We can see in this picture the St Joseph chapel around 1895 in Cairo. Despite the excellent scholarship on Coptic and Evangelist missionary history in Egypt and the Sudan (for instance, Sharkey, 2008) the material, urban, and economic aspects of Catholicism in the city are rarely mentioned. The public image of khedives and kings often included their protection and land-grants for Catholic establishments, which Europeans saw as proof of progress and civilization. Cairo is just as a city of churches as it is a city of mosques and – to a lesser extent – synagogues. The Catholic St. Joseph chapel was built in 1874. This picture provides a good occasion to look at the spatial dimension of Catholic Cairo.
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, PET FOL-VZ-1478.
Significant Catholic establishments in Cairo started from the middle of the nineteenth century. Greek and Melkite Catholics from Aleppo and the Syrian cities had had important trading and literary activities in various Egyptian cities since the eighteenth century (Philipp, The Syrians; Hill, “The First Arabic Translations”). In the nineteenth century, Italian and Maltese immigrants, Coptic Catholics,and soon Ottoman Syrian Christians – belonging to various minor denominations -, the French, and some Austro-Hungarian subjects populated the new chapels and churches. In fact, Cairo also served as the headquarter of Catholic missions in the Sudan and Ethiopia (until today this is the case). The churches and monasteries usually contained a garden and living quarters, separated by large walls from the streets. In the second half of the nineteenth century, many churches received a land-grant from the khedives. Building a church was a sensitive issue because according to Islamic law only the preservation of Christian places of worship is allowed in conquered land. The question whether Egypt was conquered or peacefully surrendered land had animated many discussions among Muslim jurists (one interesting discussion occurred in the eighteenth century; see Perlmann, “Shaykh al-Damanhuri”).
Source: View of Cairo towards the St Joseph Church, around 1910. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, EI-182.
Catholic interests prompted important urban expansion and activity. The St. Joseph church managed one of the best cine-clubs in ‘Imad al-Din street in the 1950s. One less known fact is that Heliopolis has Catholic roots. The Belgian entrepreneur Baron Empain offered land to congregations, in particular Catholic, because they were the ones who managed the largest number of denominational schools, as a marketing strategy to populate the town. Thus he gave concession of land to Catholic congregations (churches and schools) for a nominal amount (1 LE per square meter) and this was what stirred the development and expansion of Heliopolis (Volait-Minnaert). Another Catholic establishment is in ‘Abbasiyya. One late major concession of land at reduced price was the one granted by King Fouad to the Dominicans in 1929: 12000 sq. m. at half price, at Masna’ al-Tarabish street. The Dominicans wanted to create a Cairo branch of the Biblical School in Jerusalem in 1928 but they decided to turn it in 1937 to the study of Islam – and this institute hosts now one of the major holdings of Arabic manuscripts and prints in the world. This is IDEO today.
The spatial dimension of Catholic establishments also included an aural presence as Catholic churches – unlike the more silent Protestant ones – use bells to indicate time (for Cairo soundscapes in general see Fahmy, Street Sounds) and to call to prayer (the so-called “Angelus” – 7 am and 7 pm in France). A French author joked in the early nineteenth century that Mehmed Ali’s reforms caused that church bells rang now at the same time when there was the Muslim call to prayer (Ampère, “Voyages,” 403). However, while accidents may happen the simultaneity and competition of religious sounds is possibly a myth as churches carefully avoid ringing the bells in the Muslim prayer times.
(A.M. & M.V.)
Bibliography:
Hill, Peter. “The First Arabic Translations of Enlightenment Literature: The Damietta Circle of the 1800s and 1810s.” Intellectual History Review 25, no. 2 (2015): 209-33.
Philipp, Thomas. The Syrians in Egypt, 1725–1975. Stuttgart: Steiner-Verlag, 1985.
Perlmann, Moshe. “Shaykh Al-Damanhuri Against the Churches of Cairo (1739).” Biblos (Coimbra) 46, (1970): 27.
Sharkey, Heather J. American Evangelicals in Egypt : Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Documents of IDEO’s foundation: https://www.ideo-cairo.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Annexes.pdf
Jean-Jacques Ampère, “Voyages et recherches en Egypte et en Nubie,” Revue des deux mondes, XVIII, 1er mai 1847, 393-416
Fahmy, Ziad. Street Sounds Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2020.
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