Meanwhile, reforms paralleling those of the Tanzimat in Istanbul had begun, transforming Copts from dhimmis (protected but inferior subjects in an Islamic state) into theoretically equal citizens of an emerging Egyptian nation. Muhammad Ali relaxed restrictions on building churches, ringing church bells, and wearing crosses in public, and for the first time conferred the rank of ‘bey’ on a Copt. Said abolished the jizya in 1855 and began conscripting Copts into the army. In 1866, two years after Simaika’s birth, Isma‘il included Copts in his appointments to Egypt’s first quasi-parliamentary body. In 1882, Copts joined in a national assembly that endorsed the Urabi revolt against Khedive Tewfik and his European backers.
In 1874, the year Simaika turned ten, incoming Patriarch Cyril V agreed to the founding of a communal council (Majlis al-Milli) of laymen to join the clergy in administering Coptic waqf, schools, and personal-status law. Correctly fearing that this would dilute his own authority, Cyril soon backtracked on cooperating with the council. For the next seventy years, until Nasser stripped the Majlis al-Milli of most of its functions, popes often clashed with the council and suspended it for lengthy periods, only to be pressured eventually into reconvening it. Simaika was only twenty-eight in 1892 when he joined the government, Boutros Ghali (the first Copt to be made a pasha), and the other members of the Majlis al-Milli in exiling Cyril V to a desert monastery. When the pope turned the tables and emerged triumphant, his enmity kept Simaika from obtaining a seat on the Comité in 1896. A decade later, however, Simaika’s reconciliation with Cyril cleared the way for a burst of high-profile appointments—seats on the Comité and national legislative council, and even the vice presidency of the Majlis al-Milli. The patriarch’s consent to the founding of the Coptic Museum soon followed.
From the vantage of these distinguished posts, Simaika watched with dismay the crisis in Coptic–Muslim relations surrounding the assassination of Boutros Ghali—the first Copt to become prime minister—by a Muslim member of the Watani Party, the ensuing Coptic Congress in Asyut in 1911, and the answering Egyptian Congress convened in Heliopolis. Simaika claimed that the Coptic Congress had grown out of the resentment of the Asyut Coptic notable Akhnoukh Fanous that his Oxford-educated son had not received a government appointment comparable to that of his fellow Oxford graduate Muhammad Mahmud. He also blamed the flare-up of Coptic–Muslim tensions on policy failures of both Lord Cromer and his successor, Sir Eldon Gorst.
Firm grounding on Marcus Simaika’s memoirs is a great strength of this book. It will in turn stimulate further research, archival and otherwise, on many still inadequately understood topics. The causes and consequences of the Coptic Congress of 1911 is one such theme. Others include what happened to Coptic antiquities in the decade between the Coptic monuments being brought under the Comité’s jurisdiction in 1896 and Simaika’s accession to a seat on the Comité, the choice of the Fatimid Mosque of al-Aqmar as inspiration in designing the façade of the Coptic Museum, and the politics surrounding the nationalization of the Coptic Museum in 1931. Another intriguing question is the absence of the Coptic Archaeological Society (founded under another name in 1934) from Marcus Simaika’s memoirs, even though he had a seat on its board and his son Youssef Marcus Simaika served as its treasurer and secretary. What part did the exhibits, resources, and activities of the Coptic Museum play in the great revival stimulated by the Sunday School movement from the 1920s on? The politics of the Majlis al-Milli from its inception to the Nasser era also still await adequate historical examination.
On a personal note, in the fall of 1987 my daughter Alysa mentioned a friend in her class at the British International School in Zamalek, Marianne Simaika. I was doing research on the history of Egyptian museums and archaeology and wondered if Marianne might be related to Marcus Simaika. When my wife Barbara and I met Marianne’s parents, Dr. Samir and Yolande Simaika, we learned not only that he was the grandson of Marcus but also that he had inherited his grandfather’s unpublished memoirs. Samir generously lent me these, which proved to be a rich source for Egyptian history on which I have drawn in several publications. Nearly thirty years on, I was delighted to learn that the American University in Cairo Press was considering for publication a biography of Marcus Simaika by Dr. Samir Simaika and Nevine Henein which was based on these remarkable memoirs. Their fine work will appeal both to general readers with an interest in Egypt, Copts, archaeology, and historic preservation and to a range of specialists who will find it a valuable stepping stone to further research.
| 1 | Cairo |
Marcus Simaika was born in the reign of Isma‘il Pasha on February 28, 1864, to one of the oldest Coptic families in Cairo. The Simaikas were wealthy notables from Old Cairo who could trace their ancestry to the middle of the seventeenth century through records and manuscripts in the Mu‘allaqa Church and the Coptic Museum. They were mostly magistrates who prospered in the service of the state and the Church. One of Marcus’s ancestors presented the Mu‘allaqa Church with a set of illuminated service books in Coptic and Arabic; another provided the funds for the Holy Chrism at the church, as attested by a procès-verbal held in the library of the Coptic Museum. His forebears also donated manuscripts and other treasures to the Mu‘allaqa Church.
Marcus was born in the house of his maternal grandfather, Hajj2 Boutros al-Birmawy, a Coptic notable who had accompanied Ibrahim Pasha on his Syrian campaign in the aftermath of Muhammad Ali Pasha, viceroy (wali) of Egypt’s ill-fated Greek campaign. After an appeal for help by the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–39), Muhammad Ali Pasha had sent his army under his eldest son, Ibrahim Pasha, to quell the Greek uprising. The Egyptians conquered Crete between 1822 and 1824, and in 1825 quickly subdued the whole peninsula of Morea. On October 20, 1827, as part of the Greek War of Independence, the British, French, and Russian squadrons destroyed the combined Egyptian and Ottoman navies had entered Navarino harbor. Ibrahim Pasha had been tricked by Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who had induced him to remain in the harbor and await instructions from Muhammad Ali Pasha. An Anglo-French convention with Muhammad Ali provided for the evacuation of the Egyptian forces from Greece in the winter of 1828–29.
Having lost his fleet, Muhammad Ali now demanded the compensation promised from the Ottoman sultan. This was the naming of Ibrahim “Wali of Syria” as a reward for crushing the Greek revolt in Crete and Morea, and the ceding of the province of Syria, which included modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, to Egypt. When the sultan refused, Muhammad Ali picked a quarrel with the pasha of Acre, and sent Ibrahim with an army that rapidly conquered Syria and invaded Anatolia just six months later, completely defeating the grand vizier and the main Turkish army at Koniah on December 21, 1832, and reaching Bursa. After that battle nothing remained between Ibrahim Pasha’s army and Istanbul. He was on the point of overthrowing the Ottoman Empire when, at the convention of Kutahia, France induced the sultan to grant all Syria and Adana to Muhammad Ali, as well as Crete and the Hijaz. Ibrahim Pasha was also proclaimed “Wali of Syria.” Seven years after the convention of Kutahia, the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II abrogated the Peace of Kutahia, and attacked the Egyptian forces at the Battle of Nizib on the frontier between the Ottoman Empire and Syria on June 24, 1839, but was again routed by the Egyptians.
Muhammad Ali had, in the meantime, pushed his conquests in Arabia as far as the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, and in Africa he greatly extended his empire, reaching Ethiopia and Uganda. This was accomplished