At a time when the citizenship of a candidate’s mother disqualifies him from the presidency, it is nearly impossible to imagine an Armenian holding the post of Egyptian prime minister. Yet the reign of Mohamed Ali was not a unique chapter of diversity in Egyptian history.
Like the Ottoman period, the Fatimid and Mamluk eras involved significant contributions of foreign peoples. Armenians were builders of Bab Zuweila and seamstresses of the Kabba covering, court photographers of Mohamed Ali and jewelers to King Farouk. Today, they are a tight-knit community, integrated in the fabric of Egypt.
Under Mohamed Ali, Armenians and other Ottoman citizens flocked to Egypt for opportunity under the ambitious new ruler.
“Egypt was like the Gulf is today as far as traveling there to work,” says Thomas Zakarian, a teacher in Heliopolis’ Nubarian School.
The Wali of Egypt hired Armenians as diplomats, commercial agents and technicians to modernize the country. Under his auspices, Armenians founded colleges of accounting, engineering and translation in the mid-19th century. Education Minister Yacoub Artin Pasha inaugurated Egypt's first girls’ school in 1873.
Mastery of Ottoman Turkish and European languages made Armenians suitable intermediaries to the West and favored by Ali as chief translators.
“Armenians were viewed as outsiders, but not as Europeans,” says Mahmoud Sabit, an Egyptian historian, whose ancestor Sherif Pasha was the rival of Nubar Pasha.
They had a knack for diplomacy and warfare; Fatimid and Mamluk armies employed Armenians as heavy-armored cavalry.
Others were expert stonemasons. Armenian Muslim Badr al-Jamali, one of seven Armenian Fatimid viziers, commissioned his kin to build Bab al-Futuh, Bab al-Nasr and Bab Zuweila.
“The world then was not based on ethnicity, which is why outsiders could have easily integrated in it,” Sabit said.
SEE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/communities-armenians-egypt-recount-rich-history
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