin and was not to end until Muhammad Ali came to power where he abolished the jizya and made Copts equal to Muslims and imposed the Napoleonic code as you stated.

We do have extant evidence from the sources (eg: The Cairo Geniza documents) that the jizya tax was at times 50% of what the dhimmi would won, and the dead were also taxed. No wonder that most Egyptians converted to Islam.

And you know what? I will bet you a buck that if the good citizens of Colombia get to pay 50% of your income as a tax unless you become Catholic, you will convert at the blink of an eye.

The real question is why did Egytpians Copts included adopted the Arabic language instead of Egyptian/Coptic? And why did the Persians inspite of the fact that almost all of them converted to islam never adopted the Arabic language as their national language (in actual fact 20% of Farsi are Arabic words) is a question that do not have clear answers. However, Egyptian Arabic is full of Coptic words (shoubra is a garden, bissa is a cat, outa or tomato is a fruit) , Coptic syntax (notice that the Arabic th, qaf, hamza, jeem are in Egyptian Arabic T, Alif, hamza disappears, Geem all reflecting similar Coptic letters) , and follows very much the grammar of the Egytpian/Coptic language (inta rayih masr leeh? You go to cairo why? instead of in classical Arabic: lema tadhhab ila al-Qahira? or why you go to Cairo?)

As for why more Copts are into private business and very few hold public offices: because Copts are regarded as second class citizens in their own country but they still have to make a living. I remember reading about a Copt who is a famous pediatric cardiac surgeon in London and who is now a Lord and he was denied a post at Cairo Universtiry for being a Copt. Sad indeed.

And if we are to believe Gaston Wiet you have a chance of 92% that your ancestors were Copts that were brutalized by Muslims and Islam. The surprising thing is the importation of Arabs to Egypt was very limited and the chances are you ani't no Arab.

I guess old civilizations are not conjured away not by islam and not by Arabian imperialism. And like I said before your screen name is clear evidence to me that Islam or no Islam you love your pre-Islamic history.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".