A Silent Patriarch by Daniel Fanous

Author:Daniel Fanous
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St Vladimir's Seminary Press

Notes

1Al-Masri, Story of the Coptic Church, 6:161.

2Meinardus, Christian Egypt: Faith and Life, 22. For a useful summary of the history of the maglis, see Zaklama, Pope Kyrillos VI, 1:387–411.

3Ibrahim notes that the move had historical precedence with Ibn al-Assal, a thirteenth-century jurist, justifying the formation of a body consisting of “specialized laity” to “assist” the clergy; see Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, 34.

4Meinardus, Christian Egypt: Faith and Life, 23. Accordingly, the original constitution stipulates the Council’s management of the monastic endowments (waqf), schools, benevolent societies, and personal status issues; see Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, 35–36. For a discussion of the PSL issues, see John Khalil, “A Brief History of Coptic Personal Status Law,” Berkeley Journal of Middle Eastern & Islamic Law 3, no. 1/2 (2010): 81–139.

5Van Doorn-Harder, Modern Coptic Papacy, 88; Donald Reid, Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 261. Nelly van Doorn-Harder suggests that similar reform was taking place at the al-Azhar with likewise similar reactions from the traditional Islamic legal scholars.

6Al-Masri, True Story of Christianity in Egypt, 2:352; van Doorn-Harder, Modern Coptic Papacy, 89; Samir Seikaly, “Coptic Communal Reform: 1860–1914,” Middle Eastern Studies 6, no. 3 (1970): 262.

7Carter, The Copts in Egyptian Politics, 28.

8Adel Azer Bestawros, “Community Council, Coptic,” in CE, 580b–82b; Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, 37; Meinardus, Christian Egypt: Faith and Life, 23.

9Van Doorn-Harder, Modern Coptic Papacy, 90. Pasha, in prerepublican Egypt, was one of the highest ranks in the Ottoman Empire’s political system.

10Ibid.

11Meinardus, Christian Egypt: Faith and Life, 23–24.

12To limit confusion, and given the audience, I will refer to the “monastic endowments” by its popular singular usage (“waqf”), rather than differentiating between singular (waqf) and plural (awqaf or waqfs).

13Seikaly, “Coptic Communal Reform,” 260–61. For a sense of the enormity of the figure, see: Carter, The Copts in Egyptian Politics, 42; Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, 126–27. Nelly van Doorn-Harder suggests that in 1926 there were 100 monks inhabiting seven monasteries who had access to 300,000 Egyptian pounds (hereafter abbreviated as LE) in revenues from 5–9000 feddans of land, an astronomical figure at the time; see van Doorn-Harder, Modern Coptic Papacy, 92–93. [One Egyptian pound converted to US $0.20 in 1926, or just over $2.81 in 2019 terms (dollartimes.com). One feddan is equal to 1.038 acres (or 4200 m2; justintools.com and other sites).]

14Carter, The Copts in Egyptian Politics, 29.

15Van Doorn-Harder, Modern Coptic Papacy, 92; Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, 117. Ibrahim also notes that the married priests lived in a state of poverty: the average salary was 3 LE a month, which in fact was only given as a charitable contribution 3–4 times per year, with most living off gifts of food from their congregation. This further suggested a drastic misappropriation of funds; see ibid., 124–25.

16Van Doorn-Harder, Modern Coptic Papacy, 92. Watson suggests many saw the maglis as a brake on patriarchal excess; Watson, Among the Copts, 47.

17Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, 117.

18Ibid., 118.

19Meinardus, Christian Egypt: Faith and Life, 25; Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, 119; al-Masri, Story of the Coptic Church, 5:42.

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