office) dared to ride (without dismounting) past the Al-Azhar mosque at Cairo wearing boots, spurs and a white turban.[1]
In 1389 a great procession of Copts who had accepted Islam under fear of death marched through Cairo. Repenting of their apostasy, they now wished to atone for it by the inevitable consequence of returning to Christianity. So as they marched they proclaimed that they believed in Christ and renounced Mohammed. They were seized, and all the men were beheaded one after another in an open square before the women. But this did not terrify the women; so they, too, were all martyred.
The time of the Burǵi Sultans (1390-1517) was one of utter misery for all Egyptians. A series of helpless puppet-kings was set up by the lawless Mamluks. These kings, constantly deposed or murdered,[2] had no control of the soldiers. The country was in a state of anarchy; the soldiers did just as they liked, plundered and slew peaceable citizens of any creed with impunity. No decent woman dared go out of doors. And the unhappy Christians, always victims of Moslem misrule, naturally suffered tenfold in this state of things. The hideous condition of the state produced continual and ghastly famines in the Nile valley, richest land of the Levant, which had once supplied corn for all the empire. Honest Maḳrīzī, who has been our faithful guide so long, lived at this time (he died at Cairo in 1441). He gives a lurid description of one such famine, in the year 1403, from which he too suffered.[3]
The only Coptic Patriarch who stands out in this period is Gabriel V (1409-1427), who wrote an explanation of the Coptic rite and reformed their liturgical books.[4] John XI (1427-1453) showed some desire for reunion at the time of the Council of Florence (1438-1439). He sent John, abbot of an Egyptian monastery, as his legate to the council. A union with the Monophysites of Syria and Egypt (called Jacobites) was proclaimed, and Abbot John signed the decree.[5] But the union fell through almost at once, or rather was never really carried out in Egypt.
