Coptic

The Copts are Egypt's native Christian people, descended from the ancient Egyptians and settled chiefly in Cairo, Alexandria and the Nile valley, especially Upper Egypt. Their language Coptic is the last stage of ancient Egyptian, written in an alphabet based on Greek; after the Arab conquest of 641 Arabic gradually replaced it in daily life, while Coptic survived in the liturgy.

Christianity reached Egypt in the first century through Saint Mark, and the Egyptian desert birthed Christian monasticism through Anthony and Pachomius. After the Council of Chalcedon in 451 the Egyptian church broke from the empire's to become the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.

Under the caliphs and later the Mamluks, Copts paid the jizya and endured cycles of tolerance and persecution with repeated tax revolts; they ceased to form a majority after the fourteenth century. Under Ottoman rule they were grouped in the Armenian millet; Muhammad Ali opened army and state service to them in the early nineteenth century, improving their position.