Visible Identities: In Search of Egypt’s Jews in Early Islamic Egypt

Abstract

When the Arabs arrived in Egypt in the mid-seventh century (CE), they reportedly encountered substantial Jewish communities in Alexandria and at the Roman fortress of Babylon at the point where the Nile enters the Delta. Descriptions of synagogues, courts and religious educational institutions suggest a well-organised and functioning religious community. References to Jewish Egyptians in documentary sources, however — Greek, Coptic and Arabic papyri and inscriptions — remain scanty in the first two centuries of Muslim rule in Egypt. To quote Maged Mikhail’s recent historical study of the period, ‘Richly documented throughout Late Antiquity and especially from the late tenth century on, Egyptian Jews are marginally attested in the sources of the centuries under investigation [i.e., the early post-conquest centuries]. This prevents even a cursory survey’ (Mikhail 2014, 9). Only from the ninth century do Jewish Egyptians become more visible in the documents. Three questions follow from this observation. (1) How to explain the absence of Jews in the documentary record from the first two centuries of Arab rule in Egypt? (2) What caused the increase in attestations from the ninth century onwards? (3) Does this signify an increase in the Jewish Egyptian population or are other factors at play? In this paper I will argue that the introduction of ethnic-religious identity markers in the written record in the ninth century is best explained by demographic changes and the consequent socio-political re-orientations related to these changes.