Julian Barnett
Egypt, Part 4: Pan-Arabism and Today’s Cairo

Julian Barnett - Egypt, Part 4: Pan-Arabism and Today’s Cairo

- Morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are. Students at Lockdown University, welcome back and thank you for tuning in to this fourth of four lectures on Egypt, specifically Cairo, but with the general view over Egypt. And thank you very much for joining. Let me start off just by saying a couple of things. Some of the photographs I’m going to show you this evening, you will remember from lectures one, two, and three. And of course, lecture one was looking at pharaonic Cairo, lecture two at Coptic Cairo, lecture three Islamic Cairo. What I’m going to do this evening is I’m going to use some of those pictures again but with a different slant, because what I’m going to attempt to do tonight is to pull all of those lectures in one bundle and then take it to today’s lecture four to say where is Egypt heading? What direction is this country going in? Specifically, what is going on, on the Cairo Street, that can tell us something about the future and what we can expect? Although, in that region of the world as we know, the unexpected is what normally happens. And I think what’s really important to bear in mind with all of this is that with the exception or possibly the equal status of Iran, I cannot think of any countries in that region, if the world, that have such a strong sense of national identity. And that goes down to the fact that Iran and Egypt are quite probably the countries that have the largest, more or less, unchanged borders anywhere in the world. An Egyptian, if you speak to an Egyptian on the street in Cairo, they have a sense of history going back 5,000 years, which is, of course, the title of this evening’s lecture or the subtitle of this evening’s lecture.

So this is a country with an incredibly strong sense of itself and that influences and projects that country abroad and has a part to play in the way that country behaves in every level, internationally, nationally, locally, and so on. I think I’ve said on a number of occasions, if you speak to what I suppose I will term the average Egyptian if there is such a thing, what would that Egyptian say? If you said, “What are you?” the first thing that they would most probably say is, “I’m an Egyptian.” “I’m a Muslim,” would probably come later. “I am an Arab,” would come bottom of the list if at all, and I’ll say a little more about that later. Egyptians see themselves as primarily Egyptians. So what I’m going to do this evening is we’re going to go through some of those pharaonic roots again, and the Coptic roots and the Islamic roots of what makes an Egyptian an Egyptian and how that then propels Egypt and Egyptians to behave and to think and to do the things that they do today. Particularly important for those neighbours all around Egypt, because this is a giant of a country when it comes to population. It’s 25%, around about 110 million, of the 444 million Arabs in the Middle East are Egyptian. One in four Arabs are Egyptian. A country of between 107 and 115 million people. The next country down in population from the point of view of the Arab world is Algeria with 46 million. And then after that, Sudan and then Morocco. So Egypt is by far and away the most populous country in the Arab world. And I would argue it is the absolute heartbeat of the Islamic world, culturally, architecturally, religiously. More on than that as we go along.

So Emily, over to you with the pictures. So if we can go onto that first picture, you will recall that flag of Egypt. And if we go zoom in I think a little further to the next picture, you will see that central crest. And to me, if anything was an embodiment of precisely what I was talking about, that Egypt sees itself as a continuum going back thousands of years, and that’s the key words continuum, unbroken, this figure in the middle of the Egyptian flag is in a way an absolute embodiment of that. Because if you look at that figure, you’ve got this, the national bird of Egypt, the eagle, but that was also a key bird in Ancient Egyptian times. Look at the way the eagle is drawn onto the flag. It’s an art deco, quite angular eagle, which is an absolute hark back to ‘30s, '40s, and '50s of the modern, Pan-Arab, nationalist state of Gamal Abdel Nasser. I’ll come to that a bit later. And then at the very bottom, you’ve got the Arabic there which is all about , the Egyptian Arabic Republic. Think about that, Egyptian Arabic Republic. It’s a republic, not an Islamic state. Arabic comes after Egyptian. Very, very clear there. So in a way, that emblem on the front of the modern-day Egyptian flag is backwards looking all the way back to pharaonic Egypt. Really gives us a hint of how Egyptians see themselves. And then forward looking through to the '50s. One final thing. The eagle was also the bird of Salah Al-Din, known in the West as Saladin, who was the first caliph of Cairo. He wasn’t born in Egypt. He isn’t buried there. Buried in Damascus, born in Tikrit in Iraq. But he was the first caliph of Cairo, one of the great, great Arab Islamic heroes in Arab Islamic history.

So once again, that’s harking back to a mediaeval Cairo. Everything about that flag conjures up that continuum of magnificent history that goes back 5,000 years into Cairo. To the next one please, Emily. And you can see here now, once again, the position of Egypt. We know where Egypt is, but it was Napoleon who said that Egypt is the most important territory on Earth. May I remind you where it is. It is in the Middle East. It is Mediterranean. It is African. It is in the Gulf. So it touches upon all of these key regions. And Egypt is all of those things. If you’re in Cairo, or let’s go further north, if you are right up in the north to Alexandria, there’s a very European feel to parts of Alexandria still, a hangover from that period. If you go down to Cairo, it’s much more sort of Arab, Middle Eastern, visceral Arab, Middle Eastern. If you go down to Upper Egypt, remember Upper Egypt is south, direction of the flow of the Nile, it feels African, Nubian. People dress differently, they walk differently, behave differently, the music is different, the food is different. So there are many Egypts. And it’s a large country geographically and a diverse country from the point view of the input from the regions that draws upon. And to the next one. So we are moving on now. And there you can see, of course, the Nile. Upper Egypt, lower Egypt. That is lower Egypt in the north, Upper Egypt in the south. The Nile branches out into the Nile, that, or the valley towards the top and the Nile Delta and then the many, many tributaries of the Nile. 99.99% of the population of Egypt lives within 20 kilometres of the river Nile. Nothing has changed in that respect since time immemorial. The only exceptions to that are two-fold. One are the oases in Egypt like Siwa Oasis and a few others, oases dotted in the deserts, and a few major settlements that have been built in the last 30 years that have piped water coming out to them from other parts of Egypt.

But nevertheless, the Nile is the life force and the lifeblood of Egypt. And that must not be forgotten when trying to understand that psychology of Egyptian people. To the next picture. The Arab League, it’s headquarters are in Cairo, with the exception of 1977 to 1983 I think when the Arab League withdrew its headquarters from Cairo in reaction and in response and in condemnation of the Egyptians signing a peace agreement with Israel, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. November '77 when Sadat finally made his trip to Israel. Remarkable event. With the exception of those few years when, in protests, the Arab world withdrew its Arab League headquarters from Egypt, the Arab League has been based in Cairo. Their lies one of the great contradictions, because as I said before, many Egyptians don’t primarily consider themselves Arabs. When they use the word Arab, they’re referring to the people of the Arabian Peninsula. So the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Iraqis, the Yemenis. So Egyptians do not consider themselves primarily Arab. They see themselves as the Arabis people of Egypt. They were invaded by Arab forces. After the death of Muhammad, Islam swept to Katsuren Peninsula into Egypt, across the North African Southern Mediterranean area. So Egyptians, this is really important to understand how they see themselves. They are Egyptians who have been colonised by the Arab invaders of the eighth, ninth, and 10th centuries. More than that a little later, as well. Despite that, the Arab League is headquartered in Cairo. And to the next one. So we’re now going back to pharaonic Cairo. Let’s move to the next slide, and you will recall some of these pictures.

But now, remember I want to use these pictures in a different sort of way. We looked, I spent a whole lecture looking at 96 pictures I think on pharaonic Cairo. Now, I’m just going to show you a dozen or so, but try to use those as a way to understanding modern-day Egypt. There they are, the three huge pyramids of the Giza Plateau. Cheops, Chephren, Mykerinos. Father, son, and grandson. Cheops, Chephren, Mykerinos is the Greek pronunciation of those. It’s Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure in Egyptian. And you can see right at the fore of that picture the three smaller pyramids, the mastabas, that are next to the Mykerinos pyramid, part of the consciousness of Egyptians. And by the way, they are part of the literal, physical consciousness of Egyptians, because there is hardly a mosque in Cairo that was built between the Fatimid period of the ninth, early 10th century through the Ottoman period of the 1880s. Hardly a mosque in Cairo does not contain some stones from those pyramids. Look at the middle of those three pyramids, and you can see it’s rather smooth on top. That is the limestone covering that originally covered the entire three pyramids, this beautiful sheet of highly polished limestone that caught the glint of the sun in pharaonic times. It’s also thought, by the way, they were capped up with gold at the very top. Those three pyramids have been almost entirely stripped of that limestone with the exception of those top parts on the pyramids of Chephren. And that limestone pops up all over the place in Cairo, mainly in the large, municipal, religious buildings of Egypt for the last thousand years. So quite literally, physically Egypt is the mosques of Cairo. Remember Cairo has more mosques than any other city on Earth by far. The mosques of Cairo are literally part of the pyramids of Giza. Think about that concept. That is part, as I say, of the consciousness of people living there. The size of the pyramids is absolutely extraordinary.

They were built 2580 B.C. That’s when the pyramid of Cheops was built, 2580 B.C. When you bear mind, think of this concept that we today in 2022 are closer to Jesus in the beginning of Christianity 2022 years ago than Jesus was to the building of the pyramids of Giza. Pyramids of Giza were almost 2,600 years B.C. So that starts to give you a real sense of how that country sees itself in the world for the long, long game. Next picture please. There are, of course, many other pyramids in pharaonic Egypt. The great step pyramid of Saqqara, the prototype pyramid, the first pyramid ever built on Earth as far as we know. And there’s still more to be discovered, not impossible. And it was built much more rudimentary, a series of steps, one platform on top of the other getting smaller to 52 degrees as opposed to the ones on the Giza plateau, which are 51.5 degrees precisely, all three of them. Let’s now go to the next one. Here is a pyramid that went wrong. It’s the pyramid of Sneferu at Dahshur. You can see this went up at an angle of 52.8 degrees, and it was too steep an angle. So when they got part of the way up, they had to abandon that angle and then took it inwards. So you have this slightly bizarre looking pyramid. It worked. Sneferu, who was the architect that was buried there and the pharaoh within. But it was a peculiar thing. There were many, many experimental pyramids built between Saqqara, 25 kilometres from Cairo, pyramid of Sneferu here, otherwise known as the Bent Pyramid, and then what I consider to be the masterpieces, the ultimate in pyramid design, Cheops, Chephren, Mykerinos on the Giza plateau just outside of Cairo.

But of course, the pharaonic architectural heritage in Egypt, the vast majority of it is not in Cairo. It’s elsewhere. We’ll come to that very shortly. To the next picture. And we now go and look at this, the only surviving sculptural image of Cheops, the Pharaoh that was buried in the Great Pyramid Cheops, otherwise known as Khufu. Cheops being the Greek, Khufu being the Egyptian. Tiny, little ivory piece, wonderful piece. To the next one. An actual closer up picture of his pyramid known as the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Great Pyramid. And to the next one please. The actual plan of that pyramid. You’ll recall many passages serving many purposes. If we go to the next picture, you can see some of those internal pictures. The entrance on the right to the Great Pyramid. And on the left, the Grand Gallery with that precise movement of stones. Not movement, precise positioning of the stones. Look at the peephole just at the bottom of that Grand Gallery. There are many passages within the Great Pyramid that you have to crawl through. They really, really are very cramped. But there are other passages. There are these vast, vaulted, cathedral-like passages. A remarkable thing to experience to go into those things. To the next one. And from the Grand Gallery, you proceed through this tiny, little gap in the wall to the next picture, which is the burial chamber itself of Cheops. Nothing remains of the remains of Cheops or of the gold and remains of Cheops, of the jewels. Remember the tomb of Tutankhamun is the only pharaonic tomb ever discovered intact, 1922. I did a whole piece on that in November, 'cause it was the centennial discovery of Tutankhamun. Look at the precision of that room. That room is in the centre of the pyramids, of the Great Pyramid.

And on each side of those walls, beyond each of those walls, are millions of tonnes of sheer stone. Nothing else. It’s remarkable. And within that, you have to think of the pyramids more or less as being total, solid, dense structures with a few chambers and a few tunnels within them. But those structures were built in a sense like a kit around the rooms. It’s so remarkable. So they would’ve built upwards around the walls and then created the rooms from within those solid structures. It’s quite phenomenal the actual achievement of the skill of the masons and of the builders at that time. To the next picture. Now, we’re going to Upper Egypt in Luxor, and you’ll recall that we looked at the tomb of Tutankhamun, discovered as I said a hundred years ago. There he is, Howard Carter, the archaeologist who said as he shown his candle through the first crack in the first wall that he had opened into the tomb as he said to, to the next picture, to Lord Carnarvon. Carnarvon said to him, “What do you see Carter? What do you see?” And Carter said, “I see wonderful things. The glint of gold everywhere.” Of course, the rest is history. We know about that. There is the Valley of the Kings. One of the greatest concentration of pharaonic architecture and pharaonic remains in Egypt, in fact, the greatest.

There were three valleys: Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Valley of the Nobles, and lots of other smaller valleys where the workers were buried and where lots of other people were buried, the senior servants, the accountants were buried. These other valleys are often forgotten. They’re devoid of tourists, but you can go visit them and visit the most wonderful tombs there. And you can also see that lush screen, because the Nile is just very shortly off that picture to the right-hand side of the picture. So you really get a sense of the irrigation that is on either side of the Nile, and then that just stops, and the desert and the valley and the mountains start. Remarkable. Let’s go to the next picture. And we’re moving on to that entrance, the only pharaonic seal never broken, into the next picture, which is the tomb of Tutankhamun. And then to just quickly remind you how packed that tomb was. He died so suddenly age 16, so everything was ram-packed into this tomb. And that’s probably why his gold wasn’t discovered, because behind all that ram-packed wood and ivory, which the tomb robbers weren’t really interested in when they robbed most of the tombs in antiquity. They were interested in the gold, but they didn’t realise there was another room behind all this, which is where, to the next picture, the beauties survived. Those absolutely iconic pictures, the necklaces and the jewellery of Tutankhamun. And to the next picture please. A much overused term, but probably one of the most iconic things ever created by the human hands, the death mask, the funeral mask of Tutankhamun. He was, of course, mummified, embalmed and mummified and then rather like Russian dolls, golden case within golden case within golden case.

This was the final thing that Howard Carter saw, the mask on top of the mummy of Tutankhamun. Phenomenal, phenomenal piece. Every single human being should see this piece in the flesh once in their lives if they possibly can. Quite, quite incredible. Let’s move on, because now, we are going onto, after this close up of that glorious thing… Just look at it. Let’s move on to Coptic Cairo and Coptic Egypt. And you’ll recall that the Copts consider themselves the indigenous people of Egypt. They consider themselves the real Egyptians. None of this mucking around with Islam and so on. The Copts consider themselves the true Egyptians. Indeed, the word Copt is from the Greek for the very word Egypt. The Copts are between 15 and 20% of the population of Egypt. Nobody really knows. They keep their figures relatively discreet. That said, nobody really knows anything much about statistics in Egypt because of the rather chaotic nature of the country. We don’t know the true population of Cairo or of Egypt. We have approximate figures for all of these things. Let’s have a look at the Copts of Cairo. They are a fascinating community. This first one is Saint Mark, the man who is considered to be the founder of Coptic Christianity. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So one of the four evangelists. And there we have Mark holding the Bible. Look to the left, you can see the lion, because Mark was said to have roared like the lion of John the Baptist.

Look to the right, you see a tree with seven pieces of fruit in it, representing the seven sacraments of the Coptic Church: baptism, marriage, death, and so on. Look to the left again. You see the boat sailing across the Mediterranean, which is the boat that carry Saint Mark over to the right, which is the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, where Mark planted his staff and established Coptic Christianity in Egypt. Who are the Copts? Let’s move on. The Copts are this fascinating ethnic group. They’re totally different to Arabs. They are not Arab. They are Copt who are living in an Arab republic, but they are not Arabs. And they are not only an ethnicity, but they are a religious group. And their religious group is Coptic Christianity. Coptic Christianity has a pope, it has a hierarchy, but it does not go by the traditional idea of the infallibility of popes. And Coptic Christianity split away from mainstream Christianity in 451 A.D. That absolutely crucial Council of Chalcedon where the Coptic Christians really established their key dogmas to what Coptic Christianity stood for. But here they are, Copts holding the cross on high in Tahrir Square but flying the Egyptian flag. They are Egyptian first as all Egyptians are, Copts second. Egyptian first, Muslim second. That’s how Egyptians see themselves, proud to be part of this ancient nation. And the Copts do consider themselves the true thing, the real thing, the real Egyptians. Moving on please. I moved around a lot in Coptic communities over time. Their churches are enormous. And there is the Coptic Cathedral in Abbassia in downtown Cairo. I say their churches are enormous because they’re big communities.

There are also very tiny Coptic churches, too. But this is a big influential, powerful, proud community. That said, they are also a minority within a Muslim majority country. Egypt is not an Islamic state. It is an Arab, not secular state. It’s sort of somewhere between. It’s an Arab state with a constitution that has Islamic influences in it, but it is most certainly not an Islamic republic. And an Egyptian would baulk at that idea as they did in the 14-month government of Mohamed Morsi, which we’ll come to a little later. Moving on, the Copts are headed by their pope, and they have a long tradition of monasteries all over Egypt as well as living in urban centres. And to the next picture please. Lots and lots of monastic, isolated communities of Copts. There’s another and to the next picture. There is the Coptic pope, Pope Tawadros. The previous pope, Abba Shenouda, was Pope for many decades and made a trip actually to Israel in the 1990s, a rare trip of a Coptic pope. The pope is a key figure, but he’s not, as I say, considered infallible. He’s more of a political figure. He is a religious figure, but he’s more of a political hierarchical figure than a figure who can work miracles. That’s not how they see the pope. He a leader. He’s a leader who leads that community. The largest Coptic diaspora in the world is in Canada, and then I believe it is actually the United Kingdom. But of course, the majority of Copts in the world do live in Egypt themselves, which is where they’re originally from. Let’s move on to the next picture. And there is President Sisi, whom I’ll come to later, with the Coptic pope emphasising the idea of one Egypt. I the president, I’m a Muslim, President Sisi. But nevertheless, the Copts are an ancient… They are the most ancient of all Egyptians.

And Sisi is at great pains to keep that unity of Egypt, to make the Copts feel that they are welcome, that they are at home, that Egypt is theirs as well as everybody else’s. To the next one. Copts can be seen identified by this cross, the Coptic cross tattooed into the wrists. And to the next please. And a further dramatic example of young children with those tattoos on the hands. And to the next one. This man is Father Makary, who I’ve mentioned before, because to me he embodies the influence of Coptic culture within Egyptian society. Now, the majority of Egyptians, Muslims, between 85 and 88% of the population are Muslim. They wouldn’t go into a church. But there was a very interesting interplay between Copts, because Copts are such a part of the consciousness of Egypt, because their roots go back into Ancient Egypt far further than Muslim roots. They are see almost as the… How can I put it? Well, as I say, the real thing. They are the genuine article. They are the . Indeed, Coptic writing is a further developed form of Demotic. And Demotic was the the the last of the three great incarnations of Egyptian writing. It was the third type of hieroglyphic writing. So the Copts even used a script that goes back to pharaonic times. And the singing and the chanting in their churches they say is influenced by the music of the Ancient Egyptians. It’s certainly not Arabic sounding, and it’s certainly not Western. It is something very, very different and very ancient sounding. Okay, let’s have a look at Father Makary and how he influences. He’s a classic example. To the next picture. He is a major practitioner of exorcisms. Here are some Coptic priests about to lead an exorcism service. And many Muslims send troubled Muslims to be exercised by Copts.

What is an exorcism? Well, in the belief of these religions, it would be that there is an evil spirit that needs to be taken out of the person. Knocked out sometimes, sometimes violently. In most places in the West, if there is a problem with somebody in depression or somebody who is possibly suicidal or who is self-harming, the way that these things are most frequently dealt with in the Western world is that they seek help, medical help, or they speak to people. But in this world, they’ll often go to be exorcised, and the Copts are the centre of that. To the next picture. This is the beginning of the ceremony, Coptic ladies waiting. And to the next one please. And to the next one. And to the next, waiting for the ceremonies to begin. And there they are, the exorcisms. Father Makary carrying out an exorcism. And to the next. And again. These are powerful things that happen in almost every Coptic church every Sunday night across Egypt. Many of the people that go to be exorcise, as I say, are not Christian. They are Muslim. And this, again, emphasises the point of this idea of a sort of shared, broad Egyptian culture that they’re a part of. And to the next. Look at that. Out in the desert, one of the oases. And to the next. Powerful stuff, this could be an African part, but it’s again, it’s right down south in Upper Egypt going towards Wadi Halfa and the border with Sudan and almost towards Ethiopia. To the next please. So now, we move on to Islamic Cairo.

We start by, to the next picture, going to Jerusalem, because in my lectures on Jerusalem, I mentioned that the Dome of the Rock, the holy sight in third holiest city in the world, Al-Quds, the only city in the Islamic world called Al-Quds is Jerusalem. Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, three holy cities, but I maintain that Cairo is the heartbeat of the Islamic world. And therefore, that feeds into the consciousness of Egypt itself. Let’s move on. You can see what should be familiar to many people. The rock within the Dome of the Rock, whereby Islamic tradition, Abraham almost killed his son is Ishmael, and by Jewish tradition, Abraham almost sacrifice his son Isaac. This is a sight holy to Muslims and Jews and, indeed, Christians, because it was on the Temple Mount, the Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem, that Jesus came to the very violent ends of his ministry. He was crucified just outside of there, but he came up to the Temple Mount on the festival of Pesach or Passover. So this is a site holy to all three monotheistic faiths. To the next one. Now, we move on to Mecca. The Kaaba built by Abraham according to Islamic tradition fell into used by idolatrous worshipers, but rededicated, next picture please, two monotheistic worship by Muhammad. Now, the cloth that covers the Kaaba is made in Cairo and has been done so for the last 30 or 1,200 years. Within 200 years of the death of Muhammad, Cairo became the place where this Kiswa, the cloth that covers the Kaaba is made.

Now, that gives you an idea of the centrality of Cairo in the consciousness of the Islamic heart and the Islamic world. To the next picture. And you can see a close-up of the cloth on the left covering in the middle that black stone, what’s considered to be a meteorite, the black-red stone, I should say, the meteorite, which is on the southeast corner of the Kaaba, which is the high point of any pilgrimage to Mecca. To the next picture. And you can see, the actual making of that cloth in workshops all year round. Once a year this cloth is replaced. So it’s rather like the painting of the Forth bridge just outside of Edinburgh. As soon as one cloth is put up there on the Kaaba, the work on the next one starts for the following year. To the next picture. Now, all of these things put Cairo at the centre of the things. There’s the map of the Islamic world. In the light green are all the Sunni countries in the Islamic world. 80% to 85% of the Muslims of the world are Sunni. The darker green, which is Iran and parts of Iraq and a slither of Syria and also a little bit of Yemen, these are Shia majority places. But the majority of Muslims are Sunni, and Cairo is the centre of the Sunni world. To the next picture. And therefore, because it’s centre of the Muslim world, Fatimid Cairo established Cairo as that heartbeat and within Fatimid Cairo, to the next picture, was Al-Azhar University There is a map of what the Fatimid world was. The Fatimids were a dynasty, a Shia dynasty actually. So there were descendants of Muhammad from the fourth generation onwards. And you can see that the Fatimid caliphate stretch from what we now know as Morocco through to Algeria, Western Sahara, over towards Libya, and then over to Egypt itself, Sinai, and of course, down the western part of the Arabian peninsula and up to what we now know as Israel, Lebanon, and Syria.

But this was the Fatimid caliphate with Cairo at its very centre. And we’re talking about ninth, 10th century. So very early on in Islamic history, Cairo, despite Mecca and Medina being the holy cities, with Jerusalem number three, Cairo was the sort of heartbeat. It was the centre, the largest Islamic city, and where all the great decisions were made, which we’ll come onto very, very soon. Next picture. Because those great decisions came out of here, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, the largest and oldest mosque in Cairo. Stunning building. Next picture please. And it came out of the many buildings around Fatimid Cairo. These are all ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th century buildings. So that explains, as you can see, the age and look of them. Let’s move on to the next one. Fatimid structures. Powerful, simple gates of Cairo. To the next one. And now Al-Azhar University, one of the oldest Islamic, well, the oldest Islamic… Actually, I contradict myself here. There is some discussion of whether a university in Fez is an older university in Morocco. So I self-correct here, but Azhar is certainly the most influential university on Earth. It was established very early on in the Fatimid periods. Let’s move on, and you can get a sense of this university. It’s where Muslims come from all over the Sunni Muslim world. It dominates old Cairo, Islamic Cairo. To the next one please.

Nobody knows how many students are there, but we’re talking about something between 30 and 50,000 students study at Al-Azhar University. It’s the old-fashioned type of studying. It’s not formalised into massive public lectures and official courses. You just arrive in Cairo, and you find a sheikh , and that sheikh will guide you and will teach you the Quran and Hadith and the many other scripts. Moving on again please to the next picture. There we have President Sisi meeting the mufti of Al-Azhar. Mufti of Al-Azhar is a political appointment but a very important appointment. And moving on again please. Any important dignity that comes to Cairo goes to Al-Azhar. Here is Mohammed bin Salman, the future lead of Saudi Arabia, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, critically important man in the Arab world. What does he do? He comes to as Azhar. This is a nod to the importance of Azhar and the importance of Cairo. To the next one please. And look at these sheikhs of Al-Azhar wearing the Egyptian flag. They are Egyptians first and foremost. I can’t keep over-emphasizing enough how important that is . Even the sheikhs in Azhar, which is a moderate organ within the Islamic world, this is not an extreme organisation, a moderate organ in the Islamic world, even the sheikhs have to swear an oath of loyalty to the Egyptian state first and foremost. Let’s move on please. And Al-Azhar is open to thousands of women’s students, too. And the next one please. And as you can see here, the mufti of Al-Azhar, he’s not head a state, he wasn’t on a state visit, but he was on an official visit to the UK some years ago meeting the late queen. Such is the importance, the British foreign Office understood the importance of Egypt in the Arab world and the importance of Al-Azhar in that jigsaw, that puzzle of what forms Egypt and what makes Egypt important.

Thus, the rare honour of him taking tea in Buckingham Palace with the late queen. Okay, moving on. Other aspects of his Islamic history in Cairo. Mamluk Cairo. So after Fatimid Cairo, the Mamluks, who were this multi-ethnic group of people originally brought over by slaves. You can now go through these pictures quite fast. So we will see who the Mamluks were. They were originally brought over as slaves, and then they became great builders. There is Mamluk, Cairo, the map there. You can see Mamluk world. It was what we now know as Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt. Smaller, slightly smaller, well, quite a bit smaller than the Fatimid caliphate but a very powerful caliphate which packed a powerful punch across the Islamic world. To the next one please. They were renowned for their magnificent architecture, the Rafia Mosque, the Al-Hussein Mosque. And I love that picture, because you have modern Cairo behind it and these magnificent structures in the foreground. More of these wonderful structures. And to the next ones please. Just look at these. These are all 'round seven, eight, 900 years old. Beautiful use of stone, ablaq stonework. This, in Cairo, it tends to be gold, sort of brownish stone and black. In Jerusalem, it tends to be pink and black, mirroring the stone use of the quarries outside of Jerusalem. Moving on again. Wonderful architecture, this series of domes built by the Mamluks. They were great builders but corrupted by their wealth and by their success, buried in the City of the Dead, where now 600,000 estimated Cairines live, in the graves of the Mamluks. But they’re not graves as we know them.

Moving on, they are proper stone structures. This is a typically Egyptian Cairine solution to what to do with homeless. Rather than have 600,000 people homeless on the streets, you give them permanent squatters’ rights within the tombs of Cairo, and there, moving on again, you can see whole families, whole communities living and working in workshops, satellite dishes, washing machines, internet coverage in these cities of the dead, these vast Mamluk cemeteries. Let’s just roll through these pictures of some of these mausoleums where people live. They play sports, football, cook. Just go back that one picture please, Emily, sorry, or two pictures. A lady cooking. There she is, this is her family home. Oh, her family home. She’s cooking on a stove. If we can just get that there, she is cooking on a stove. Her family would’ve been there for a long time. I’d once published an article in the “Jerusalem Report” about the family that lived in one of these tombs. They’d been there for generations, squatters’ rights. She brought up a family of 11, 12, 13 children. I can’t recall. There’s the tomb of the person that was buried there in 1281 I believe. I think it was 1281. Yeah, there she is cooking around the tomb. This is so Egyptian, the idea of living amongst the necropolises of those generations and civilizations that have preceded you. Do you begin to get the sense of the timescale of Egypt? It’s just remarkable. Okay, let’s carry on please. I’m taking us through to these wonderful pictures of the City of the Dead. And then after going to these, we look at Ottoman Cairo.

So Ottoman Cairo was from ‘round about 1517 to 1917. Certainly ended 1917. Collapsed, the Ottoman Empire. Tremendous architectural heritage again. Not as powerful, next picture please, as Mamluk and Fatimid architecture, but it has its appeal. But give me Mamluk and Fatimid any day. But Ottoman is very dainty and beautiful and fancy. And of course, the Ottomans were in Egypt for a long time. To the next one please. And the next one. The Mosque of Muhammad Ali. This could be a mosque out of Istanbul. You can clearly see the Turkish influences, but there it sits, Egyptian flag proudly at the entrance to the mosque on the citadel in Cairo. And to the next one. So we now move on to the modern day, and we look at King Farouk, who was the last king of Egypt, because in the revolution of 1952, Farouk lost his throne. And let’s just move on to these pictures there. Pan-Arab Republican, Cairo. So we’re looking at what actually happened, because there he is Gamal Abdel Nasser, who took over Egypt. It’s often forgotten that there was a president slightly before him, as well, just for a year, President Mahfouz, but he is often forgotten. Gamal Abdel Nasser took over in '52, and he became this absolutely tremendous figure in the Arab world who attempted to almost eradicate his true but downplay, downplay the Islamic side to this Arab world and up-play or play up the Arab side to bring about a secular Baʿath Party-centered Pan-Arabism. That’s how he saw the future of that part of the world. Let’s move on.

And you can see Sadat, who was the next state president of Egypt sitting next to Naguib. Sadat was assassinated, of course, on the 6th of October, 1981, by the , the Muslim Brothers, partly as a result of the enduring anger about the peace agreement he’d signed with the state of Israel. But that’s too simple an explanation. There were other things going on, as well. It is often forgotten that Hosni Mubarak almost died that same day. The whole top echelon of the army and the government was almost killed on that day. Mubarak just darted a bullet. He was sitting next to the man, Sadat, who was killed on that day, but Mubarak survived and he became the next president. Let’s move on. And Mubarak survived, of course, and went on to 2011, but then there was a revolution. And what seemed to be the end of that Pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, Egypt happened and Mohamed Morsi took over. But Mohamed Morsi, the first and only, so far, Muslim Brother president survived only 14 months, 'cause this is really important. The Egyptian people themselves, to use an old-fashioned English term, got frit. They got nervous at the growing Islamization of Egypt under the Muslim Brother leadership. Massive demonstration came about, and the head of the Egyptian army, Sisi, took over. So it was in a sense a coup upon a coup, but it was led by the people. That’s what’s so fascinating.

The people who had elected in what were more or less free and fair elections that swept Mohamed Morsi to power. The people that elected them into power soon got rather worried. They did not want to see a creeping Islamization, which goes to the heart of that identity I’m trying to portray here of Egyptians, who are by nature are moderate, non-extreme people who are Muslims but who are primarily proud Egyptians. Let’s move on and you can see some of the scenes from Cairo today and what formed the Cairo that we know today in modern Cairo. Let’s have a look at some of those scenes from that revolution. The massive demonstrations of the 2011 revolutions in Tahrir Square where Muslims and Christians, the Jewish community is so tiny in Egypt now, Muslims and Christians and, indeed, secularists stood side-by-side to get rid of what they felt was the hated government of Mubarak to bring about some form of more liberal democratic government. Well, that didn’t happen as we know. Let’s move on. And we know, as I’ve said, that Morsi came to power, but after 14 months what happened? Demonstrations again. Look at the helicopters going over, flying the Egyptian flag, claiming that the Muslim Brothers had hijacked Egypt, that the Muslim Brothers were usurpers of what is truly Egypt, and that the Egyptian people wanted back their Egyptian Republic. They didn’t want to become an Islamic republic of Egypt. They didn’t want it, and they took to the streets. Let’s move on.

And those streets are infamous. It was Shimon Peres who famously said, “When Egyptian traffic starts to become organised and the Egyptian streets are under control, then Israel will have something to worry about.” He understood that the chaotic nature of Egypt was part of its identity and part of the way it operates. Moving on please. One of the really interesting things is the fact that, although you have people praying in the streets, although Egypt is dominated is by Muslims, 85% of the population at least to 88%, it is nevertheless not an extreme form of Islam at all With that Al-Azhar University at its centre advocating that moderation above all things. It’s not like some of the other countries in the Arabian peninsula at all. Moving on please. How do so many Egyptians get their information? Well, people tend to assume in the West that everybody in the world is on the internet. It’s not true. Huge proportions of countries like Egypt are not on the internet. They are not online. They get their information from the streets. Look at the next scene. You have these vast stands, next picture please, of huge newspapers of every imaginable guidebooks and newspapers. You can just go along in the streets, read what’s going on in the world, pick up the newspapers . This is how many Egyptians get their information. And now, the last few pictures. Let’s look at this. This is an ostracon. Now, an ostracon is a little shard, a little piece of pottery. And in ancient’s Egyptian times, which is when this is from, this was the equivalent of satire and cartoonists from that time.

So Ancient Egyptians used to portray everyday life with these funny little sketches. In Greek times, people painted or wrote a little note on it. Yes or no, they voted with ostracons, which is where we go get the word ostracised from, because of the box that had the most ostracons for yes won the election. The box with the least ostracons, these little pieces, would lose and would be ostracised, or would lose, so to speak. This is an Ancient Egyptian tradition. This goes to the heart of my message today, because the ostracons of Ancient Egypt… Let’s just see a few more, Emily, please. Look at the next one. Look at this fantastic thing, a cat pushing along ducks. Now, this would’ve had a political message in its time. This is three and a half thousand years old. It’s very beautifully done, but it’s not what we imagined to be Ancient Egyptian glorious wall paintings. This is intimate, informal paintings done in the vernacular. It’s fantastic. Move on to the next one. Another example of an ostracon. Look at this beautiful figure of this woman doing this, well, I don’t know what you call that. Gymnasts would know what exactly that is. It’s just magnificent. We don’t know who painted it, we don’t know who created it, but it’s this beautiful, informal commentary of the times. Now, why am I showing you this? Just move on to the next picture please. This is now reappearing on the Egyptian streets. So that tradition of taking pharaonic things and putting them into political messages is absolutely live and vibrant. Move on to the next one please, more close-ups. You can see the mask of Nefertiti, which I showed you on lecture two. Lecture one, I should say.

Nefertiti has long been thought to be the mother of Tutankhamun. The current thinking is she was the stepmother of Tutankhamun, as well as his mother-in-law I should add. And Nefertiti is wearing a gas mask. Egyptians are being gassed if they demonstrate. Tear gas is being thrown in the streets. So here is Egyptian graffiti showing the ancient, how Nefertiti’s seen as the symbol of ultimate beauty in Ancient Egypt, being blasted out by the ugliness of tear gas. Think about that, the consciousness of Egyptians harking back to pharaonic times. It’s powerful. Let’s look at the next one. These examples are all over the Cairo streets. Look at this wall, this man. Look at the scale of these, we would call it graffiti, but these are in effect modern-day ostraca. Look at the man’s eye, look at top left, the boy’s eyes bloodshot with tear gas, eating the simplest of food, pita bread. Look at the pharaonic boat in the middle, and look, by the way, at the legs coming down to the right of the boat. A crucified figure, feet nailed to a cross. You can’t see the cross, but it’s feet nailed. This is Copts complaining about their situation in Egypt. It’s really powerful and harks back to Jesus, harks back to pharaonic Egypt. Remarkable. To the next one please. Again, more of these images. And the next one please. Again, look at the ballot. There is Sisi, President Sisi, voting, but he’s voting with a bloodied hand. This is condemning the fixed elections by President Sisi over what is happening in Egypt. And to the next. So the message of these things is the message I’m trying to convey here.

That to understand Egypt, you, of course, have to understand Egyptians. And look at this one. Top figure shows almost a Babylonian image of a winged horse. So it’s actually making references to the cultures around Egypt, as well, but from the ancient world. That is a way of understanding what’s happening in Egypt. That the Egyptians see themselves, as I said at the beginning, as a continuum, not as a modern country that started in '52, or not as a mediaeval country that started in the 13th century, or not as an Islamic country that started in the 10th century, or not as a Coptic country that started 2,000 years ago with Christianity. No, no, no. Egyptians see themselves as something far longer than that. They see themselves now as the continuation of a country that has been there four and a half to 5,000 years. And they see the modern Egyptian state as simply the latest incarnation of a tremendously long history of which Christianity and Islam and secularism and pharaonic and pagan beliefs are all a part of that. The key thing here is one word Egypt and Egyptians. That’s how they identify themselves most strongly. To the final couple of pictures. Look at that powerful figure. A modern-looking Egyptian young man posing like a pharaoh. Link between the extreme past and the current day. And to the next. Again, hieroglyphic looking symbols, but making very modern statements about the state of the political system. And I believe the last two couple of pictures now. There we go. Demonstrations against, in favour of Palestinians. Moving on please.

The Muslim Brothers in Egypt, now no longer in power. Most of them either dead or in prison. The Saudi flag being flagged by the Muslim Brothers in Egypt for that brief period when there was such a strong influence of extreme Islam. And to the next. And look at the picture of Mubarak with Star of Davids on it. Muslim Brothers who took over the country, who most Egyptians felt had hijacked the country, claiming that Egypt was almost like a Zionist entity within the Arab world. And to the next. Using the Quran to justify their position, Muslim Brothers. And the next. And then put on trial for treason, for plotting against the modern state of Egypt. And to the next. And of course, what we’re all familiar with, the Camp David Agreement of 1977. There it is, Begin, Carter, Sadat, shaking hands with the three flags behind them, Israel, America, and Egypt, respectively. And to the final two. In Arabic, in Hebrew, salam alaykum in Egyptian Arabic, very different form of Arabic. And the final one. We all know or most of us will know shalom in Hebrew. So we started a little late, because of the delay I think with sum of the links. So I’ve carried on that talk a little late. Really happy as always to take questions. So thank you, Emily, for sharing your screen. I’m going to go now back onto questions. And if I, just before I start on those, just to say a blockbuster on Rome is about to start next Tuesday, the first of five lectures I’m going to give on the city of Rome. I’ve got some photographs for you I hope will be everlasting in your memory. Real, real beauty coming your way. The 17th, starting next Tuesday, the 17th, Hidden Rome Part One. Then the 22nd of February, 28th of February, 14th of March, and another one in April. Hidden Rome, Republican Rome, Byzantine Rome, Catholic Rome. Lots of beautiful, beautiful things to come. For now, I’m going to have a look at your Q and A So here goes. Oh, yes.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: So first question is, “Are there more mosques than Mecca and Medina?”

A: 100%, Mecca and Medina are relatively small towns. Cairo is a giant of a metropolis. Infinitely more, well, not infinitely, because no numbers are infinite, that point of view. Massively amount more mosques in Cairo than lie in Mecca and Medina, yes.

Marsha, well, B.C.E., B.C., I’m happy with both. I’m easy with both.

Q: Now, here’s a question. Here’s an interesting one. “What would happen to the pyramids in an earthquake?”

A: Well, there have been earthquakes in Cairo, actually, lots of them. The most recent I think was 1993. Nothing happened to them, because those pyramids are pretty solid structures. They are I believe still… I wait to be corrected. I believe they are still the largest stone structures ever created. Maybe now that is slightly out-of-date, but it might not be. But they’re not only stone structures, they are solid. Bear in mind, as I said before, you have to imagine the pyramids as absolutely block-solid structures, but with a few gaps for chambers, which are relatively tiny, and corridors to get to those chambers. Nothing’s going to shift those structures, believe me. Well, I hope I’m right.

Absolutely, thank you Monique, spot on. The Copts are among the very earliest Christians. Absolutely. The Chaldeans, the Christians in Iraq, as well. Iraq and Egypt and little parts of Syria, small parts of Syria, are where the oldest Christian communities in the world are. Oh, and one must, must, must not forget the Armenians. The first sovereign Christian state in Christian history was Armenia. Bear that one in mind.

Jonathan, “There’s a story, probably apocryphal, that when Dayan was introduced to Sadat in Jerusalem, Dayan said that he was looking forward to seeing Sudat in Cairo, and Sadat replied, 'Let us know when you’re coming so I can alert the museums.’” I haven’t heard that. It’s wonderful. And I presume you know where that comes from, Jonathan, because there was some really not very nice stories told about what was going on with stuff being found in the Negev and the Sinai and how a lot of stuff went missing from archaeological digs at that time.

Oh, that’s fantastic. I’ll have to double check that one. But even if it’s not correct, it’s wonderful.

Q: “What’s the Copts view of the creation of the modern state of Israel?”

A: To be quite honest, most Copts wouldn’t be that interested one way or the other. Copts are first and foremost Egyptians. Their loyalty is to the state of Egypt. So before the Camp David Agreements, Copts like any other Egyptians were in a state of war against Israel. Now, there is a peace agreement with Egypt, which Egypt and Israel have honoured to the letter. It is a cold peace, if we’re honest, and there’s reasons for that. That perhaps may be for another time. It’s not a warm piece. It’s not like the piece that has been established very recently with some of the Gulf states. It is a cold piece, but it is still a piece that both sides of honoured since 1977.

Q: So the Coptic view of the creation of the modern state of Israel would be whatever the Egyptian view would be at that time. How would I now put the dominant Egyptian view on the modern state of Israel?

A: We don’t particularly like it, but we accommodate it. Israel is going nowhere, and therefore, we need to come to an accommodation with it. And I would say that would be the . In all my travels around Egypt over decades, I never really got into many conversations about Israel, partly because I did avoid it, but also partly because it didn’t interest most Egyptians most of the time. Because most Egyptians are not politically active and were really interested in feeding and clothing and roofing their families. Life is hard in Egypt. They weren’t obsessed with the state of Israel. It didn’t mean much to them. Israel is tiny remember, and Egyptian is vast. Most Egyptians have, I can tell you, they have no sense about how tiny sliver, what a tiny sliver of a country Israel is. It’s sort of irrelevant to most Egyptians, because they’re so busy really trying to lead their own lives and just eek out the success that they can from their own existence. I hope that partly explains, but I would say that the Coptic view is not markedly different to the Islamic Egyptian, the view of Muslims in Egypt. Because as I… The point I keep pushing is that Egyptians are primarily Egyptians first and then Coptic Egyptian second or Muslim Egyptian second, but they are Egyptians first.

Q: “In the picture of the Coptic crowd,” Heather asks, “women are wearing head scarfs. Isn’t that more a Muslim requirement?”

A: Good point. Two answers I would give to that. Some of those women will be Muslim women coming to Coptic churches for exorcisms. But also, many Coptic women, because the dominant culture in Egypt is a Muslim culture, many Coptic women will cover their hair. Not all, most won’t, but some will, and that might be a double explanation for that. But I have to say that I could just, I would be able to tell you if I was in a street, if a woman had her head covered, if she was Copt or if she was Muslim. They’re a different ethnicity. You can just tell them a mile off a Copts from an Egyptian. Even if her hair is covered, you could tell that this is different ethnicity altogether.

Q: “Why is Ethiopia largely Coptic?”

A: Because of those historic earlier parts of the movements of the Copts when the borders of Egypt and Ethiopia were more nebulous and were more vague. The same with Nubia. And therefore, the movement was much easier. That said, the Ethiopian Coptic church is somewhat different to the Egyptian Coptic church. Slightly different structure, different leadership, but doctrinally the same.

Q: “Do Egyptians also see Copts as Egyptians or as a minority group in their society? If the latter, are they persecuted as such?”

A: Enormous question, of course. They are 100% Egyptians. They are seen as 100% Egyptians. That said, their life is not easy, and their life was made particularly difficult in those 14 months of Muslim Brother rule. That goes to make my point that when Islam starts to figure as the dominant political force in Egypt rather than religious force, I’m making a difference here, a differentiation, when Islam starts to see itself as a dominant political force in Egypt, the Copts suffer. When Islam is relegated and firmly pegged at number two force, and the number one force is the national force of Egypt, the Copts are relatively okay. Note the word relatively, but they are. So in that 14-month period of Mohamed Morsi, the Copts suffered really severely. There was enormous movement of Copts out of Egypt. It was a catastrophic time for them. And many of them moved to Britain, to Canada, and other parts of the Middle East. Many of them have now moved back now that a more or less secular government Ba'ath Party sort of military Ba'ath Party secular government is in control again. In fact, I wouldn’t call it secular, but it is not, it is not an Islamic government. So therefore, things have settled again for the Copts. I hope that answers your question, G.

Q: “Are the South Africans Suunis or Shiites?”

A: I’m not sure what you mean by South African Sunnis? So I’d need clarification on that question. You’re welcome to email me.

Q: “If Egyptians see themselves as Egyptian first, how was Nasser’s vision of Pan-Arabism able to take hold?”

A: It’s a really good question. Because Nasser saw Egyptians as the foremost Arab Republic of all. Indeed, they’re the most populous. They are now, as I mentioned, one in four of every Arabs are Egyptian. So Nasser wanted to say, “Well, we are the most populous of all the Arab countries, so we want Egypt to be right at the top of the pecking order, and I, Gamal Abdel Nasser, will be that Pan-Arab leader.” I hope that partly explains that. “Poor Egyptians also live in Jewish cemeteries.” Absolutely. “Some of ‘em stole the stones covering the graves.” Correct, yes. And one of those Jewish cemeteries was almost demolished but saved by Carmen Weinstein, who I knew, who was for a long time the leader of the Jewish community in Cairo.

“Photo painted with female in gas mask resonates with Banksy.” Yes, it does, Rita. Totally agree with you, and there might be an internet influence there. They’ve seen what goes on in the rest of the world, and that could well be the case.

Q: “Are there any anti-Jewish subjects in present-day graffiti?”

A: Yes, but it was at its height during the Morsi years, well, the Morsi 14 months. Much less so now. The vast majority of, although I haven’t been back to Cairo in some time now, but I try to keep a hand on the pulse of what’s happening there by asking people, but the vast majority of graffiti is anti-government graffiti, because that’s what affects people’s lives. Israel doesn’t affect people’s lives in Egypt. Government policy does, and that’s what a lot of it is.

Q: “What is the relationship with Sudan? I’ve checked through Sudan.”

A: Fantastic, so have I. “And explored around the Sudanese pyramids,” indeed, more pyramids in Sudan than in Egypt, but they’re much smaller, of course.

Q: “They’re simplistic and primitive without the exotic jewels and of the Jewish ones. Why is this?”

A: Different culture altogether, Nville. We’re talking about the Nubian culture. Much less money, much less successful empire. The Egyptians had water. They had numbers. They were relatively large numbers at that time. They had writing. They had all types of things going on in their very advanced society, which made them the dominant culture in that time.

Q: “What is the relationship with Sudan now?”

A: Strained, to say the least, but no time to go into that now. I should add even more strained with Ethiopia. Delighted you enjoyed the lecture. And Margo, good luck to your daughter going to Egypt. Wonderful.

Q: “Wasn’t Nasser’s Pan-Arabism fundamentally at odds with Egypt’s self-identity?”

A: Yes and no. Yes, it was from the point of view that, because so many Egyptians don’t see themselves as Arabs, if that’s what you mean by at odds, yes. But Nasser was trying to change the way Egyptians saw themselves, but there has been a pushback against that now. Sisi is not attempting a Nasser-style Pan-Arabism. Both Mubarak, Sadat and Mubarak and Sisi are not, they want to be the most influential Arab country in the world, but they’re not going for Pan-Arabism, because they see themselves very different from the Arabs of the Gulf.

Delighted, Nanette, you enjoyed it, thank you.

Q: “What about the UAR with Syria?”

A: We’ll go into that another time. Sorry to jump over that one.

Q: “Lots of tours of Egypt. Do you recommend a good one that teaches the history?”

A: I’d have to have a think about that. Throw me an email, Monica. I’ll come up with some ideas I hope.

Q: “Is it safe for Jewish people to visit Egypt?”

A: Yes, if you use your common sense, if your sensitive to local sensibilities. I haven’t heard of people having difficulties and problems. I wouldn’t hesitate personally. Each person has to do what they feel comfortable. And of course, if local people feel that a tourist is uncomfortable, the Egyptians are very, they’re a very visceral people. They’re a very… They sense things, very much so. If they sense someone’s uncomfortable, they will feel uncomfortable, and they’ll start to ask questions why. Only go to Egypt if you feel that you’ll be comfortable going? That would be my advice on that question. Delighted you enjoyed it for those people that have said that, too.

Yes, 6th of October City. Again, no times to treat that out. Cairo is growing at a massive rate, indeed. There is now a satellite city called New Cairo, the new capital. So I’m not going to go into Armenian genocide now. Maybe we’ll do a whole series of lectures perhaps on Istanbul and Ottoman. Maybe that will be a really good time to deal with that. It’s a tremendously important question.

“In the Sudan, the Copts are very good friends with the Jewish community.” Indeed. And Roseanne, thank you for that, and I’m glad you’re looking forward to Rome.

I think I’m going to have to cut it off there, Emily. I’m sorry anybody else whose questions I haven’t got. I can see that they’re coming in.

Very important one here from Carrie. I’m just zooming through these. There are indeed 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt today. Absolutely, because it is, in effect, a police state in a military dictatorship, but what it isn’t is an Islamic military dictatorship, which is a really important differentiation. And this is an enormous debate that’s going on around the world at the moment.

Q: What do you do if you have a choice to see an Islamic dictatorship of Morsi or a military dictatorship of Sisi? What do you do? What do you support?

A: It’s a shame, of course, they can’t… It always seems to have to be a dictatorship.

I will leave it there. I do apologise. There’s lots more questions there. I thank you all for coming and for being so patient and for joining me and for joining us all together in this lecture.