The latter included not only the increasingly rigorous tax policies, but also social and domestic constraints, which can be surely defined as religious discrimination. In the course of the Middle Ages, the Copts experienced a variety of drastic changes in the attitude of Muslim rulers towards them, from confidence to disgrace. But on the other hand, the integration of the representatives of the Coptic community in the social and political structure of Egypt occurred on the condition of administrative posts being kept by representatives of the Muslim community. On the one hand, the Coptic Church was granted broad internal autonomy.
But the Copts did not have all the civil rights enjoyed by Muslims and also were required to pay the jizya and kharaj. The Coptic “elite” ranked fairly high positions in the administrative apparatus of the Muslim Egypt and had a significant economic impact in the country. Arab rulers did not prohibit the Egyptians to profess Christian faith, which, for the Egyptian Christians, meant the end of persecution of their church. The evolution of these relations was simultaneous to the changing confessional situation in the country, being as well a process of transformation of the Copts into an ethno-confessional minority.Īfter the conquest of Egypt by the Muslim Arabs a new period started in the history of the Copts. Since the Arab conquest of Egypt in 641 active development of the religion-state relations began. An essential source for this is the History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic church of Alexandria, the most famous chronicle of the Coptic Church and also the root of Coptic historiography itself, which also gives the view of how the Coptic Church itself assessed its role in Egyptian society and in public policy. So, the main goal of this work is to is to trace historical precedents which can be considered either negative or positive discrimination, and their suppositional influence on the Copts’ turning into a minority.
The question of the balance between positive and negative discrimination as an instrument of regulating intrastate social cooperation can be crucial for understanding the specific of these relationships during the described period. The latter included not only the increasingly rigorous tax policies, but also social and domestic constraints.
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