Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/273

Rh Christians groaned under the tyranny of Amīrs of the Sunni Khalifs (at Damascus and Bagdad). From 969 to 1171 Egypt has a Shi'ah Khalif (of the so-called Fatimid House) of her own. The Fatimids are, on the whole, a shade less outrageous in their treatment of Christians; but one of them, the unspeakable Ḥākim (996-1021), is the worst persecutor under whom Egypt, perhaps any country, ever suffered. In 1171 the great Saladin restored the Sunni faith, and set up a line of practically independent Sultans. His descendants (the Aiyūbids) persecuted too. In 1250 the slave-guard (Mamluks) get the upper hand; their officers reign for two centuries and a half, during the latter part of which time anarchy and misrule of every kind reduce the country to utter misery, and the Copts suffer again untold misfortunes. In 1517 the Ottoman Turks conquer Egypt and give the Christians, not real toleration nor even decent treatment, but a rather better tyranny than they had yet known. It was not till the 19th century that European interference at last brought peace to the Copts.

During all this time the line of Coptic Patriarchs, from Dioscor and Timothy the Cat, continues unbroken, side by side with that of their Orthodox rivals. Both lines can show a long series of pontiffs who bore appalling ill-usage for their faith. The Coptic clergy and people keep alive the Christian religion almost miraculously through the long centuries of ill-usage. Their old language died out, except in the liturgy; they all learned to speak Arabic. Enormous numbers apostatized during the continual persecution, but not all. The comparatively small number which remain are those who, bearing everything with that extraordinary meekness which is characteristic of the native Egyptian, yet never let the faith of Christ be quite stamped out. What they have borne for it we can hardly conceive. Honour to the countless unknown Coptic martyrs who shed their blood, to the still greater number of confessors who bore poverty, imprisonment and torture for the Lord of all Christians. For, when the last day comes, weightier than their theological errors will count the glorious wounds they bore for him under the blood-stained cloud of Islam.