Between Cross and Crescent: Coptic Christian Mobilization in Egypt’s Revolution of 1919

The years leading up to the Great War were fraught with sectarian tensions in Egypt. Coptic Christian ascendancy in Egyptian politics and public life had come under increased scrutiny in the religious and nationalist press during the early twentieth century. The critiques focused on the growing wealth and influence of Copts, their suspected collusion with British colonizers, or accusations they planned to impose a Christian state. The assassination of Egypt’s first and only Coptic Christian Prime Minister Boutros Ghali Pasha in 1910 exacerbated this already heightened sectarian environment, unleashing a national crisis not only over the specter of political violence but also anti-Christian sentiments plaguing relations between the country’s Muslim majority and Christian minority.

Yet into WWI and especially following the Armistice of 1918, Muslim and Christian laity found opportunities to mobilize around a common cause: Egyptian independence from the wartime British imposed protectorate. Prominent political and communal leaders from both religious communities supported a nationalist and anti-imperial platform, joined by an emergent women’s movement also comprised of Muslim and Christian advocates that catalyzed the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. Based on multilingual primary source material from three different continents, this presentation argues that Coptic Christians in Egypt enjoyed a unique moment of national leadership at the peak of the 1919 revolution– a stark contrast to the tensions and suspicions that characterized their national standing during the preceding decade.