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Coptic Christians lost their majority status in Egypt after the 14th century and the spread of Islam in the entirety of North Africa. Today, Copts form a major ethno-religious group whose origins date back to the Ancient Egyptians. [6] [7] The Coptic Christian population in Egypt is the largest Christian community in the Middle East. [8]
Coptic icon of St. Mark Portrait of a Coptic Christian woman by Bertha Müller, circa 1850. The Copts are one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East. Although integrated in the larger Egyptian nation state, the Copts have survived as a distinct religious community forming around 5 to 20 percent of the population.
The position of the Copts began to improve early in the 19th century under the stability and tolerance of Muhammad Ali's dynasty. The Coptic community ceased to be regarded by the state as an administrative unit and, by 1855 the Jizya tax was lifted. Shortly thereafter, Christians started to serve in the Egyptian army.
During the 14th and 15th centuries, Nubian Christianity was supplanted by Islam. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the larger body of ethnic Egyptian Christians began to call themselves Coptic Orthodox, to distinguish themselves from the Catholic Copts and from the Eastern Orthodox, who are mostly Greek. [14]
The Copts are descended from the pharaonic inhabitants of Egypt. Most ethnic Copts belongs to the Coptic Orthodox Church. Copts number between 10-15 percent of the Egyptian population [4] of 104 million [5] The Copts and Egyptian Muslims have many similarities in their identity, as they have lived amongst one another for centuries. [6]
The "Coptic period" is an informal designation for Late Roman Egypt (3rd−4th centuries) and Byzantine Egypt (4th−7th centuries).This era was defined by the religious shifts in Egyptian culture to Coptic Christianity from ancient Egyptian religion, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in the 7th century.
During the high Middle Ages, trade routes connected Egypt with the Near East and many Coptic merchants ended up settling there. By the start of the 13th century, the Coptic Church had come to possess an altar adjacent to the Holy Sepulcher, the Monastery of Deir el-Sultan in Jerusalem, and a few churches in Jerusalem, Gaza, and Damascus.
Many Coptic intellectuals hold to "Pharaonism," which states that Coptic culture is largely derived from pre-Christian, Pharaonic Egyptian culture. It gives the Copts a claim to a deep heritage in Egyptian history and culture. Pharaonism was widely held by Coptic and Muslim scholars in the early 20th century, and it helped bridge the divide ...