On the Road to Heaven: Taxation, Conversions, and the Coptic-Muslim Socioeconomic Gap in Medieval Egypt

Abstract

Self-selection of converts is an under-studied explanation of inter-religion socioeconomic status (SES) differences. Inspired by this conjecture, I trace the Coptic-Muslim SES gap in Egypt to self-selection-on-SES during Egypt’s conversion from Coptic Christianity to Islam. Selection was driven by a poll tax on non-Muslims, imposed from 641 until 1856, which induced poorer Copts to convert to Islam leading Copts to shrink into a better-off minority. Using novel data sources, I document that high-tax districts in 641–1100 had in 1848–1868 relatively fewer Copts, but greater SES differentials. Group restrictions on apprenticeships and schooling led the initial selection to perpetuate.

Taxing Identity: Theory and Evidence From Early Islam

“…routes do not vary within Egypt). 14 Finally, our paper extends Saleh's (2018) empirical analysis of taxation and conversions in medieval Egypt, by endogenizing taxation from the viewpoint of the caliphate.…”

A ‘new’ economic history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

“…Timur Kuran, a major pioneer of this line of literature, attributed MENA's underdevelopment to certain Islamic institutions such as the inheritance law that led to the fragmentation of land ownership, the religious endowment (waqf) system that hindered the development of the corporation, and the high individualism of Islamic law (Kuran, 2004(Kuran, , 2012. More recently, there has been a surge in the institutional literature on MENA (Artunç, 2015;Blaydes and Chaney, 2013;Carvalho, 2013;Chaney, 2013;Meyersson, 2014;Rubin, 2011;Saleh, 2015Saleh, , 2016a.…”

“…The archival sources came from Egypt, one of the largest countries in the region, and whose archives were established in 1828 and are one of the oldest in the MENA region. Using two nationally representative samples of Egypt's population censuses of 1848 and 1868, two of the earliest pre‐Colonial individual‐level population censuses from any non‐Western country (Saleh, ), I documented that non‐Muslims (7 percent of Egypt's population) had higher school enrolment rates and were more likely to work as artisans and white‐collar workers than Muslims (Saleh, , ). Egypt's non‐Muslims included Copts (Egyptian Christians), who constituted the vast majority (94 percent) of non‐Muslims in Egypt, and two small urban minorities of non‐Coptic Christians (mostly, Levantines, Greeks and Armenians) and Jews (Karaite and Rabbinic Jews).…”

“…But why did the Coptic‐Muslim socioeconomic differences emerge to begin with? I argued in Saleh () that this was partially due to the tax system that was imposed after the Arab conquest of the then‐Coptic Egypt in 641 and that was enforced until 1856. In particular, Arabs imposed a poll tax on non‐Muslims, a tax that was removed upon an individual's conversion to Islam.…”

“…Pioneering scholars such as Kuran (2004Kuran ( , 2012 emphasized the role of Islamic legal institutions, such as those governing inheritance and pious trust (waqf), in explaining the relative stagnation of the region vis-a-vis Western Europe. A number of scholars expanded this area of research by examining the impact of various institutions in the MENA region (Artunç, 2015;Blaydes and Chaney, 2013;Carvalho, 2013;Chaney, 2013;Meyersson, 2014;Rubin, 2011;Saleh, 2015Saleh, , 2016a.…”