How Egypt Lost Its Christian Majority

What really happened..

For the first six centuries after Christ, Egypt was 100% Christian.

Today, Egypt is overwhelmingly Muslim, while the descendants of that ancient Christian civilization - the Copts - form a tiny minority.

So how did one of the great centers of early Christianity become a predominantly Muslim nation?…

The Arab Conquest

It all started in the year 639. Only a few years after the death of “Prophet” Muhammad, Arab Muslim armies under the command of Amr ibn al-As crossed the desert from Palestine and entered Byzantine Egypt. The campaign lasted nearly three years. The fortress of Babylon near modern Cairo fell after a long siege, and Alexandria, the great Mediterranean capital, surrendered by treaty in 642.

The overwhelming majority of Egyptians, however, remained Christian for generations afterward. Arabic historians such as al-Baladhuri record that treaties were concluded with many communities, permitting them to keep their churches and continue their worship in exchange for accepting Muslim authority and paying the jizya, the special tax required of non-Muslim subjects. Outwardly, Egypt still “looked” like a Christian country.

But the political foundation shifted completely. The Byzantine administration that had ruled for centuries was gone, and a new order based on Shariah law now held the land.

Life as a Dhimmi

With the new rulers came the dhimmi system, the legal framework that defined the place of Christians and Jews under Islamic governance. They were permitted to practice their religion, but only under conditions that marked them as subordinate. Every adult Christian man was required to pay the jizya. As it says in the Quran:

“Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture—[fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.”

Beyond the tax itself, Christian communities lived under a varying set of restrictions. Some governors ruled with relative pragmatism and left church affairs largely alone. Others enforced the regulations more strictly. Medieval chronicles, both Christian and Muslim, describe periods when churches were closed or demolished, public crosses were forbidden, Christians were barred from certain offices, and distinctive clothing was required so that non-Muslims could be instantly recognized. The experience changed from one dynasty to the next - Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk - but the underlying legal distinction between Muslim and dhimmi never disappeared.

The near-contemporary Coptic bishop John of Nikiou, writing toward the end of the seventh century, recorded the immediate impact on ordinary Egyptians. After describing the new burdens of forced labor, extra deliveries of food, and the excavation of canals, he concluded:

“And the yoke they laid on the Egyptians was heavier than the yoke which had been laid on Israel by Pharaoh, whom God judged with a righteous judgement, by drowning him in the Red Sea with all his army after the many plagues wherewith He had plagued both men and cattle.”

Conversion Came Gradually

For hundreds of years after the conquest, Christians still formed the clear majority of the population. Most modern historians place the tipping point somewhere between the tenth and the twelfth centuries, when the balance finally shifted.

The process worked through many channels at once. Some families converted to escape the annual jizya and the social disabilities that came with it. Others sought advancement in the new administration, where Arabic replaced both Greek and Coptic as the language of government and record-keeping. Intermarriage with Muslim families led the next generation into Islam. Still others were forced to convert or die. Each conversion, whether pragmatic or sincere, reduced the Christian share of the population by a little more. Over the span of centuries those shifts accumulated until the landscape had changed.

The Muslim historian al-Maqrizi, writing in the fifteenth century but drawing on earlier records, described how waves of pressure produced the expected result. After recounting one especially severe campaign of church destruction and violence under the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, he observed:

“Under these circumstances a great many Christians became Muslims.”

In another passage he noted that when the greater number of churches in Upper Egypt were pulled down and mosques built in their place, “more than four hundred and fifty Christians became Muslims in one day.” The pattern repeated across the medieval period: periods of relative calm followed by sudden intensification of restrictions, demolitions, and forced measures, each time thinning the Christian ranks a little further.

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The Copts Endured..