Egyptian, Coptic

The Coptic Egyptians are the Christians of Cairo, Alexandria, the Delta and the Canal cities, about 6.2 million people who speak Egyptian Arabic and belong mostly to the Coptic Orthodox Church, the church of Saint Mark and the oldest in Africa. With the Copts of Upper Egypt they make up about a tenth of Egypt, the largest Christian community in the Middle East. Many are city families who moved north from Upper Egypt over the past century, from Shubra's shopkeepers and professionals to the Zabbaleen garbage collectors of Mokattam, whose cave church seats thousands. Their year runs on the Coptic calendar and its long fasts, and Coptic Christmas on 7 January is a national holiday. Suicide bombings of churches in Cairo, Alexandria and Tanta in 2016-2017 killed more than 70 worshippers, and Copts remain under-represented in public life.

Coptic Egyptians in Bahrain are Orthodox Christians among the roughly 27,600 Egyptians who live in the kingdom, most of them teachers, engineers, doctors, accountants and skilled tradesmen on renewable contracts, many with their families. They worship at the Church of the Virgin Mary and Saint Ruweis, the Coptic parish in Manama, which also serves Coptic families living in Saudi Arabia, where no church may open. In 2016 King Hamad gave land in Manama for a second, three-storey Coptic church for about 3,000 worshippers, after visiting Pope Tawadros II at Saint Mark's Cathedral in Cairo. The community keeps the Coptic calendar, with its long fasts before Christmas on 7 January and before Easter, and an Arabic and Coptic liturgy unlike any other church on the islands.

Coptic Egyptians are the Christian minority among Kuwait's roughly 667,000 Egyptians, about 60,000 Coptic Orthodox and 5,000 Coptic Catholics, most of them engineers, accountants, doctors, pharmacists, teachers and skilled tradesmen, many living with their families. Kuwait gave them the first Coptic church ever built outside Egypt in 1961, and in April 2017 Pope Tawadros II made the first papal visit to the country to open St Mark's Cathedral in Hawalli, at 6,500 square metres the largest Coptic church in the Gulf. On Fridays, Kuwait's weekend, the cathedral fills for liturgy in Arabic and Coptic, and every Ramadan the church hosts a ghabqa, a late-night meal, for Kuwaiti officials and Muslim neighbours.

Copts in Lebanon are a small Egyptian Christian community of about 3,000 to 5,000 people: Lebanese families of Coptic descent alongside Egyptian and Sudanese Copts who came to work or to escape discrimination at home. Their Coptic Orthodox Church is one of the eighteen religious communities Lebanon formally recognises, with its own courts for marriage and inheritance, which gives this tiny group a legal standing that Copts have in few other countries outside Egypt. The community gathers at its church in Sin el Fil on Beirut's eastern edge, where the liturgy is sung in Coptic and Arabic under a bishop who also serves Jerusalem, Kuwait and the Gulf. Most Egyptian Copts in Lebanon are men working as concierges, cleaners and tradesmen in the Christian neighbourhoods of the Metn and Kesrouan.

Coptic Christians are a minority among the Egyptian workers in Libya, perhaps one in seven of about 188,000 Egyptians, some 26,000 people, nearly all men from the villages of Minya, Asyut and Sohag in Upper Egypt who work in construction, farming and crafts beside their Muslim neighbours. Three Coptic Orthodox churches, Saint Mark's in Tripoli, Saint Antonios in Benghazi and Saint Mary and Saint George in Misrata, have served them since the Qadhafi years, though attacks on the Benghazi and Misrata churches in 2012-2013 pushed worship into quieter forms. In February 2015 Islamic State militants beheaded twenty Coptic workers, thirteen of them from the village of al-Our in Minya, and a Ghanaian companion on a Libyan beach; the Coptic Church honours them as the 21 Martyrs of Libya, and the cross tattooed on a Copt's wrist can still single a worker out. Poverty at home keeps them coming, by the same brokers and desert roads as other Egyptians.

Coptic Egyptians in Oman are the Orthodox Christian minority among the sultanate's 60,000 or so Egyptians, perhaps 5,000 to 7,000 teachers, doctors, engineers, accountants and their families. They are Egyptians first in daily life, sharing the dialect, food and workplaces of their Muslim compatriots, but their social world centres on the Coptic Orthodox Church of Muscat, a single parish served for years by its own priest, Father Surial Anba Bishoy. Christmas on 7 January and Easter, kept by the Coptic calendar after weeks of fasting from meat and dairy, fill the church with families, and Egypt's ambassador, and once its foreign minister, have joined the celebrations. Copts in Salalah or Sohar, hundreds of kilometres away, worship with the Indian and Syrian Orthodox congregations there or travel to the capital for feasts.

Coptic Egyptians are the Christian minority within the UAE's large Egyptian community, perhaps 25,000 to 60,000 people, most of them engineers, doctors, teachers and accountants living with their families in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. They share the dialect and workplaces of their Muslim compatriots but gather around six churches of their own, led by the four-storey St Antonios Cathedral in Abu Dhabi, built in 2007 on land given by the state after years of renting rooms by the hour in Anglican churches. On Fridays and feast days Copts from Al Ain and Fujairah drive in for liturgy in Arabic and Coptic, and Christmas Eve on 7 January fills the cathedral. The community has grown with Egyptian migration since the 1970s, and UAE ministers attend its Easter and Christmas services as a public sign of the country's religious tolerance.