IIS awards Dissertation Writing Scholarship 2009

Ms Shenoda is working on her doctoral thesis entitled Lamenting Islam, Imagining Persecution: Copto-Arabic Opposition to Islamisation and Arabisation in Fatimid Egypt (969-1171 CE). The thesis is a critical consideration of Coptic Christians in Fatimid Egypt. Copto-Arabic writings of this period lament the Islamisation and Arabisation of Egypt.

However, this perceived persecution of Christians is not echoed in other contemporary sources, such as the Judeo-Arabic or Muslim-Arabic histories. Ms Shenoda’s dissertation considers the gendered aspects of medieval Coptic anxieties toward Islam. The study of these histories stands to make an important contribution to the way medieval Egyptian history has been written and understood.