1/14/11

Today, we visited Old Cairo or, as it’s more commonly referred to, Coptic Cairo. Coptics are the Christians of Egypt and while 90% of the people of Egypt are Muslim, 10% are Coptic. When Dr. Denis gave a little introduction at the beginning of the tour, I was surprised to learn that when the Muslims came to Egypt, they did not persecute the Coptics. In fact, more churches were built after the Muslims took over than before. Before the Muslims came, the Roman Catholic and the Western Christians persecuted the Coptics.
   
First we saw the Fortress of Babylon. The first church we went into looked like a regular church with the pewter and the stained glass windows depicting the different biblical scenes. But an interesting thing I noticed was that there was a pulpit similar to the one in the mosques we saw in Islamic Cairo. I also noticed that some of the structural designs were similar to the mosques, such as the dome shape. I thought that the Coptics borrowed the style from the Muslims, but turns out the Muslims borrowed it from the Coptics. I also thought it was interesting that the church had been built on top of the Fortress of Babylon so that if there were Coptics praying inside and someone on the outside wanted to enter and persecute them, they could escape to the Fortress through a trap door.
   
We saw one more church where the Coptics claim the Holy Family fled to when the escaped persecution in Jerusalem. I haven’t heard the Quranic version of this story, so I guess this is going to be my next point of focus when I read about Jesus, or Prophet Isa as the Muslims call him. I also liked how the ceiling of the church was in the shape of Noah’s arc.
   
Next, we visited the Ben Ezra Synagogue where I learned that there are very few Jews left in Egypt, only about 55 in Cairo and the synagogue is actually no longer active. It was deteriorated, but about 20 years ago a Canadian woman collected 20 million to restore it. So what we can see of this synagogue today is not original, except for the ceiling.
   
The last site we visited was a mosque. When we got to the mosque, it was time for the third prayer of the day, Asr. But we also noticed some men carrying a coffin and I knew that there would be a janaaza after the Asr prayer. So I caught up with the jamaat  for Asr, and soon after, we prayed the janaaza. The mosque had a melancholy mood because of the janaaza, but even if an outsider didn’t see the coffin or know that there was a janaaza going on, I feel like he would know because of the tone of the Imam who was reciting the prayer in an obviously mournful way.

Church at Coptic (Old) Cairo

 Well next to Ben Ezra Synagogue where Prophet Moses was (supposedly) found