Coptica v. 16 2017

Portraying the Religious Other In the Age of Pope Matthew I (The 87 th Patriarch, 1378–1408) *

Mark N. Swanson

Since the Arab conquest of Egypt in the middle of the seventh century of the Common Era, the literature of the Coptic Orthodox Church has been created in an environment in which political power was held and society shaped in important ways by Muslims, who to the Copts were religiously Other, people who did not follow the teachings or the practices of the Christian Church. For some of us, this is an element in the ongoing fascination and wider importance of this literature: it reflects the struggles of a post -Constantinian Christian community, one that had to learn how to be the Church and to create and maintain a specifically Christian culture without benefit of the coercive power of a supportive state. It comes as no surprise that within such a literature there should be a wide spectrum in the ways in which Muslims are represented. Some texts stress the particularities of Coptic Orthodox identity—and do so by making the sharpest possible contrast between the Copts and those who are religiously Other, sometimes saying things that could not be said in public. When Jason Zabarowski published his edition of the 13 th -century Coptic- language Martyrdom of John of Phanijōit, he pointed out that the text, which would only be read by Copts by virtue of being in the Coptic language, depicted Muslims as simply immoral. 1 He helpfully suggested that such a text could be considered an example of a “hidden transcript,” James C. Scott’s term for a discourse in which a dominated group brings to word subversive notions that cannot be stated openly, but that serve the cohesion of the group. 2 But at the other end of a spectrum of representation, there are texts motivated by practical matters of coexistence that stress the common experience of Christians and Muslims in Egypt. These provide examples of (again to use Scott’s language), a “public transcript,” one that could be widely read and that strives to avoid giving offense to the dominant group. Let me give examples from different ends of this spectrum. In an earlier issue of this journal I wrote about the Fatimid-era Martyrdom of Jirjis, whose name before his baptism was Muzāḥim; he is known in the modern-day

* This paper was first delivered at the Fifteenth St. Shenouda–UCLA Conference of Coptic Studies, on July 20, 2013. 1 Jason R. Zabarowski , The Coptic Martyrdom of John of Phanijōit: Assimilation and Conversion to Islam in Thirteenth-Century Egypt (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005); on the depiction of the Muslims, see Chapter One. 2 Ibid., 14-15, pointing to James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

Coptica 16 (2017), 81 – 92.