posted 14 December 2004 06:34 AM            

Gypsies and non-Gypsies in Egypt:

the Zabaleen and Ghagar Communities of Cairo

by Adrian Marsh

This paper is very much a work in progress and is largely made up of a synthesis of what little information is available in English about these two groups, together with some observations derived from a recent trip to the city, to which I have added some conjectural thoughts about the process of the formation of ethnic identities in the context of economic and social marginalization in both modern and early modern societies. It is the nature of such things that the scope of the subject will far exceed the coverage I can bring to bear upon them; I hope that what I may provide is the possibility of developing some of my own ideas relating to these groups in particular and the question of the construction of ethnic identity in general, whilst providing the opportunity for those with a much more profound knowledge of both to comment upon my reflections and widen the knowledge available about those groups of people in the world whom one could broadly identify as being members of marginal or "pariah" communities.

It will be of help I think, to define the kinds of terms I will be using that may be more or less familiar to some or all of the readers, as well as to contextualize the paper I am presenting both historiographically and sociologically. I will use the term "Gypsy" frequently throughout; this is a conscious use of an ambiguous ethnonym and I hope will not prove confusing in the context of a discussion about Egyptian "Gypsies". It is an exercize in reclamation and establishes a clear political position in relation to the discourse of 'naming', particularly as a self-ascription. The term "Dom" will also be used and this requires a more comprehensive explanation./1/ The historical process of emigration from north-western India from the 7th centuries CE saw three major linguistic groups, and two ethnic identities (currently) emerging from the mosaic of peoples escaping Muslim incursion and invasion. The earliest of these was the group who, it has been suggested can be labelled as the Dom./2/ The others were the Lom and the Rom, terms based upon the linguistic differences that arose from the koine that was Romani and its transformation through geographical distance from the point of origin and linguistic accumulation, through contact with Armenian, Greek, Turkish and other languages to give rise to Romani, Lomari and Domari (all drawn from the word for man, Rom, Lom, Dom). The migration of the Dom brought them through medieval Armenia (Cilicia), Syria, Palestine, Sinai and Egypt (their presence in Anatolia and south-eastern Europe is almost impossible to trace, as the later Romani identity has subsumed the earlier Domari). This group now resides throughout the Middle East and North Africa and is made up of a number of sub-groups, or distinct identities: Ghagar, Halebi, Ghorbati, Nawar, Arhagar and Roma./3/ The overall population of Dom may be between three and five million people; however, it is difficult to establish with certainty as many Dom remain hidden due to prejudice towards them./4/ The final term I shall be using is that to describe the people of Cairo (and formerly Upper Egypt), the Zabaleen. The word derives from the Arabic term for refuse collectors and stands, in a similar way to terms associated with the occupations of particular groups of Gypsies in the Balkans (Lovari, Ursari, Kalderash), as both an economic and social designation, in many ways it is the description of an identity.

The notion of the "pariah syndrome" was first effectively coined, in the context of the discussion of studies about Gypsies, by Ian Hancock in his eponymous book of 1987. His account of Gypsy slavery and persecution was one that, as Thomas Acton described does not "...concentrate on the "problems of the present, and either ignore history or present a stylized and inaccurate account of it."/5/ Hancock's contention is that the nature of non-Gypsy (gadjo/ gadze) society is such that an outsider group is necessary to serve as objects of fantastical and oftimes romantic projection, "...or else to serve as scapegoats, or to help maintain the boundaries of their own [gadjo] cultural perception."/6/ It is in this sense that pariah status is most clearly applied to Gypsies (although all pariah groups are not Gypsy). Others such as Oakley have offered similar perspectives with regard to the question of cultural boundaries, when she argues that it is code of pollution taboos "...which both express and reinforce an ethnic boundary"/7/, a notion derived from Fredrik Barth's conception of ascribed boundaries/8/ and the work of Mary Douglas on American Rom./9/ Despite Acton's criticism of this model as an exclusively semiotic one, and his point that these codes have a "hygienic function,"/10/ it is still essential to see these as mechanisms that separate Gypsy communities from non-Gypsy, and provides what Acton suggests is "...a commitment to a culture which will remain Gypsy..."./11/ It is also the case that, following Barth and others these rituals (if such a term can be used without exoticizing such practices) are a substantial part of what constitutes Romani identity. To be able to define what is mochadi, or polluted within the overall system of marime allows (like all cultural markers), a member of one group to identify other members, to separate those outside from those within the boundaries and respond accordingly.

Further to the question of identity, it is often suggested that a defining characteristic is language. To speak a particular "mother tongue" is to be part of the "imagined community, as Anderson has called it./12/ This notion has been the basis of much of the nation-state formation in the previous three centuries, where a so-called people can be identified on the basis of a shared language, and located firmly within a territorially discreet locality. A shared language is usually taken to inform a concept of a particular culture relating to it, unique and unrepeatable elsewhere. The combination of these elements (crudely) forms the basis for claims of nationhood, as the notion includes the myth of a origin expressed by the shared language and common culture. The accretion of further myths or mythologized historical "moments" further serve to re-inforce this identity as it is "forged", to use Hobsbawm's term./13/ There are numerous examples of varying degrees of sophistication to illustrate this model which render it unnecessary to go into in detail here. Its importance is as an ideological trope, for what becomes a metaphor of "the nation" or "the people", homogenized, culturally discreet, often superior and self-evident.

This all-too simple and brief look at the process of nation-building does allow us to see two aspects important to this discussion: the disparity between the national project and reality, and the dominance of this as a discourse in the context of discussion about the formation of any identity, in the sense that all identities must correspond to this 'check-list' before qualifying for the status of 'nation', for example a press release encouraging Serbs and ethnic Albanian Kosovars to "contribute to the creation of a democratic, multi-ethnic Kosovo"/14/ clearly illustrates how this group did not meet the criteria (which one could contrast with the recognition of the Croatian state by Germany in October 1991). The acceptance of identities is a process contingent upon both the 'nation' and other 'nations', and how this may serve a variety of interests. The increasing fracturation of nation-states as the contradictions between this ideology and the actuality of diverse populations and linguistic groups within particular territorial borders (to say nothing of competing irredentist claims from external populations upon those internal groups whom they identify as "belonging"), illustrate this clearly. The forging of an national identity does, as Hancock suggested earlier, require an 'Other', groups beyond the boundaries, what Sibley calls "outsiders in urban societies"./15/ These are most likely to be groups of dispossessed and refugee, marginalized and pariah peoples. In this sense, these groups are the nation-states "worst nightmare", they challenge both the reality of the nationalist ideologue and the everyday perceptions of the citizen, emphasizing the disparities that exist, and undermining the notions of homogeneity and the assimilative power of nationalist semiotics and the hegememonic hold of the elites in any society. It is in this context that I wish to discuss the Zabaleen and Gypsies of Cairo.

The Ghagar community of Egypt has been little researched or written about./16/ Primarily metal-workers, the Ghagar have been peripatetic, but are now almost entirely sedentary, plying their traditional trades in villages close to their own in the Sett Guiranha district. As blacksmiths, "tinkers", wool-traders, shearers, saddlers, musicians and dancers the Ghagar Nawar and Halebi Dom occupy a position in Middle Eastern society analogous to that of Roma and Gypsy communities in Turkey, the Balkans and Europe./17/ Marginalized and exploiting what small economic niches exist, the Ghagar have been subject to the same substantial changes to Egyptian society that other groups have experienced; namely increasing urbanization of the rural population. The corollary to this has been, like many rural migrants the growth of large areas of poor housing both around and within the city; the Dom live in extremely poor quality accomodation along the polluted water canals./18/ The Ghagar communities of southern Egypt have seen increasing migration to Cairo in relatively large numbers, drawn by the economic opportunities offered, especially as metal workers, dancers and fortune-tellers,/19/ and these can find accomodation in small apartments in outlying districts./20/ However, the major area of settlement for the Dom is on the south-eastern extremity of the city in the old cemeteries among the tombs and mausolea, and the question of accommodation and housing for the enormous numbers of rural migrants and refugees that arrive in Cairo every month is a complete subject in itself. Here I can only suggest that the problem is almost chronic and not likely to improve. I have no figures (as yet) for the numbers of Ghagar, as well as Halebi and some Nawar who live in this area;/21/ one other area where I came across Ghagar metal-workers was in the old quarter of the city, in the streets running down from the Ottoman citadel westwards towards the centre of Cairo. Here, aluminum ducting, rotisseries, railings and stoves are made and repaired by Ghagar metal-workers. These are known as "tinkers" both by non-Ghagar or khashar and Ghagar alike; metal-workers in the rural environment are known as blacksmiths, with some social distinction being encompassed by this differentiation./22/ Ghagar blacksmiths, like their European Roma counterparts are involved in making agricultural implements and horse-ware (one of the other traditional occupations amongst the Ghagar being as saddle-makers;/23/). Smithing is seen as a family occupation, with husbands and wives working together, tinkering involves only the men, whose wives are not involved in the trade but engaged in other occupations. In the context of urban Cairo, this is likely to be as entertainers, peddlers of haberdashery in the major markets in the city and, increasingly begging. In the past this has been seen as a clear last resort when times have been difficult (as during the winter months for the tinkers who repair stoves and heaters/24/), but the increasingly urban population of Ghagar (and Halebi and to a lesser extent Nawar) have, like many of Cairo's poorer residents resorted to begging in order to survive. The combination of tourism and urbanization has resulted in a powerful motivation for many Ghagar dancers and musicians, drawing them to Cairo and concentrating them in particular areas of the older city. The increase in tourism has off-set the decline in this occupation due to a revival in religious observance amongst both Muslims and Copts since the late 1960's./25/ Importantly, the Ghagar dancers, singers and musicians are socially differentiated from both other Ghagar and khashar alike./26/ Similar in their dependence now upon tourism are the monkey-trainers; like the Ursari of Anatolia and the Balkans, they train animals (not always monkeys) to perform tricks. Other Gypsy entertainers are the acrobats and jugglers, many of whom are Nawar rather than Ghagar, but who perform in poorer areas of the city, as well as in the tourist zones./27/ However, the Dom of Cairo are not limited by their more traditional occupations; as Gypsies have always done, they are utilizing their particular gift in exploiting every available economic niche in the city.

The Zabaleen of Cairo live in the south-eastern Manshiet Nasr district of the city, close by the cemeteries. The community of about 25-27,000 Zabaleen are cramped into a thin sliver of land between the eastern autostrada and the Muqattam hills, which they have occupied for just over thirty years. As squatters with no legal claim to the land on which their domiciles are built, their position looks further undermined by the presence of the Egyptian military on the crest of the Muqattam ridge, who occasionally take to detonating dynamite during religious festivals and whose extensive and sophisticated surveillance equipment, whether trained upon the Zabaleen or not, is a constant reminder that this is a community under threat. Not only are the Zabaleen squatters, engaged in the task of "street-sweeping" (collecting refuse being a government monopoly/28/), recycling up to half of the daily 6,000 tons of solid waste produced by Cairenes every day,/29/ they are also Orthodox Copts.

The communities resources have been mobilized over the past thirty years in the construction of some of the most impressive and, at times almost Disney-like sanctuaries I have seen. The struggle for individual daily existence has been recently compounded by government fiats designed to move the Zabaleen from this district to the outlying region of Torah, allegedly for environmental reasons. Both the Ministry for the Environment and the Cairo governorate have brought legal and fiscal pressure to bear upon the Zabaleen in connection with their raising of pigs, at one time of which there were 40,000 consuming the organic waste the Zabaleen brought back from the city./30/ The waste produced by the pigs was used to create composting, exported to desert regions for the purposes of land reclamation,/31/ recycled thanks to a plant set up by the Zabaleen NGO, the Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE). In the recent past, this has been moved, with the compliance of the APE and the "...feudal lords of the Zabaleen..." the wahis, who own and control the large dustcarts that move rubbish from the city to Manshiet Nasr who have themselves begun to relocate their recycling operations to Torah./32/ The return of the donkey-drawn carts which collect the garbage in the streets of Cairo is apparently a recent phenomena, and may be as a result of both increasing costs to the Zabaleen (the wahis charge E£1,000 for removing garbage to Muqattam) and this attempt to enforce the change in location of the community. At this level, the underlying resistance of poor communities facing dislocation in Cairo, usually due to so-called "development" is reflected in the Zabaleen's determination to stay in Muqattam; "With such a decision [to move the Zabaleen] our livelihoods are being destroyed... we have lived all out lives in Muqattam and are not prepared to move to Torah..."./33/ The expansion of the city has led to this confrontation between the Zabaleen and the authorities; thirty years ago the community was very much on the outskirts of the city. Their place as Copts in a predominantly Muslim society, despite claims that their position is not one of a minority group,/34/ is nevertheless defined by the sharia, the Muslim religious legal code which designates Christians and Jews as dhimmi. This is a protected, but unequal status to that of Muslims, demonstrated most clearly in the context of the Coptic Zabaleen by the necessity of the community to build (or rather excavate) its churches from the base of the Muqattam hills as the Ottoman law forbidding the construction of new churches, if not the repair of the old, has never been repealed. Likewise, the penalties for apostasy, including death remain on the statutes; something which the converts at the services of the charismatic Father Sammaan seem oblivious to. The community's religious leader, and something of the guiding force behind the APE, seems to have a complex relationship with the Cairene authorities; despite his proselytizing and the 'miracles' of conversion, he is reported to be encouraging the Zabaleen to accept the move to Torah,/35/ a decision which seems at odds with the enormous efforts and resources that have gone into the construction of the sanctuary at Muqattam. With the community 29 kilometres away in Torah, who will the Father primarily serve? The opportunity to see the sanctuary in detail with an associate of Father Sammaan leading us, was one of the most extraordinary points of my visit to Cairo.

The Zabaleen are, in many ways a community in transition. Not only is this a geographical movement, it is a coalescence of an identity. The experience of the 1980's, when a series of high-profile projects designed to improve the daily lives and conditions of the Zabaleen launched them into international prominence, especially the Zabaleen NGO./36 / The name of the community is now capitalized, and is being used in ways similar to both the notions of an ethnic designation and to that of the progress of "Gypsy" as an ethnonym. The demand by Gypsy politicians and activists for the capitalization and consistent spelling (as opposed to gipsie; gypsy), has led to the growing acceptance of Gypsy as an ethnonym. The use of "Zabaleen" by both the community and the media is indicative of this change in awareness; the experience of resistance may also have the effect of re-enforcing both an image of a pariah group and a distinct identity. As a group whose identity is defined both by their occupation and their marginalized status, who also experience dislocation on a generational basis the Zabaleen are very similar to the Ghagar and other Gypsy groups. The emergence of a distinct identity with an occupational basis, supported by endogamous marriage practices, distinct cultural boundaries separating the Zabaleen from the wider society point to, I would suggest the foundation for a future Gypsy-like group in Egypt. In the context of the ethnogensis of Romani identity in the early modern world, the transition that seems to be taking place in Manshiet Nasr is one that could enhance and broaden our understanding of Gypsy identity and the processes of its formation. It would be interesting indeed if the groups who provide most light upon the origins of Gypsies as an ethnic identity are indeed "genuine Egyptians"./37/

Notes:

/1/ CBF Texas "The Gypsy People of Egypt" Romany People News, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Texas, www.cbftexas.org/romany/articles/profilegypt.htm (Back to text)

/2/ Fraser, Angus The Gypsies, Blackwell, Oxford (1992), chap.1 (Back to text)

/3/ For population estimates of these groups see Bethany Statistics: Gypsies of the Middle East, The Unreached Peoples Prayer Profiles, www.bethany-wpc.org/profiles/clusters/8010a.html (Back to text)

/4/ (CBFTexas 2000a) (Back to text)

/5/ (Acton 1987: x-xi in Hancock 1987: introduction) (Back to text)

/6/ (Hancock 1987: 129) (Back to text)

/7/ Okely, Judtih The Traveller-Gypsies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1983: 77) (Back to text)

/8/ (see Barth 1969) (Back to text)

/9/ (see Douglas 1966) (Back to text)

/10/ (Acton 1971: 120) (Back to text)

/11/ (Acton 1971: 109) (Back to text)

/12/ Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalisms, Verso, London (1991) (Back to text)

/13/ Hobsbawm, Eric The Invention of Tradition, [ed.] Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger, Cambridge, Cambidge University Press (1992): intro. (Back to text)

/14/ G8 "Why Kosovo? Why NATO? Why Now?", G8 Statement on Regional Issues (June 20, 1999) www..g8cologne.de/03/00150/index.htm (Back to text)

/15/ (see Sibley 1981) (Back to text)

/16/ Hanna, Nabil Sobhi Ghagar of Sett Guiranhana study of a Gypsy community in Egypt, Cairo Papers in Social Science, vol.5/1 (June 1982) (Back to text)

/17/ (CBFTexas 2000b; Hanna 1982: 25) (Back to text)

/18/ (CBFTexas 2000b) (Back to text)

/19/ (Hanna 1983: 24-38) (Back to text)

/20/ (CBFTexas 2000b) (Back to text)

/21/ (the total numbers of Dom in Egypt are currently being assessed by various evangelical organizations at work in the region, one of which suggests that there are some 1,006,900 Masri-speaking Halebi and 251,700 Romani/Domari-speaking Ghagar in Egypt; see Joshua Project, Pwww.ad2000.org/profiles/gypsy3.htm 2000: 1) (Back to text)

/22/ (Hanna 1982: 25) (Back to text)

/23/ see Hanna ibid. (Back to text)

/24/ see Hanna 1982: 25 (Back to text)

/25/ (Hanna 1982: 33) (Back to text)

/26/ (Hanna 1982: 31) (Back to text)

/27/ Dom Research Center, www.domresearchcenter.com/Photos%20Egypt.htm(see also DRC 2000: 1-3) (Back to text)

/28/ Warren, David "With Christ in Egypt: a spiritual journey amongst the Copts" The Ottawa Citizen (Sunday 11 January, 1998) (Back to text)

/29/ VSO Orbit www.vso.org.uk/pubs/orbit/70/finders.htm (Back to text)

/30/ (VSO Orbit 70 2000) (Back to text)

/31/ Meyhar, Rasha "Ministry attempts to dispose of Zabbaleen community", Middle East Times (metimes.com/issue99-51/commu/ministry_attempts_to.htm) (Back to text)

/32/ (ibid.) (Back to text)

/33/ (Meyhar 2000) (Back to text)

/34/ (Warren 1998) (Back to text)

/35/ (Meyhar 2000) (Back to text)

/36/ (Meyhar 2000) (Back to text)

/37/ (Fraser 1992: chap.3) (Back to text)
http://www.domresearchcenter.com/journal/13/index.html

posted 14 December 2004 06:35 AM            

by C.F. Thomas

Introduction

During the last few decades interest has been high regarding the Gypsy or Romany people--especially those from Eastern Europe. Much has been written concerning their origins, language, culture and certainly their suffering during the holocaust in World War Two.

Little research has been done however and even less written dealing with those of this ethnic group who live in North Africa. This study is a first step in filling that gap. The geographical area covered herein includes the countries of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. These are countries where Gypsy presence is either established, suspected or rumored.

The following is a preliminary study and is intended to be only that: an initial look at this topic. It is hoped that the circulation of this document will solicit additional information and corrections for enhancing and updating these findings. Later a more complete study will be done which will include field research from the countries involved.

One final introductory remark: For clarity sake and in an attempt to differentiate from other groups, the Gypsies of North Africa as well as those in the Middle East will be referred to generally as "Dom." This comes from the word in their language (Domari) which means "man" and is often used by them as a self-designation. Gypsies in Europe and elsewhere will be referred to as Rom and their language as Romani.

HISTORY

The English word "Gypsy" is believed by many to be a shortened form of the word "Egyptian." This idea connects with some accounts of early Romany migrations into Europe and their claim at the time to be from Egypt. There is almost no historical evidence to support such an idea though one group in Albania today is known as "Evgit" or Egyptian Gypsies.

Little is known about the specific origins of the Gypsy peoples of North Africa. It has been suggested that the Haleb and Nawar of Egypt probably migrated there from Syria. Both Ralph Turner and John Sampson, early Romani linguists, speak of basically three branches of Gypsy migration: the Lom into Western Asia, the Rom into Europe and the Dom into the Middle East.

Since one group, the Ghagar tribe, migrated back to Egypt from Europe others might have done the same. It is more likely however that the majority of the Dom in North Africa were an extension of the early migration of groups out of India and into the Middle East.

Scholars have cited numerous reasons for the migration of the Gypsies out of India but for these peripatetic groups, economic factors were likely the strongest. Some have also suggested the slave trade by Turks as a reason for the arrival of Gypsies in Africa. It is true that later European Rom were forcibly taken to other parts of Africa to work in the German and Portuguese colonies.

CULTURE

Many North African Dom live in the poorer districts of large cities or in modest conditions in rural areas. Others live in tents and have a lifestyle similar to the Bedu or Bedouin of the region. One interesting study on this subject was done by Nabil Sobhi Hanna and is entitled "Ghagar of Sett Guiranha: A Study of a Gypsy Community in Egypt."/1/ Therein the writer describes a group of Dom who live in a rural setting. As late as forty-five or fifty years ago, however, they still lived in tents and followed a more nomadic life style. Today their major occupations are entertaining, smithing, tinkering, trading and wool work. Other groups in North Africa are known to earn their living as day-laborers, watchmen and fortune tellers while some survive as beggars or thieves.

With regard to religion, it should be noted that many North African Gypsies or Dom are more than nominal Muslims. It is reported that some have even made the pilgrimage to Mecca, or Haj. No known groups of Dom Christians or churches have been found.

LANGUAGES

Traditional Gypsy languages are Indo-Aryan and have their origins in Sanskrit. The language of the Dom of North Africa is known as Domari. It was first recorded by Seezeen in 1806 and at that time it already contained many Arabic loan words. The grammar, however, remained essentially Indian.

Various sources have shown that the Dom of North Africa employ a large number of Arabic loan words when speaking Domari. The use of loan words is a common phenomenon in many languages and certainly the Romani speakers of Europe have borrowed words from the languages of their host countries.

Domari may further be broken down into a number of sub-groups or dialects. Two of these main dialects are Halebi and Nawari (or Nuri.)

GROUPS OR TRIBES

Afrikaya A group of Gypsies reported to be living in Algeria. These are possibly Manouche or French-speaking Gypsies originally from France.

Gaodari A group listed in Egypt and shown on a map entitled the "Probable Lines of the First Gypsy Immigrations" in Clebert's book./2/

Ghagar (or Nagar) Donald Kenrick mentions them as "a Gypsy tribe in Egypt who migrated back from Europe. The men are blacksmiths while the women work as rope-dancers, tattooists and singers. They live in the towns in the winter, and form a distinct group in Egypt."/3/

Ghawazee (or Ghawazi) are the well-known female dancers of Egypt. They are traditionally from the Quen area and are a subgroup of the Nawar.

Haleb (or Heleb) Kenrick says "the name comes perhaps from the town of Aleppo. They are considered to be a long-established group in Egypt and Libya. The men sell animals and act as vets and the women tell fortunes."/4/

Hanager (or Nagara) A field survey by the Dom Research Center found the term Hanager used as a designation for a sub-group of the Nawar in Egypt.

Nawar (or Nawwar, Nowar, Nuar, Nuwar) This group's name is an Arabic word meaning "blacksmith" or "fire-worshiper." Nawar are found in Egypt as well as in the Middle East.

Xoraxa (or Xorax, Xoraxane) These Dom are sometimes known as Muslim Gypsies and reported to be present in Algeria as well as in parts of the Balkans. They are also described as "Middle Eastern Roma," "Turkish Gypsies" and "Arabic Gypsies."

COUNTRIES

Algeria: It is reported that there are 2,500 Xoraxa (or, Xorax) in Algeria. Another source speaks of Afrikaya Gypsies in Algeria but nothing additional can be found concerning this group. Given the country's historical ties to France, it is wondered whether or not there might be Manouche or French Gypsies also located in Algeria.

An article in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society in 1952/5/ relates a story which places Gypsies in Algiers, Algeria in the early 1800s. Though they were identified as "Gitanos," there is no evidence that they were Romanies from Spain.

Chad: One source identifies Chad as having a Halebi population. No other source has been found to substantiate their presence there.

Egypt: The population of the Haleb or Nawar of Egypt is listed in the range of 864,000 to 1,067,000. Van de Pijpekamp adds Ghagar (or Nagara) to the list of Dom in Egypt.

According to the Ethnologue there are 1,080,000 Muslim Gypsies in Egypt, or 2% of the population, including 864,000 Halebi, 216,000 Ghagar (1993 Johnstone). The Ghagar live mainly in Dakahlia Governorate, north of Cairo.

Libya: After Egypt with more than one million, Libya is the country of North Africa with the largest Dom population. Most sources give a figure of approximately 33,000 Haleb or Nawar living in that country. Little is known about this group though one source says that they are Domari speaking but using a large number of Arabic loan words. Van de Pijpekamp also includes Libya as a place of Halebi and Ghagar (or Nagara) populations.

It is reported that many of these Haleb live in northwestern part of the country, thus giving rise to the idea that some might have migrated to Tunisia. A survey of this group and area is needed.

Morocco: Xoraxane or Muslim Gypsies have been reported in Morocco.

It is suspected that Kalo (or Calo) Gypsies from Spain have migrated to Morocco for business reasons. However no government statistics can substantiate this supposition. Similarly, it may be true that French speaking Gypsies or Manouche may have in the past or still today traveled and worked in Morocco but there is no evidence of this at the moment.

Sudan: An article from the Library of Congress in Washington DC identifies Halebi Gypsies as living in Sudan. They are described as "semi-nomads" and living near villages while they worked as smiths.

Examination of the Ethnologue (13th edition) database has revealed no population figures for Dom in the Sudan though Van de Pijpekamp speaks of the presence of Haleb there. A Dom Research Center field survey in Egypt also reported testimony of Haleb in Sudan.

Tunisia: Xoraxane or Muslim Gypsies have been reported in Morocco.

Due to a common border, it has been speculated that the Haleb of northwestern Libya may have migrated to Tunisia or at least travel and trade there. No hard evidence of this has as yet been uncovered. Also as for Algeria and Morocco, close proximity and linguistic (Francophone) ties to France created a climate favorable to Manouche immigration.

Note: According to information in the Ethnologue, Dom are also found in Afghanistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Uzbekistan.

ENDNOTES

/1/ Hanna, Nabil Sobhi, Ghargar of Sett Guiranha: "A Study of a Gypsy Community in Egypt," The American University in Cairo: June 1982. (Back to Text)

/2/ Clebert, Jean-Paul, The Gypsies, London: Vista Books, 1963; pp. 196-197. (Back to Text)

/3/ Kenrick, "Romanies in the Middle East-3," op. cit. pp. 29-30. (Back to Text)

/4/ Ibid, p. 35. (Back to Text)

/5/ Winstedt, E.O., "An Algerian Gypsy Prophetess" from the "Notes and Queries" section, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1952, vol. 31, 77. (Article first written July 27, 1951.) Cited in this article is a book entitled Six Years' Residence In Algiers by a Mrs. Boughton, published in 1839. (Back to Text)

posted 14 December 2004 07:11 AM            

Armeanians in Egypt: Armenians were Christian populations in Egypt,and some were Muslims,but majority were Christians. Armenians have been coming into Egypt since Byzantine era.

See the following article:

A nation of the heart
[Boghos Youssufian]
Boghos Youssufian (1768-1844), "a strange mixture of timidity and courage," in the words of his nephew Nubar, was buried in a quiet ceremony; when Mohamed Ali heard of his death, he ordered the coffin exhumed and given a state funeral

There was once a prince called Vatchakan and a peasant girl named Anahid. The prince saw the peasant girl while walking in the forest and fell madly in love with her. He asked for her hand in marriage but, to everyone's surprise, she rejected him. "Tell him," she urged her father, "that I will marry him only if he learns a trade. He is a prince through no effort of his own. If he really loves me, he has to prove his love by doing something difficult."

Seeing that Anahid would not relent, Vatchakan went away and learned the art of carpet weaving. Soon he became one of the finest craftsmen in the land and began to earn a handsome living with his trade. Now he could claim Anahid's hand, he thought. On his way to his sweetheart's village, however, he was kidnapped by bandits and kept captive in a tower in the wilderness. When the bandits discovered his talent, they spared his life and put him to work. He wove the most beautiful tapestries for them and finally they decided to reward him. Vatchakan however wanted neither money nor honours. "Take this carpet to my village and sell it," he told his captors. "I will only accept money that I have earned by my own hard work." The captors did as they were told. Since Vatchakan had woven the directions to his prison and the names of his captors into the carpet, he was soon rescued and reunited with Anahid.

This Armenian legend contains many of the elements that have been woven into the national sentiment of a people who have had no land to call their own for more than 500 years: reliance on one's talent and ingenuity, the need to survive in often hostile environments, and the importance of such virtues as hard work and proficiency. As the history of the Armenian community in Egypt shows, these are values they have sought to transmit to the younger generations, along with a sense of solidarity and pride in a common identity, culture and language.

Geographically situated at the confluence of warring imperialist tides, Armenia lost its independence in the 14th century. The bulk of its Christian population was divided between Russia, Turkey and Persia. The Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in those days amounted to 2.5 million, half of whom owned land in the empire's six eastern provinces, in which they formed a religious minority.

"The Armenians were no race of fighters... Until the latter part of the 19th century, their peasantry had remained politically quiescent, earning a reputation for sobriety and thrift like their brethren in the business communities of the cities," writes Lord Kinross. "As an Aryan race, loyal to their religion, language and culture, they were a people of great national pride. They considered themselves to be European [as opposed to Ottoman] and, in time, came to benefit from a Western education, dispensed to them in the East, by Armenian Protestant missionaries."

[Monument of Boghos]
[Monument of Nobar]
[Nobar and his wife]
Left to right: the funerary monument of Boghos Youssufian at the Armenian Patriarchate in Alexandria; the monument of Nubar Pasha; Nubar Pasha and his wife, Foulik Hanem, c. 1880
(photos: Mémoires de Nubar Pacha)

MIGRATION TO EGYPT: Historians trace the migration of Armenians to Egypt to antiquity, with a notable increase under Byzantine rule. Their presence in Egypt is well documented, particularly during and after the Arab conquest, in which Armenian converts to Islam participated. Wardan (Vartan) El-Roumi (the Roum were the Christians of Anatolia) established a market in Fustat known as the Vartan Market. During the Abbasid era, the courage of the Armenian Amir Ali Ibn Yehia, "[who was] versed in the science of war," is praised by the mediaeval Islamic historian Ibn Taghribirdi.

THE FATIMID PERIOD was a prosperous one for the Armenians, whose community in Egypt enjoyed commercial, cultural and religious freedom. Their numbers increased considerably as more migrants arrived from Syria and Palestine, fleeing the advance of the Seljuks westward during the second half of the 11th century.

During this period, Badr Al-Gamali (d.1094), an Armenian by birth, who was governor of Damascus and commander in Acre, was called to Egypt by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Muntasir. He was given the military command of the Fatimid state and the task of rebuilding it. He arrived in 1074 to find a situation of complete civil and military anarchy. A severe seven-year famine and a rebellious and divided army had decimated the population and emptied the storehouses and the treasury. With the support of the Caliph, he silenced the military cliques running and ruining the country. He was appointed head of the secular government, commander-in-chief and vizir.

Among Badr's most notable contributions are the architectural improvements he brought to the defence of the city, protecting it from possible attacks by the Seljuk Turks. The original brick walls of Al-Qahira were replaced in 1087 by the Armenian architect John the Monk and his two brothers, who rebuilt the walls -- often using cut stones wrenched from Pharaonic edifices -- to include a series of internal galleries connected by vaulted rooms with arrow slits and clear openings looking onto the city along the entire length. Guard rooms and living quarters turned the new ramparts into a fortress with towers placed at regular intervals allowing soldiers a full view of potential invaders.

The appointment of Badr Al-Gamali marked the beginning of a new kind of vizir: instead of confining themselves to executive duties, they became part of the decision-making process. This is why the second part of Fatimid rule is sometimes referred to as the "Armenian period". Egypt's vizirs after Badr Al-Gamali were all Armenians: first Badr's own son, Shahnashah (1094-1121); then, in succession, Ahmed Ibn El-Afdal, El-Sayed Abul-Fath El-Armani, Bahran El-Armani, Bohran El-Armani, Tali' Ibn Raziq El-Armani and Raziq Ibn Tali'.

The Armenian golden years came to an end with the conquest of Egypt by Salaheddin, who entertained the belief that they had remained faithful to the Fatimids and consequently began to persecute them.

DURING THE MAMELUKE PERIOD, thousands of young Armenians, captured during invasions of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia, which took place between 1266 and 1375, were brought to Egypt as slaves. They were employed in agriculture and as craftsmen. The youngest were educated in army camps following the Mameluke system, and later employed in the army and the palace.

At the beginning of the 14th century, a schism occurred in the Armenian church, which caused Patriarch Sargis of Jerusalem to request and obtain a firman from the Sultan Al-Malik Al-Nasir. This "brought the Armenians residing within the Mameluke realm under the jurisdiction of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem," writes Armin Kredian. The schismatic Armenians who came to Egypt were given permission to practice their religion freely. Their patriarch's authority over the Armenian community's private and public affairs was decisive. The churches and those who served them were supported by the generosity of the faithful and the revenues deriving from charitable foundations.

"Thus," comments Kredian, "for more than six hundred years, from 1311 to the first half of the 19th century, the Armenian community in Egypt was administered from Jerusalem."

AFTER THE OTTOMAN CONQUEST of 1517, alarmed by local conflicts, the Armenians fled Egypt, but "[a]t the beginning of the 17th century, new waves of Armenians started to arrive, running away from the devastation and plunder spread by the Jalali [a group of irregular rebel elements] movement (1598-1628) in Asia Minor, Ottoman Armenia and Syria," recounts Kredian. Upon settling, they resumed practicing the professions for which they were famous: a large number were jewellers, merchants, tailors, furriers or ironsmiths; others were coffee shop owners or grocers. The more literate were employed as sarrafs (bankers) by the government. Some were suppliers accredited to rich households; others were involved in commerce.

They prospered throughout the 18th century, but the development of their community was interrupted once more by the French Expedition and the ensuing few years of chaos. By 1804, the Armenian presence in Egypt had all but disappeared. This sudden decrease in their population was followed by an almost immediate increase when, under Mohamed Ali, a large number of Armenians were either invited to Egypt by the new wali or attracted by his ambitious projects and the wealth they seemed to promise.

THE REIGN OF MOHAMED ALI ushered in a period of prosperity. Acumen and talent were qualities closely associated with the community's members. The first one to play a decisive role in the future Pasha's life was a powerful Istanbul banker, Yeghiazar Amira (the title of amira was only bestowed on the most powerful financiers of Istanbul, according to Anne Kazazian), who lent him the money to pay for his trip to Egypt.

Once established as ruler of the country, Mohamed Ali rewarded Yeghiazar (the grandfather of Nubar Pasha's wife) for his confidence by naming him sarraf bashi in Cairo. Although already quite wealthy in his own right, he accepted the offer and came to settle in Egypt with his extended family, perceiving that, with Mohamed Ali at its helm, the country would prosper and present rich opportunities. He was the first in a long line of Armenian sarrafs -- among whom his own nephews -- who were to thrive in Egypt for half a century, until their good fortune came to an end with Khedive Ismail's financial debacle.

Boghos Youssufian (1768-1844) was an Armenian banker and businessman whose influence had grown so much that he was often described by European consuls in Egypt as Mohamed Ali's "minister of foreign affairs", although, as Ghislaine Allaume remarks, Egypt, at the time a simple province of the Ottoman Empire, could have no such minister, since international affairs were dealt with only from Istanbul. She writes, however, that Boghos played a special role in the Egyptian administration. Settled in Egypt at the end of the 18th century, he started his career as the agent of the multazim (tax farmer) of the Egyptian customs. By the time the French had left Egypt, he had personally acquired the iltizam of the customs of Alexandria.

[Fatimid Cairo]
[icon]
Fatimid Cairo's walls, built by John the Monk; Saint Barsouma by Yohanna El-Armani (1745)

Mohamed Ali chose him to be his official drogman, but more important than his public functions was the personal friendship which developed between the two men. Once, as Boghos had complained about the inordinate raise in the price of his iltizam, Mohamed Ali offered to take on a share of the cost and become his partner. It is not known how long this arrangement lasted, but the friendship endured.

In 1819, Boghos was in charge of the Diwan Al-Tigara (bureau of commerce) besides overseeing other financial affairs for Mohamed Ali, but he was never considered an employee of the wali's administrative apparatus, and his name never appeared on a payroll. Rather, he was given a generous allowance which he used according to his needs.

His nephew Nubar, who was to distinguish himself more than any of Mohamed Ali's protégés in the years to come, recounts in his memoirs that, during Mohamed Ali's absence from the country, Abbas, who had been designated his delegate for the duration of his voyage, decided that Boghos's status should be normalised and a monthly salary allotted to him. Boghos was so shocked and humiliated to have been stripped of his special status that he stopped eating completely and died a few days later, on 10 January 1844.

"When news of Boghos's death reached Mohamed Ali and he was told that Boghos had been buried simply and quietly without the honours due to him, the wali was furious and sent a letter to Osman Pasha, the governor of the city, which began 'Donkey, brute' and went on to rain threats and insults on the man's head for having failed to give Boghos his due with a state funeral. He ordered him to exhume the coffin and have it buried again with full military honours which was promptly done," writes Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot.

Artin, the son of Soukias effendi Tcherrakian and the wali's private secretary, took over the Diwan Al-Tigara after Boghos's death. Soukias Tcherrakian had been the agent of Mohamed Ali's son Tusun in Istanbul. After Tusun's death in 1816, he came to Cairo to settle his principal's accounts, but, having discharged his duties was hired to look after the interests of Tusun's four-year old son Abbas. Two years later, Tcherrakian's children, a daughter and two sons -- Banuma, Artin and Khosrow -- joined him in Cairo.

Brought up in the palace with young Abbas, the two boys were with the first contingent of Egyptians sent to study in Paris in 1826, where they were awarded degrees in law and administration. Upon their return in 1830, Artin entered Mohamed Ali's personal staff, a post he relinquished only in 1844, when he was appointed head of Diwan Al-Tigara. Khosrow was to replace him as Mohamed Ali's private secretary.

Influenced by the Saint Simonians, with whom he had established good relations as early as 1835, Artin pressed for the creation of the overland road to India as an alternative to the piercing of the Suez Canal. Before any final decision could take shape, however, Abbas came to power in 1850 and Artin, accused of embezzlement by the new viceroy, chose to leave Egypt secretly in September of the same year.

Sepia ink drawing by Ervand Demirdjian; Emperor Haile Selassie by Chant Avedissian; Demirdjian's Le Petit Chaudronnier; Ballerina by Ashod Zorian

Artin did not cut his ties with Egypt completely, however. While in Istanbul, he was kept informed of Abbas's news by his brother-in-law Hekekyan, whose private correspondence and diaries provide invaluable information on the intrigues of the period.

Hekekyan had married Banuma. She had been Abbas's playmate when they were children "which he must have remembered fondly," writes Ehud Toledano, "when granting her a large estate". Hekekyan had benefited from the influence of his brothers-in-law and the relative wealth of his wife. Furthermore, he was asked at one point to serve as president of the Board of Health.

Of a rather envious nature, however, Hekekyan felt that he was not close enough to the seat of power and seems to have vented his frequent anger in his diaries, which read at times like a gossip column on the high and mighty -- though one can suspect that his prudent nature prevented him from consigning all his thoughts to paper.

"While remaining on the government payroll," adds Toledano, Hekekyan knew that he was being watched by Abbas, that his Istanbul mail was being intercepted (Hekekyan suspected an Armenian in the government, namely Nubar Pasha, explains Anne Kazazian, since his communications, although written in Turkish, were transcribed in Armenian script) and that he was expected to report to Abbas any schemes which Artin may have been hatching against him in Istanbul.

"Understandably, this tight-rope walking caused Hekekyan a great deal of anxiety, and led him to a deep hatred of Abbas. It even made him apply in secret for British protection," writes Toledano. Abbas, however, did not seem to be aware of Hekekyan's state of mind; nor did he hold any particular grudge against him. After he was eased out of his job on the Board of Health and "put on a quarter pay", Abbas gave him permission to engage in archaeological excavations.

NUBAR PASHA (1825-1899) was destined to rise to more prominence than Boghos or Artin. His influence on Egyptian politics spans much of the 19th century.

Born in Smyrna, Nubar came to Egypt as Boghos's protégé in the last decade of Mohamed Ali's rule, and was immediately attached to his household. It is said that, educated in Paris, one of Nubar's first duties was to read aloud to the aging wali Thiers' History of the French Revolution Consulate and Empire.

In 1844, he was named Ibrahim Pasha's private secretary and, as he writes in his memoirs, witnessed his painful death. With Said Pasha, he became involved in the protracted negotiations over the digging of the Suez Canal, then entered the service of Ismail when the latter became viceroy in 1863.

His relationship with Ismail was not entirely smooth and he fell out of favour a number of times, having to leave Egypt on these occasions. Nubar worked for the reform of the Egyptian legal system and was responsible for the introduction of the mixed courts in 1876 -- one of the reasons for his lack of popularity with the Egyptian intelligentsia. Furthermore, his involvement in the negotiations of Egypt's debt with its European creditors alienated Ismail completely. It was whispered in many quarters that, while Egypt's coffers remained barren, Nubar was pocketing handsome commissions on the loans he was arranging. Nevertheless, at the insistence of the European managers of the debt, Nubar, who had been dismissed by Ismail, was brought back in 1878 to form a government which included, for the first time, Europeans serving in ministerial posts.

The move was extremely unpopular in Egypt, with both Nubar and the khedive coming under sharp criticism. The army officers, who were already restive over receiving half-pay (a measure taken due to Egypt's financial difficulties) and the discrepancies in promotions for Egyptian and Turco-Circassian officers, were pushed to the brink of rebellion. Ismail dismissed Nubar once more, an act resulting in his own British-engineered removal by the Ottoman Sultan later that year. Following the establishment of British colonial rule, Nubar was asked to form a ministry early in 1884, to superintend Egypt's withdrawal from the Sudan, which took place in 1885.

With Cromer's help, Nubar managed to abolish the corvée and, by 1887, was advocating the reintroduction of a strong Egyptian police force and greater Egyptian control over domestic policy. As president of the Council of Ministers, he had to strike a fine balance between pressures from the British, on one hand, and from the palace and political elite, from the other. If he managed so well for such a long time, it is said that it was due to his very exceptional qualities. The "anonymous" author of Khedives and Pashas, referring to Nubar's house, states: "In that house resides what little of real statesmanship there exists in Egypt." Opinions on the many-sided character of Nubar Pasha and his influence on Egyptian affairs may differ, he adds, "but [no one] will deny that, in intellect at least, he stands a head and shoulder above all his rivals."

Nubar, however, did not win all his battles against the British and when Khedive Tawfiq realised that he was no longer able to protect him against the occupying forces, he dismissed him. Nubar formed a ministry in 1894 for the new khedive, Abbas II, but he was retired in favour of Fahmi Pasha after a year.

Though a brilliant statesman, historians agree that Nubar's astuteness did not endear him to the population of a country whom he, according to his memoirs, loved dearly, and whose past and present seem to have been his only lasting passion.

Attempting to explain this lack of popularity, Lord Cromer wrote: "[He] was a minister who was not only a Christian and associated with other European Christians, but who also belonged to a nationality against which the Mohammedan population of the Ottoman Empire is greatly prejudiced...Nubar Pasha carried little weight with the Egyptian population, with whom, moreover, owing to his ignorance of Arabic, he was unable to communicate in their own language. He could only rely on persuasion and on the support of two foreign governments. This support, although heartily accorded, did him in some respects more harm than good. Under these circumstances, his fall from power was almost a foregone conclusion."

self-portrait by Van Leo, 7 January 1945; cinematographer and inventor Ohan, photographed by Randa Shaath; Arshag Karageuzian, King Farouk's personal photographer, on a hunting expedition with the monarch; Armenian woman, photographed by Khatchig Wanis

Following his retirement from political life, Nubar became involved with the Armenian national delegation to the Porte, a diplomatic and political pressure group that represented Armenia's interests to the Ottoman Sultan.

It is only toward the end of his life that Nubar became preoccupied with the fate of the Armenian nation. This, however, was not a consequence of a shift in his personal allegiances but rather of important changes taking place at the time within the Armenian community in Egypt.

Anne Kazazian remarks that, while several members of this community were rising to fame and occupying key positions in the Egyptian government during the first half of the 19th century, their affiliation with Armenian organisations remained marginal. Possibly the Armenians who arrived in Egypt to serve Mohamed Ali were more intent on building a new Egyptian state than asserting their own ethnic and/or religious identity. Mohamed Ali's Egypt could have led one to believe that "the various communal groups would eventually slowly blend into a sort of common denominator represented by the Ottoman nationality," writes Robert Ilbert.

In his memoirs, Nubar Pasha commented that "the true Mohamed Ali is he who has reversed in Egypt all the preconceived ideas of the Orient, all the ways of thinking which differ from Europe's, who has made the Christian equal to the Muslim... the inferior being equal to the Kurdish Bey."

Although marital -- and often business -- alliances remained strictly ethnic/religious affairs, the Armenians had little sense of belonging to a particular group in those days. The elite spoke Turkish or French, while the lower classes expressed themselves in Arabic. Kazazian mentions in particular a letter sent from the Patriarchate requesting a priest who spoke Arabic "because our nationals do not speak Armenian", and the comment of an Armenian historian noting the difficulties encountered by teachers at the Armenian school to interest their students in the rudiments of their mother tongue.

During that period, a small charitable institution attached to the church and a parochial school funded by Yeghiazar in 1828 were the only establishments run by the community. The church of Bayn Al-Surayn was only built in 1839, followed by the Prelacy in 1853; in 1854, the school was enlarged and moved to a better location, thanks to Garabed Agha Kaloust's bequest of revenues from his land.

One should not be overly surprised, however, notes Kazazian, at the Armenians' apparent lack of interest in the formation of a structured community in Egypt, since it was only during the 1860s, and only in reaction to restrictions on the autonomy of Armenians in Turkey, that the first Armenian "national" awakening took place, resulting in the establishment of the Constitution of the Armenian Nation, granted in 1863 by the Ottoman government to the Sultanate's Armenians.

This process added for the first time a political dimension to the Ottoman ethnic and religious community (millet) system, and introduced the novel idea of a sacred "duty towards the nation". It was this changing and freshly structured society that had to make room for the first waves of Armenian refugees arriving in 1894 and 1896. The newcomers had a different background and were generally politically active. Since they did not speak Arabic, they tended to congregate, eventually drawing into their circles the Armenians of Egypt, whom they attempted to organise politically while raising their awareness of the problems facing the Armenian people.

During the same period, Khedive Ismail's Egypt had been changing, too. Egyptians who sought government posts were given preference over their foreign counterparts. Monopolies were no longer granted to wealthy merchants. In short, the economic and administrative hegemony of Mohamed Ali's Armenians was coming to an end.

It was time for the Armenians to take care of their own. Assistance was needed for the constant arrivals of new refugees. While official institutions provided certain services (mainly education) for free, the creation of associations (charitable organisations, cultural, political, and sporting clubs, musical and theatrical groups...) filled the social vacuum.

By the end of the 19th century, the main traits of the Armenian community in Egypt had been forged. Its various organisations prospered slowly during the following 100 years, allowing the community to welcome and accommodate the even larger numbers of refugees who came in droves after the massacres of 24 April 1915. This was achieved with the help of collective contributions. The Armenians had come to believe that they could only rely on themselves if they wanted to survive, and the members of the community readily fulfilled their duty towards the nation.

A new school was provided for in 1907 and more money raised in 1929 to help the school since "pupils from the working classes could not pay any tuition fees". Notables made it a habit to bequeath properties to the "nation", funding scholarships, establishing trusts and answering the church's requests for more contributions whenever needed. Life revolved around the church, the family, the school and the clubs. Only hard work brought relative prosperity, which had to be shared with those in need.

For a long time, the community closed in around its members, who were exceptionally capable of blending in with their new environment through professional contacts, but who resisted total assimilation. Even when many ceased to cherish the hope that they would eventually return to Armenia after the establishment of a communist regime there, they still held on to their identity.

"All this is changing now," says Kredian. "Armenians are no longer closed to the world, they travel and incidentally, many have been to Armenia to discover that reality is different from the dream. Even the language is different there. The old generation is completely settled, they have their place in the community, their standing, and are active in the churches, the clubs and the charitable institutions. They will not stand uprooting. And why should they? Most Armenians want to continue living in Egypt. They speak the language fluently and have usually graduated from Egyptian Universities. They belong to an affluent society. We have a strong community life, but now we send our children to foreign schools and they have friends of different nationalities. Once more, in our history there are children who do not speak Armenian. Maybe they will have a problem; who knows?"

Loss of identity may be the most wrenching predicament faced by Armenians living abroad today. Khatchig was born in Egypt, where he spent his youth. In 1965, he went to Armenia with his parents, who wanted to return to the old country. He could not however acquire the Armenian nationality, nor did he really want to. When his parents died, 25 years later, he decided to return to Egypt. To his surprise, he was no longer entitled to the Egyptian nationality. "I am neither Egyptian nor Armenian," he says, still puzzled. "What am I, then?"

Sources:

Lord Kinross: The Ottoman Centuries, the Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire, New York, 1977

Anne Kazazian: "Les logiques associatives dans la communauté armenienne d'Egypte", Egypte Monde Arabe, vol. 3, CEDEJ, 1990; Yeghiazar Amira, an Armenian Banker at the Service of Mohamed Ali, paper delivered to the Egyptian Historical Society (March, 1999)

Anonymous, Khedives and Pashas (By One who Knew them Well), London, 1884

Ghislaine Alleaume: "Les registres du Diwan Al-Tigara Wal Mabiat (1819-1856)" in Annales Islamologiques, vol. 27, IFAO, 1993

Armin Albert Kredian: The Armenian Community in Egypt During World War I, Master's thesis submitted to the Department of Arabic Studies, American University in Cairo, April, 1997 (unpublished)

Mohamed Rifaat El-Imam: Al-Arman fi Misr (The Armenians in Egypt in the 19th century), Nubar Printing House, Cairo, 1995

Ehud Toledano: State and society in Mid-nineteenth-century Egypt, Cambridge University Press, 1990

Mirrit Boutros Ghali, ed.: Mémoires de Nubar Pasha, Librairie du Liban, 1983

The Earl of Cromer: Modern Egypt, MacMillan and Co., Ltd., 1911

Robert Ilbert: Alexandrie, 1830-1930, IFAO, 1996

posted 14 December 2004 08:31 AM            

Click to view caption
Khedive Ismail; Mohamed Ali
Well before Mohamed Ali (1805--1848) created the foundations of the modern state in Egypt, there had existed a special relationship between Egypt and Italy. This relationship can in part be attributed to historical ties. In "Egypt and Italy: between the past and present", appearing in Al- Ahram of 18 February 1933, Abbas Ammar states that relations between the two countries date even further back than ancient Rome's hegemony over the country. Long before that, he claims, Egypt's gods and goddesses were held sacred in Rome. Later, "the beloved goddess Isis continued to be worshipped even in the days of Caesar Augustus and the height of Italy's glory." He continues, "And here is Hadrian, building his palace on the outskirts of Rome and next to it a park dedicated to Osiris and his sister, as a form of sacrifice and way to ingratiate himself to them."

In part, too, the relationship stems from economic links. Trade relations, regardless of their ups and downs, remained a constant between the two countries throughout history. Indeed, even after the Cape of Good Hope replaced the Middle East as Europe's route to the Orient at the end of the 15th century and in spite of the decline in Egypt's fortunes following its absorption into the Ottoman Empire (1517), Italy retained a special place in the commercial life of Alexandria. This reality was observed by no less than the scholars of the French expedition who, in "On the commercial relationship between Egypt and Europe" in the famous Description d'Egypte, noted that most of Egypt's trading relationships at the turn of the 18th century were with Italian cities. Although there was a French presence in the Egyptian markets, it paled next to that of Venice, Trieste and Florence. And beyond France and Italy, no other European nations were represented.

Italy's preeminence in its economic relations with Egypt was reflected in the size of its expatriate community. Writing in Al-Ahram of 19 February 1933, under the headline, "The Italians in Egypt", the Italian historian Angelo San Marco declares, "The Venetians and the people from Trieste, Dalmatia, Genoa, Pisa, Livorno, Naples and Sicily continued to reside in Egypt long after their native cities fell into decay and lost their status as maritime centres with the decline of the Mediterranean as a major thoroughfare for world trade."

Elsewhere in the article, San Marco writes that the Italian community in Egypt held monopolies on the goods that were still popular in the East, which included many imports. In addition, "they engage in many liberal professions, arts and crafts, and many are involved in the teaching of the Italian language, which was the lingua franca of the foreign communities in general." Italians tended to live in exclusively Italian neighbourhoods or in neighbourhoods with other foreigners. Perhaps the most famous of these districts in Cairo was known as the "Venetian Quarter". Nevertheless, San Marco notes that, in order to avoid harassment, the Italians tended to wear Egyptian dress and follow, as much as possible, Egyptian customs.

And so the situation stood until the rise of the modern state. The modernisation enterprise that Mohamed Ali embarked on and the foreign expertise that he would need for this purpose ushered in a new era in the Italian presence in Egypt.

San Marco, in his article, observes that "the Italians had long been familiar with the path to the Orient. At the same time, the political situation of their country compelled them to migrate. Many of these, moreover, were refugees who had ventured to participate in the numerous revolutions that erupted in the Italian peninsula. In addition to the people from the Italian peninsula who sought refuge in Egypt were Italian Jews who had long since placed themselves under the protection of the old Italian city states. It was the great Duchy of Toscana that sought to bolster the influence of Italy by guaranteeing the cooperation of these people who had taken on Italian culture and customs."

The Italian historian continues: "If the Italian community in Egypt consisted primarily of a large array of merchants, artisans, professionals and an increasing number of workers, this was because Italy had remained for a long period of time politically and economically weak, which rendered it incapable of competing with the major industries and capitalist investment coming to Egypt from France. Also because of its economic weakness, Italy fell behind in the transition from sail to steam powered shipping, for which reason it fell behind other industrial powers in commercial relations with Egypt."

There was a reason for Al-Ahram and other Egyptian newspapers exploring the history of Egyptian-Italian relations. King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Helena were scheduled for a royal visit, which would last more than two weeks, from 20 February to 9 March 1933. Still, historical ties alone did not suffice to explain the importance of this visit.

In the latter half of the 19th century two major events would have an impact on Italy's relations with Egypt. The first was the unification of Italy in 1870 including the remnants of the city state system that had prevailed until then and which ended the Austrian control over northern Italy. On 7 February 1933, Al-Ahram allocated a considerable portion of its front page to an article on the subject, "in honour of the forthcoming visit of His Royal Majesty the King of Italy". The author, Mustafa Sobhi, "licentiate in education and literature", as he signed himself, explained that his reason for writing this article was that knowledge of the history and culture of other nations helped develop the bonds of friendship and affection between different peoples "without the need for official documents and agreements".

The second event occurred almost a decade later when, in 1879, France and Britain interceded with Istanbul to depose the Khedive Ismail, who was then forced to find a place of exile in any but the three countries that had conspired to oust him. The khedive chose Italy.

The choice was not random. Italy at the time, like other European powers, still had political ambitions in Egypt which would have been based on a number of claims and sources of influence. The first educational missions that Egypt had sent to Europe under Mohamed Ali were sent to Italy, in this case to learn the art of printing. Mohamed Ali had also engaged a number of Italian experts to assist in the various tasks of building the modern state: in the exploration of antiquities, the exploration of minerals, in the conquest of Sudan, designing the city of Khartoum and drawing the first survey map of the Delta. In addition, Italians featured prominently in the royal court under Ismail, which is perhaps why Italian architects were chosen to design most of Ismail's palaces, new suburbs of the capital and the royal opera house, which was to be inaugurated with Aida by the Italian composer Verdi. When Verdi declined the invitation to come to Egypt, it instead debuted with the famous composer's Rigoletto.

Ismail lived for 16 years in Italy, mostly in Naples, until his death in 1895. Many of his children were with him in exile, not least of whom was Prince Fouad who would become sultan of Egypt from 1917 to 1922 and then, following the Declaration of 28 February 1922, king, until 1936. Fouad was educated in Italian schools, specifically the military academy in Turin, and it was not surprising, therefore, that the Italian influence would continue to be felt in the Egyptian royal court, if not in the political domain.

It was, in part at least, his fondness for Italy that led King Fouad to undertake, in 1927, that famous royal visit, described by Al-Ahram as "the first absence of his Royal Majesty from his beloved kingdom since assuming the throne of Ismail and Mohamed Ali". During that week-long tour, Fouad called first on his alma mater in Turin and then headed to Rome, where "he was received by King Emmanuel III, Senior Mussolini and all the ministers, members of the royal court and army officials and enthusiastically cheered by the people." While in Rome the king visited the Vatican. Afterwards, he travelled to Venice and then back to Turin, after which he left Italy to France. Following this visit, it was only natural that Fouad would want to return the courtesy to Emmanuel, even if it took six years to do so.

But the Italian king would have had another reason for wanting to visit Egypt. The Italians formed the second largest expatriate community in Egypt, coming only after the Greeks. San Marco's article supplies abundant statistics on the Italian presence in Egypt. The 1882 census, he writes, recorded 18,665 Italians in Egypt. By 1897 the figure rose to 24,454 and 30 years later to 52,462. Thus, he writes, "the Italian community increased by 122 per cent, whereas the Greek community during the same period increased by only 53 per cent and the French by 31 per cent. The British community cannot serve as a standard for comparison. Firstly, the British presence was very small prior to 1882 and secondly the 220 per cent rise in this community by 1928 was primarily due to the many British functionaries who had come to Egypt."

The majority of the Italian community lived in either Cairo or Alexandria, with 18,575 in the former and 24,280 in the latter, according to the 1928 census. The Italian historian adds, "In all events, no other community in Egypt is as large and diverse as ours, which lives in close and constant contact with all classes of Egyptian society." Indeed, the hundreds of Italian words that have been incorporated into the Egyptian colloquial dialect is perhaps the best testimony to the fact that of all the foreign communities, the Italians were the most closely connected to Egyptian society. San Marco ventures that the reason for this was that "our people are noted for their spirit of tolerance, their lack of religious or nationalist chauvinism and, unlike other peoples, their aversion to appearing superior."

Apparently San Marco was one of the Alexandrian Italians, for he dwells in great detail on the manifestations of the Italian community in that famous port city. The Italians there had eight public and six parochial schools. The government schools were supervised by an official committee chaired by the Italian consul and they had a total student enrollment of approximately 1,500. Other schools had student bodies numbering in the hundreds.

The Italians in Alexandria also had 22 philanthropic societies, among which were the National Opera Society, the Society for Disabled War Veterans, the Society of Collectors of Military Insignia, the Italian Club, the Italian Federation for Labour Cooperation, the War Orphans Relief Society, the Mussolini Italian Hospital and the Dante Alighieri Italian Language Association. This was not to mention the many Italian- language newspapers published in Alexandria, the most famous of which were L'Oriente and Il Messaggero Egiziano.

The forthcoming royal visit inspired other Al-Ahram readers to send in their contributions on the lives of Emmanuel III and Queen Helena. One was Mohamed Mohamed El-Ghandour, a student at the Khedival School, who wrote that the Italian king was reputed for his vast erudition and literary interests. He noted, in particular, that the king was one of the foremost experts on ancient Italian numismatics and whose thesis on the subject was recognised by experts as one of the most thorough ever produced. Emmanuel had a collection of some 60,000 coins dating from the most ancient epochs in Italian history. The king was also an expert equestrian. "His Royal Majesty spends long hours on horseback, without growing tired or bored," wrote El-Ghandour.

Helena seemed to epitomise queenly regality. She was tall, slender and attractive, her voice soft and melodious, and her character dignified yet kind and gracious. "Of all the queens in the world, she is the most elegantly dressed in accordance with the latest fashions, of which she prefers the lighter colours. She always carries with her a small mirror with a silver handle, with which she ascertains the countenance she wishes to strike when she smiles. Her Royal Majesty enjoys speaking with children."

One cannot help but observe that the general enthusiasm that occasioned all these articles obviated all reference to any events that had cast a shadow over Egyptian-Italian relations. Notable for its absence was the treaty concluded between the two countries eight years earlier in accordance with which Egypt lost title to the Jaaboub Oasis and the surrounding territory in the Western Desert and which stirred a public outcry in Egypt at the time. Also not mentioned was the Italian military campaign during World War I to oust the Ottomans from Libya. The Egyptian nationalist movement, during what became known as the Battle of Tripoli, had championed Istanbul.

In all events, at 6.55am on Monday, 20 February 1933, the SS Savoy carrying the Italian king and his family arrived in Egyptian territorial waters, upon which the Prince Farouq torpedo boat boomed a 21-gun salute, to which the Italian yacht responded in kind. At 8.30 the Savoy, Egyptian flag fluttering at the bow and the Italian flag at the stern, weighed anchor in Alexandria, after having been escorted into the port by two torpedo ships in front, two destroyers on either flank and two more destroyers at the rear.

At 10.05, the Italian king and queen and their daughters, Princess Matilda and Princess Maria, followed by an entourage from the Italian royal court, disembarked, then took the Faiza, which would transfer them to land. The Al-Ahram correspondent in Alexandria continues, "As soon as they were on board the Faiza, cannons sounded a salute in honour of their arrival, the boats anchored in the port sounded their sirens and the Italian community on shore let out a thunderous cheer and applause. As the boat carrying the royal visitors passed before the maritime clubs, the throngs there cheered as His Royal Majesty waved in response. King Emmanuel III was wearing a grey military uniform and a hat with a long white feather. When the royal train reached the Ras Al-Tin Palace pier, an army regiment issued a military salute as the regimental band struck up the Italian anthem in honour of His Royal Majesty."

In Cairo, the reception of the royal visitors was no less impressive. A regiment of the royal cavalry guard, with their flags and band, was placed at the head of the platform while at the royal gateway stood the speaker of the Senate, members of parliament and senior government officials. At 2.00pm, five automobiles from the Italian Embassy swerved into the station. They were escorted by four riders on motorcycle wearing the black uniforms of the Fascist Party. At 2.15, His Royal Majesty King Fouad, preceded by two masters of ceremony, entered the train station. "His Royal Majesty was in full regalia and wearing the sash bearing the insignia of Mohamed Ali and the highest Italian medal of honour."

At 2.30, the train carrying Emmanuel III and his family arrived. "As the two kings shook hands, the regimental band struck up the Italian anthem and the guns sounded a salute. The royal parties then proceeded to Abdeen Palace in a procession the likes of which Cairo has not seen in years. "The streets and squares swarmed with thousands of spectators who stood in row upon row of either side of the streets, and every balcony and window in the houses and hotels bordering the streets were packed with people. Indeed, some were so moved by their enthusiasm that they climbed up the trees in order to find an advantageous perch, while coffeehouse patrons scrambled to arrange as many chairs as possible on the pavements in front of their establishments, some renting out their chairs for as much as 20 piastres."

The atmosphere of festive reception followed Emmanuel throughout his visit. In Cairo University he was given an honourary doctorate, during which ceremony the minister of education delivered a speech extolling the friendly relations between the two countries. Nor was mention omitted of the ancient relations between the Arabs and Italy, and the service in which the former performed for the latter through the transmission of the knowledge of Arab civilisation in the Middle Ages.

Next on the agenda were visits to the Coptic and Egyptian museums, with regard to which Al-Ahram relates: "King Emmanuel and his company were especially awestruck by the artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamen. So curious were they and so intense their questions that their visit to the exhibition of jewellery and gilted coffins alone took half an hour."

Given the Italian influence on the Royal Opera House, it was not surprising that the programme would include that venue, in which Fouad offered Emmanuel and his entourage use of the royal box, which is only opened on state occasions. Spectators were treated to two operatic performances that evening.

Finally, the royal family took a brief tour of Upper Egypt. They began in Aswan where they took in the ancient stone quarries which they reached by camel and in which is located a statue of Ramses and the Aswan Dam. In Luxor, they crossed to the west bank and made their way by car to the Ramesseum and the tombs of the kings.

Back north, King Emmanuel and his entourage spent their final days in Alexandria, where they visited the Graeco-Roman Museum, Ptolome's Column and the catacombs and other antiquities. The king also made a point of spending time with the Italian community in Alexandria, which naturally outdid itself in its efforts to host members of the Italian royal family.

The visit, however, did not pass without a cloud or two. Britain, for one, had suspicions about the purpose of this trip and made it a point to air its misgivings. The London Times, known for its close connections to British government circles, featured a long article on Italy's influence in the East and the prominence of the Italian expatriate community in Egypt. It dwelt, in particular, on "Italy's economic ambitions and drive to spread Italian culture", taking the opportunity to remind Egyptians of Rome's policies in Ethiopia and the threat this represented to the source of the Nile.

Meanwhile, in Egypt the lavishness of the Egyptian government in feting the royal guests stirred the ire of some public opinion. In his daily Al-Ahram column, Ahmed El-Sawi Mohamed could not contain his surprise at "the trees that have sprouted overnight along Queen Nazli Street". There was also a letter to the editor that criticised the municipality of Alexandria for spending what was then an astoundingly extravagant LE15 per person on the banquet it hosted in honour of King Emmanuel.

But on a lighter note there was that Italian who, decked out in an elegant attire, entered the exclusive jewellery store next to Shepherd's Hotel, claimed that he was a member of the visiting royal court and made over LE1,000 worth of purchases, paying with bank drafts drawn from a Parisian bank. Much to the store's Indian owner's dismay, it transpired that the Parisian bank had no account in the signatory's name. Perhaps the Egyptians who read this story in Al-Ahram laughed, in part, because this time the joke was not on them.

* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/670/chrncls.htm

Al-Ahram

posted 15 December 2004 06:04 PM            

[The Israel Stela] Little evidence, all of which is circumstantial at best, exits to substantiate the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. Frankly, the predecessors of those people who would begin to call themselves Jewish probably came to Egypt very early and during different periods and may have even ruled Egypt for a time. However, it was not until relatively late in Egyptian history that we actually find references to Israelites or their country as Israel. The first reference to Israel is found in the so-called Israel Stele, inscribed during the fifth year of the reign of Merenptah in Egypt's 19th Dynasty. Though evidence of actual Jewish residence in Egypt occurs much later in Egypt, there were certainly earlier reference to them between the time of Merenptah and later periods.

Although Jewish refugees probably fled to Egypt after the Babylonian conquest of Palestine (Jer 42:14?22) by Nebuchadnezzar when they were dispersed throughout the known world, we really have no good evidence of such from archaeology in Egypt.

It was probably not until the wars of Ptolemy I against the rival successors of Alexander the Great (320?301 BC) that the first scale immigration of peoples calling themselves Jews into Egypt. Invading Palestine four times in those wars, Ptolemy I is said to have "removed from the land of the Jews into Egypt up to one hundred thousand people, from whom he armed about thirty thousand chosen men and settled them through the land in the forts" (Ep. Arist. 12?13). While Aristeas? numbers are likely exaggerated, various papyri, inscriptions and ostraca from the third century BC nonetheless testify to the presence of substantial Jewish populations in all parts of Egypt.

[Dedication inscriptions for a Synagogue in Alexandria dating to the second century BC] In fact, as soon as Alexandria was completed, the Jewish people probably began to inhabit specific destricts. They were probably very different than their more conservative counterparts in Jerusalem. Though both worshipped the same god, the Alexandrians seem to have found it difficult to identify him as their god. To them, wisdom was far more important than worship.

The Jewish school of Alexandria reached its greatest fame under Philo Judaeus, who lived in there during the early years of Christianity. He came from several generations of wealth and his father enjoyed Roman citizenship. His brother, Alexander, held the high office of alabarch at Alexandria, which meant that he was responsible for collecting taxes owed to Rome. This brother may have in fact been the Alexander mentioned by St. Paul in the Acts of the Apostles. If so, he was unquestionably the foremost Jew of Alexandria and indeed one of the richest men in the ancient world.

[A synagogue door from Fustat dating to the second century AD] So rich was Alexander that when Herod Agrippa had financial problems during his early years as emperor, Alexander lent him two hundred thousand drachmas, which represented only a small portion of his wealth. He even came to his assistance once more by assuming the total cost of the silver and gold plates that adorned the nine gates of the rebuilt Temple of Jerusalem. His son, Marcus, married Herod's daughter, Berenice.

However, another of Alexander's sons turned away from his religion in order to pursue a political career. After having held several offices in Egypt and Palestine, Tiberius Julius Alexander became prefect of Egypt under Nero. During one of the Jewish riots in Alexandria, it was he who turned the Roman legions upon the revolting Jews resulting in some 50,000 deaths. He even played a key role in the great siege and destruction of Jerusalem under Titus.

Many may suppose that it was the Muslim invasion of Egypt that resulted in the decimation of the Jewish community in Egypt, but it was actually the Jewish revolts against the Romans. Rome became so frustrated with the Jews that at its height point during the days of Tiberius, Sejanus, the most influential Roman in Tiberius's court, imitated measures that were designed to destroy the whole race, and after Tiberius's death, Gaius was more than eager to fulfill Sejanus's plan.

[Exterior of the Ben Ezra Synagogue] However, the Jewish community in Alexandria seems to have survived these Roman emperors into the period of Christian legitimacy. Cyril, an early Christian Patriarch of Alexandria seems to have been determined to rid the city of both pagans and Jews. In retaliation, the Jews began raiding Christian homes and launching secret attacks. One evening, the Jews ran through the streets of the city shouting that the Church of St. Alexander was consumed in flames. The Christians hurried to save their church, but when they arrived, the Jews attacked and killed many of them. This rues and loss of life incensed Cyril, and he ordered his army of supporters to the Jewish Quarter of the city, where they plundered the synagogues, set fire to Jewish homes, and chased many of them out of Alexandria.

Then around 628 AD, many more Jews fell victims when they were persecuted by Heraclius in retaliation for their alliance with the Persians who were causing problems in Egypt not long before the Arab invasion.

[Couryard of the Ben Ezra Synagogue] However, even today there remain Egyptian Jews, though very few in number, and their decline has been slow for the most part after the Roman period. Many moved to the emerging city that would become today's Cairo during the Fatimid Period, where they settled east of the ancient Roman walls in an area known as al-Mamsusa. Though there were rifts in the Jewish world at this time, the various sects within Egypt seem to have cohabited peacefully and even intermarried. There were three synagogues mentioned by Ibn Duqmaq in his description of Fustat in the fifteenth century. Two lay within the walls of old Fort Babylon (Qasr al-Sham). One of these was of course the famous Ben Ezra or Palestinian synagogue, known as Kanisat al-Shamiyin at the time and the other was Kanisat al-'Iraqiyin, which was an Iraqi or Babylonian synagogue close to the church of al-Mu'allaqa. The third waa a Karaite synagogue, built later and therefore outside of the walls.

During the Fatimid Period, Jews emigrated to Fustat in large numbers, attracted by the lack of persecution, though a notable exception was during the reign of Caliph al-Hakim, though the Egyptians in general seem to have suffered during this period. However, persecution was not the only force that drove Jews into Fustat, for it was a time when Egypt offered possibilities for amassing fortunes. They found that prosperity and some attained very high status within the Muslim community.

[Interior of the Ben Ezra Synagogue] But as time progressed, there numbers slowly dwindled, just as those of the Christians. However, Egypt continued to have a substantial number of Jewish residence up until the modern era.

While no specific synagogue remains have yet been discovered in Egypt from very ancient times, a sizable number of synagogue dedications have been recovered in Middle and Lower Egypt, some dating as early as the third century BC. In addition, numerous references to synagogues exist papyrological and literary sources. By the first century AD, they were clearly established throughout Egypt. The Jewish philosopher Philo, writing in this period, states that in Alexandria alone many synagogues existed in each section of the city.

The synagogues also appear to have been quite large in size. A land survey in Crocodilopolis from the first century BC records that a synagogue on the outskirts of the city occupied two-and-a-half acres of land. Moreover, its congregation leased out a "sacred garden" on an adjoining one-acre plot.

Synagogue dedications are nearly identical to those recovered for Egyptian temples of the period, the chief difference being the substitution of the word "synagogue" for "temple." Various allusions in inscriptions to asylum rights and to such architectural features as sacred precincts, pylons (monumental gateways), and exedrae (usually temple annexes for philosophical debate) suggest that the synagogues in this country were modeled after local temples. If so, the absence of altars and idols would have distinguished them from their pagan counterparts.

[Modern Elephantine Island] One of the best known Jewish communities existed at Elephantine Island in the Nile River at modern Aswan. They and their temple are known from Aramaic papyri of the fifth century BC. Their Temple of Yahweh was known to exist before the invasion of Egypt in 525 BC by the Persian king, Cambyses, but its precise location is not known. From this papyri, we know that in 410 BC, the priests of the nearby Temple of Khnum convinced the local governor, in t he absence of the Persian satrap (provincial governor), to attack and destroy the Jewish Temple.

Though the Jews wrote to Bagoas who was Governor of Judea, and Yohanan, High Priest in Jerusalem, they received no assistance at first. However, two years later when they wrote again to Bagoas and to the two sons of Sanballat, an earlier governor of Samaria, this time they were rewarded with an answer. A messenger was sent to request the permission of the Persian satrap to rebuild the temple. Indeed, according to one papyrus, it was restored in 401 BC. However, in 332 BC, shortly after the end of Persian rule in Egypt, the Jewish colony was dispersed and its temple once again disappeared.

Another, later Temple of Yahweh also existed at Leontopolis in the Delta region. It is evidenced by the work of the first century Jewish historian, Josephus. He tells us that, after the death of the [Interior of the Ben Ezra Synagogue] High Priest Onias III, his son Onias fled to Egypt where he became a military commander of the Jewish military colony at Leontopolis (Tell el-Yahudiyeh). This was, of course, during the Greek Period, during the reign of Ptolemy VI, whom he asked for and obtained permission to build a temple. According to Josephus, this was built on the site of an old Egyptian temple and was modeled on the Temple in Jerusalem, though of course it was smaller and less splendid. This temple was founded in 160 BC, but was destroyed by the Romans in 74 AD after the Jewish Revolt.

Today, one of the most interesting sacred sites of Old Cairo is one of the remaining Synagogues in all of Egypt. This is the Synagogue of Ben Ezra, which stands in a pleasant, shady garden near the churches of St. Sergius and St. Barabara. It has recently been the subject of a restoration project. According to tradition, there has been a Jewish community in Old Cairo since the time of Moses. However, the oldest actual documentation of this community is from records written by medieval travelers, such as Benjamin of Tudela (c 1173), who visited the synagogue and claimed to have seen the Torah of Ezra the Scribe.

[Scholar studying the cache of documents from the Ben Ezra Synagogue] The first Synagoge in this location was destroyed when the Romans took Egypt, and later, during the time of the Arab conquest in 641 AD, it was given to the Copts by the Muslim general, Amr. The Coptic Christians built a church on the site which was dedicated to St. Michael. However, this church was destroyed during the rule of Caliph el-Hakim and in the twelfth century, it was given back to the Jews. A new Synagogue was built on the site by Abraham Ben Ezra, the great Rabbi of Jerusalem.

Late in the 1800s, a hoard of ancient manuscripts, known as the Geniza documents, was found on the site. A geniza is a place in a synagogue in which obsolete paperwork would be discarded., and there were some 250,000 documents found here. Included was an ancient Torah, which was split up and portions are now owned by various institutions in Europe and America. However, some interesting documents remain, including a copy of the Torah dating to the fifth century BC written on gazelle skin, a drawing of a seven-branched candlestick on dear skin, and the manuscript known as the Atlas of Moses.

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Title Author Date Publisher Reference Number
Alexandria: City of the Western Mind Vrettos, Theodore 2001 Free Press, The ISBN 0-7432-0569-3

Alexander to Actium (The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age) Green, Peter 1990 University of California Press ISBN 0-520-05611-6

Cairo Raymond, Andre 2000 Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-00316-0

Cairo: An Illustrated History Raymond, Andre, Editor 2002 Rizzoli, New York ISBN 0-8478-2500-0
Cairo (Biography of a City) Aldridge, James 1969 Little, Brown and Company ISBN 72-79364

Cairo (Giza-Sakkarah-Memphis El-Mallakh, Kamal 1996 Bonechi ISBN 88-7009-231-3

Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian; Nicholson, Paul 1995 Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers ISBN 0-8109-3225-3

History of Ancient Egypt, A Grimal, Nicolas 1988 Blackwell None Stated

Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-815034-2
Sacred Sites of Ancient Egypt Oakes, Lorna 2001 Lorenz Books ISBN (non stated)