It is not till long afterwards, when all have settled down under the Moslem tyrant, that the Melkites reappear as a small rayah in Egypt, and reclaim their property and rights.
The Copts then obtain the usual terms of rayahs or ḏimmis under Moslem rule. At first their condition was not altogether hopeless. They may not serve in the army; they must pay the heavy poll-tax. They may restore their existing churches, not build new ones. Their churches may have no external Christian sign (such as a cross); nor may they ring bells.[1] They may not ride a horse nor bear weapons. It is death to convert a Moslem, to speak against Islam, to seduce a Moslem woman. It is death for a Copt who has once accepted Islam to return to the faith of his fathers. The word or oath of a Copt may not be taken in a law-court against that of a Moslem. It is death to rebel or to traffic with any foreign power against their masters. But, if they keep all these conditions, they are to be let alone and not persecuted because of their faith. They are not to be forced to apostatize; even a Christian woman married to a Moslem is to be allowed to practise her own religion. They become a subject "nation (millah)" in the usual Moslem sense.[2] The civil head of this nation was the Coptic Patriarch. He was, of course, himself subject to the Moslem governor; but, within the limits the conqueror allowed him, he had considerable power over his people, even in civil matters. Questions of wills, marriages, even of property, were settled by his courts. Any Copt at any moment could shake off the Patriarch's authority and join the ruling class by professing Islam. But for those who would not do so there was considerable internal self-government within their own nation. The Patriarch had rights of first-fruits of benefices and of tithes, which were enforced by the Government.
- ↑ The Prophet, and after him his True Believers, hated bells.
- ↑ The Moslem Governments (Arab and Turk) always count a man's "nation" by his religion. Each religious body becomes a millah, with its own administration, in civil affairs too. If you profess the Monophysite faith in Egypt, you belong to the Coptic millah. The Moslems would force a man to obey the regulations of his own "nation"; it was (till quite lately) almost impossible to pass from one religious society to another, to become a Catholic if you had been Orthodox, for instance. The Orthodox bishop could and did force you to continue to obey him. All through the history of Arab and Turkish government this difficulty recurs.
