Muslim but not "Arab" Egypt?

This is something I've never understood: why is it that the Muslim conquests resulted in the Egyptians, but not the Iranians, being "Arabized"? They both had their own ancient identities, languages and cultures. What is the latest possible POD for modern-day Egypt to be an Islamic but mostly Coptic-speaking (or something similar) and assertively non-Arab nation-state?
 
Well, Iran speaks languages other than Arabic despite the Koran being in Arabic.

But I think that's because the cultural tradition rubbed off more on the Arabs than the Arabs on the locals. Egypt, not so much.

So its not so much a question of the latest possible POD as a POD where the Coptic culture influences the Arabs.
 
Well, Iran speaks languages other than Arabic despite the Koran being in Arabic.

But I think that's because the cultural tradition rubbed off more on the Arabs than the Arabs on the locals. Egypt, not so much.

So its not so much a question of the latest possible POD as a POD where the Coptic culture influences the Arabs.

The Persian language had a lot of prestige with it whereas Coptic didn't. At all. There also native Iranian Islamic dynasties revive the use of Persian; like the Samanids.
 
I see. Coptic's lack of prestige was presumably due to the fact that Egypt had been under foreign domination (Persian, Macedonian and finally Roman) for over a thousand years, so things would have had to change much earlier (which probably means no Islam).
 
I see. Coptic's lack of prestige was presumably due to the fact that Egypt had been under foreign domination (Persian, Macedonian and finally Roman) for over a thousand years, so things would have had to change much earlier.

For starters, you might want to shorten the time foreign rule lasts in Egypt. Perhaps by having the native rebellion led by Charmachis in the late second century BCE become successful and lead to an independent Egyptian state.
 
It's the native Iranian dynasties that are the crucial factor here. I'll quote at length from the beautifully eloquent historian Peter Brown in his superb little 1971 book, The World of Late Antiquity

"The Persians, therefore, had never developed that fierce sense of a religious identity that had kept the Ummayyads at arm's length among the Christians of the Mediterranean seaboard. Khusro I had taught the dekkans, the courtier-gentlemen of Persia, to look to a strong ruler in Mesopotamia. Under the Arabs, the dekkans promptly made themselves indispensable. They set about quietly storming the governing class of the Arab empire. By the middle of the eighth century they had emerged as the new backbone of the Islamic state. It was their empire again: and, now in perfect Arabic, they poured scorn on the refractory Berber who had dared to elevate the ways of the desert over the ordered majesty of the throne of the Khusros."

They don't make historians like THAT any more :p

Essentially, the reason no Syrian or Egyptian upper class survived into the Arab era is the fact that it had already largely been decapitated by Diocletian. The aristocracy had largely moved to Constantinople, and what remained, the lower gentry, had probably already been substantially damaged by the Persian invasion. By the time of the Arab conquests, the only real source of leadership for Christian communities in the old Roman Empire were the bishops, who, naturally, did not have an interest in taking over the government of the Caliphate.
 
The Egyptians were more or less ruled directly by Arabs after the Conquest until the Ottomans. Umayyads then Abbasides then Fatimids then Ayyubids and then Mamlukes. The last two were not technically Arab in ethnicity, but still spoke Arabic as language. No native Egyptian ruled Egypt (and had not from the death of Cleopatra, and since she was actually Greek, it could be argued not since Cambyses in 500 BCE).

The Persians were ruled by Arabs only briefly in comparison. Indigenous Persian rulers had begun appearing since the 800s. There were various Persian dynasties from that time (Tahirids, Saffarids, Samainds, Ghaznavids) By the time of Ferdowsi (the Persian national poet who wrote the nationalistic epic the Shahnahem celebrating Persian history and language) around 1000, Persia was more or less independent and remained the court language.

Persian rulers protected the Persian language, while Arab leaders would have promoted the use of Arabic.

If an indigenous Egyptian leader whose home language was Coptic managed to rule Egypt as an independent state, it is possible that Coptic would have survived in a similar manner, even if that Egyptian leader was still Muslim. But none did.
 
A big factor why Persian survived is that it is not a Afro-Asiatic language Non-Afro-Asiatic, Non-Afro-Asiatic languages did not persish under the Ummayad Caliphate.
 
There were Arabs in Egypt long before the conquests of the Muslims. Even Herodotus wrote that Arabs lived on both sides of the Red Sea.
 
There were Arabs in Egypt long before the conquests of the Muslims. Even Herodotus wrote that Arabs lived on both sides of the Red Sea.

Really? I heard of that too. There were already Arabs living in the area east of the Nile Delta.
 
A big factor why Persian survived is that it is not a Afro-Asiatic language Non-Afro-Asiatic, Non-Afro-Asiatic languages did not persish under the Ummayad Caliphate.
With the exeption of Berber and some relatively isolated languages, such as Aramean (which I think the Assyrians spoke and still speak until this day, shame Leo isn't around to correct me), as well as some south Semetic languages still surviving in Arabia.

But despite that, I agree it seems that theres a rule that fellow Afro-Asiatic speakers adopted Arabic, while non-Afro Asiatic speakers didn't end up adopting it.
 
Arameans still do speak Aramaic or Syriac, etc.

Well, only small groups of them. Prior to the 7th century, it was the major spoken language of cities like Damascus and Aleppo, now it mostly survives among Christian populations in isolated rural areas.
 
Well, only small groups of them. Prior to the 7th century, it was the major spoken language of cities like Damascus and Aleppo, now it mostly survives among Christian populations in isolated rural areas.

It's a shame. At least they managed to survive for so long. :(
 
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