George Eden Kirk (1911 – 1993) was a British Archaeologist who worked in the Middle East before World War II. Owing to his expert knowledge he was engaged during the war in top level intelligence analysis in Cairo. After the capitulation of Italy, he moved to Jerusalem as one of the lecturers in Colonel Bertram Thomas’s Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies where British navy, army, air force and civilian special service officers received a year’s training in the history, customs and the principal language of the Middle East. While working there, he published in 1948 his famous book, A Short History of the Middle East: From the Rise of Islam to Modern Times. It was for the courses given by Mr. Kirk in the above school that much of the material for this book was originally collected. Between 1948 and 2018, 166 editions of the books have been published in four languages and held by 2,357 WorldCat member libraries worldwide. It is still regarded as one of the major references for the history of the Middle East.[1]
I focused on what he had to say about the Copts. Not much. But an entry infuriated me. Kirk explains in his book that “the main factor in the Arab conquests was the feebleness of the forces that opposed them. The Byzantine and Persian Empires were both exhausted by a generation of warfare.”[2] This is absolutely true. Then he talks about the lack of support of the support in the areas under the control of the Byzantines and the Persians in the Middle East: “The Semitic majority of the inhabitants of Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia were more akin to the Arabs, in race and sympathies, than to their byzantine and Persian rulers, from whom they were further estranged by generations of excessive taxation and bureaucratic misrule; the Bani Ghassan, who should have taken the first shock of the invasion of the Byzantine Empire, had been alienated because the Emperor Heraclius, his treasury emptied by the victorious Persian expedition, had in 629 stopped his annual subsidy to them.”[3] May be true but not entirely. He then talks about Egypt:
“In Egypt the Patriarch of Alexandria[4] had attempted to impose a doctrinal compromise on the Monophysite Copts by force, and in his complementary role of civic governor had been ruthless in collection of taxes.”[5]
All that is right. However, it is the following addition which is infuriating:
“… with the result that the Coptic Bishop of Alexandria ordered his coreligionaries not to resist the Arabs.”[6]
This is absolutely wrong, and there is no evidence whatsoever that the Coptic Patriarch of the time, Benjamin I (622 – 661) had ordered the Copts not to resist the Arabs. Benjamin was in internal exile for ten years when the Arabs invaded, and their invasion came by stealth. He had no idea whatsoever that the Arabs were invading, and no ancient source, Copt or Greek or Arab, records any communication from him to his people commanding them not to resist the invaders or to welcome them.
Western writers should be cautious of spreading falsehood about Coptic history. Its influence is great, since their writings otherwise are scholarly and respectful. Their lazy and cavalier attitude when it comes to characterise the Copts’ position vis-à-vis the Arab invasion is harmful to the Copts as much as it is misleading to those who study the history of that period.
[1] OCLC, WorldCat Identities.
[2] George E. Kirk, A Short History of the Middle East: From the Rise of Islam to Modern Times (Methuen, London, University Paperbacks, 2nd ed., 1964), p. 15.
[3] A Short History of the Middle East, p. 15.
[4] The Byzantine Patriarch Cyrus who wasn’t a Copt.
[5] A Short History of the Middle East, p. 16.
[6] Ibid.