Egypt: an economic geography The people of Egypt · 27
The geographical distribution of the Coptic population reflects their
centuries-long discrimination and persecution. Quite early in their history
they took refuge in Upper Egypt, when the Nile delta was plagued with
recurrent persecution. Thus the number of Copts in the Nile delta is only
1 per cent today, according to official statistics, in El-Minya 20 per cent, in
Asyut 10 per cent and in the other Upper Egyptian governorates about 5 per
cent. Since the nineteenth century, the Coptic fellaheen have participated
strongly in the migration to Cairo and Alexandria, where they have sought
protection in anonymity, for the Christian minorities in the villages have been
ever since targets of fanatical Muslims and at the mercy of despotic local
administrators. The middle-class district of Shubra, in the northern part of
Cairo, constitutes the strongest concentration of Christians in the capital. Its
landscape is dominated by a great number of churches, as well as by shops
with their owners’ Christian names on the sign boards and with pictures of
saints on the inside walls.