Visible Identities: In Search of Egypt’s Jews in Early Islamic Egypt

Abstract

When the Arabs arrived in Egypt in the mid-seventh century (CE), they reportedly encountered substantial Jewish communities in Alexandria and at the Roman fortress of Babylon at the point where the Nile enters the Delta. Descriptions of synagogues, courts and religious educational institutions suggest a well-organised and functioning religious community. References to Jewish Egyptians in documentary sources, however -Greek, Coptic and Arabic papyri and inscriptions -remain scanty in the first two centuries of Muslim rule in Egypt. To quote Maged Mikhail's recent historical study of the period, 'Richly documented throughout Late Antiquity and especially from the late tenth century on, Egyptian Jews are marginally attested in the sources of the centuries under investigation [i.e., the early post-conquest centuries]. This prevents even a cursory survey' (Mikhail 2014, 9). Only from the ninth century do Jewish Egyptians become more visible in the documents. Three questions follow from this observation. (1) How to explain the absence of Jews in the documentary record from the first two centuries of Arab rule in Egypt?(2) What caused the increase in attestations from the ninth century onwards? (3) Does this signify an increase in the Jewish Egyptian population or are other factors at play? In this paper I will argue that the introduction of ethnic-religious identity markers in the written record in the ninth century is best explained by demographic changes and the consequent socio-political re-orientations related to these changes.1 Another version of this article has been arranged to appear under the same title in Elisabeth R. O'Connell (ed.), Egypt, empire and the formation of religious identity (c. 30 BC-AD 1900), British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 11 (Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming). It is based on a presentation I held at the 2015-conference 'Egypt and empire: Religious identities from Roman to modern times' at the British Museum. I would like to thank Eve Krakowski, Susanna de Vries, Nicholas de Lange, Adam Silverstein, Luk van Rompay, and Jelle Bruning for their help in providing references and feedback. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own. This work was supported by the European Research Council under Grant number 683194.