The Scottish explorer James Augustus Grant (1827 – 1892)
In previous posts,[1] I talked about the Coptic bishops of Nubia and Khartoum that were sent by the Coptic Patriarchate in Cairo to Khartoum to shepherd the Coptic flock that went to Sudan following its annexation to Egypt in 1820 by Muhammad Ali (1805 – 1848), Egypt’s ruler.
I said that until the fall of the Mahdist State in Sudan in 1898 when Kitchener won the Battle of Omdurman, the Coptic diocese of Nubia and Khartoum knew three bishops. They all served during the Turco-Egyptian rule that extended from 1820 to 1885 when Khartoum fell to the Mahdists. The first was Bishop Damianus who was ordained by Patriarch Peter VII (1809 – 1852), and we don’t know the years of his ordination or his death; the second bishop was ordained also by Peter VII, and we don’t know anything about this bishop, even his name is a mystery; the third was Bishop Macarius (1978 – 1897), who was ordained by Patriarch Cyril V (1874 – 1927), and who left Sudan around the time of the Fall of Khartoum in 1885.
It is frustrating the Coptic sources does not mention anything about the second Coptic bishop of Nubia and Khartoum save that he was ordained by Pope Cyril V. Even his name was a mystery. I now think we have some information about this bishop that lie deep in the writings of one Scottish explorer, James Augustus Grant (1827 – 1892), who in 1860 joined the English explorer John Hanning Specke in an expedition from east Africa, starting from Zanzibar, to explore the source of the White Nile. Specke managed to reach Lake Victoria first as Grant was a little bit late due to an illness he had caught a short way before Victoria.
After finding animosity from the rulers of the region which is now Uganda, they returned back through Sudan, reaching Gondokoro in the now South of Sudan in February 1863. On 30 March they reached Khartoum, stayed in it two weeks before they left it on 15 April 1863 on their way to Cairo. He wrote a book about his experience in 1864: A Walk Across Africa: or, domestic scenes from my Nile journal.
In Khartoum, of which he dedicates Chapter XVII of his book, he tells us of a tour of the town he made, accompanied by Speke, and guided by one Ali Faḍli Bey, “a liberal-minded Mussulman”, who was deputy (wakeel) of the Governor Musa Pasha Hamdi (governor, 1862 – 1865), who happened to be away of Khartoum then. One of the attractions Ali Bey took them to was the Coptic church in Khartoum. This confirms that there was a Coptic church then in the city, to which is attached a small graveyard. It was typical of the Coptic churches in Egypt with its customs, such as the taking off of shoes, children attendance, draperies and images.
Walking through the streets with Ali Bey, he led us into a walled enclosure, where there were from twenty to thirty tombs surmounted by crosses. The fumes of frankincense met us, and we began to wonder what sight was in store. We entered an arched building; a man in spectacles read aloud from a volume placed on a desk in the centre, and around him were men wearing large turbans, their shoes placed on one side, and several children, all sitting on a carpet listening devoutly. On the walls were draperies and pictures of our Saviour, and within a doorway was the high altar covered with a cloth marked by the figure of the cross. We were in a Coptic church.[2]
We know that the Coptic church had three domes as another British explorer, Samuel Baker (), who was in Khartoum a year earlier (June – December 1862), describes the skyline of Khartoum as being “broken by the pinnacle of a minaret and the triple domes of a Coptic church”.[3]
Grant then describes to us what he calls “the head of the Coptic church at Khartoom”, “handsome old man” called Gabriel. From what he describes this Gabriel must be the Coptic Bishop, the second bishop of Nubia and Khartoum, whom is a mystery if we resort to published Coptic sources. He impressed Grant greatly so much so that he writes that he has “seldom seen a finer face than that of this venerable Copt”. Here is what Grant has to say about Bishop Gabriel:
As the service proceeded in Arabic, a handsome old man entered, bearing a staff surmounted by a golden cross. He proceeded to the altar, and knelt at each of its four sides, after which he returned to where we stood, and conversed with us. By his invitation we left the church to have coffee at his house. I have seldom seen a finer face than that of this venerable Copt. His name, we found, was Gabriel; he is at the head of the Coptic church at Khartoom, and has a congregation of about five hundred persons. He showed us his copy of the four gospels, printed in Arabic and Hebrew characters;[4] and on our taking leave of him, he thanked Ali Bey and ourselves for having visited his church.[5]
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[1] See the following:
- Was it right that the Coptic bishop of Nubia and Khartoum left his flock fatherless in Khartoum as the Mahdists approached it in 1884? (May 12, 2019).
- Was the Coptic bishop of Sudan at the time of the Mahdist revolution forced to convert to Islam? (July 17, 2020).
- Numbers and fate of the Copts in Sudan in the eve of the Mahdist revolution in 1881 and after the Anglo Egyptian reconquest in 1898 (July 24, 2020).
[2] James Grant, A Walk Across Africa: or, domestic scenes from my Nile journal (Edinburgh, London, 1864), pp. 414-5.
[3] Richard Hall, Lovers on the Nile (London, 1980), p. 63.
[4] I suspect what Grant describes as “Hebrew characters” were Coptic.
[5] A Walk Across Africa, p. 415.
