By Alan Nazareth, former Ambassador of India to Egypt
At the signing of the Gaza Peace Agreement at Sharm el-Sheikh on October 13, 2025 President Trump averred that it would bring peace to Arabs and Jews after 3000 years. This statement is quite inaccurate, as the following historical facts indicate.
Abraham had two sons: the first, mothered by Hagar, his Egyptian servant, was named Ismael; the second, mothered by his Jewish wife Sarah, was named Isaac. Isaac’s son Jacob had 12 sons, of whom Joseph was his favourite. Resenting this, his brothers sold him to Egyptian slave traders. Some years later, Joseph accurately interpreted Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat and lean cows and was appointed his ‘Food Minister’. When the famine that Joseph predicted began, his brothers came to Egypt in quest of food grains, ample quantities of which were stocked. Joseph recognised them and without revealing his identity, told them food grains would be provided when they returned with their father. When they did, he provided them not only food grains but also fertile lands to cultivate and live on. Jacob’s 12 sons gestated the incipient Jewish nation on these lands. Four centuries later (about 1200 BC), Moses, reared in youth as an Egyptian prince, on learning he was Jewish and not Egyptian, led “his people” out of Egypt into the “Promised Land” after trudging 40 years in the Sinai desert.
Two centuries later, the Jews had their first Golden Age under Kings David and Solomon, who ruled 1010 –970 and 970 – 930 BC. When Ishmaelite Queen of Sheba (present day Yemen), visited King Solomon in Jerusalem, it was Abraham’s great, great, great grandchildrenmeeting each otherthe first time!
This Golden Age was short-lived. King Solomon was succeeded by his cruel and dissipateds on Rehoboam, His kingdom was riven with dissension because of which, in the next 200 years, it had 19 kings, all of whom either died in wars of succession or were assassinated.
In 605 BC, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II conquered Judea, destroyed Solomon’s Temple and took all the Jews as captives to Babylon. Their captivity lasted 70 years.
In 535 BC, King Cyrus of Persia conquered the Babylonian Kingdom, freed the Jews and assisted them in rebuilding Solomon’s Temple.
In 331 BC, Greek King Alexanderdefeated Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela, ended the Persian Kingdom and made Judea a part of his Empire.
In 64 BC, Julius Caesar conquered the Greek Empire’s remnants, then ruled by Queen Cleopatra of Egypt and annexed Egypt and Judea to the Roman Empire.
In 27 BC. Rome appointed Herod as “King of the Jews” of their vassal state of Judea. When he learnt from the “Three Magi”that the “New King of the Jews” was born,he orderedall new born male childreninhis kingdom massacred. Joseph and Mary therefore fled to Egypt with the Child Jesus and lived there for four years in a cave at Drunka (present day Assyut). The revered Virgin Mary Monastery built over this cave, still stands.
The Holy family returned to Bethlehem after King Herod’s death.
In 33AD, Jesus Christ was crucified, despite Roman Governor Pontius Pilate finding “no fault” in him.The Jewish High Priests insisted on his crucifixion as he had driven them out of the Temple for desecrating it with their commerce.
Early in the 5th century, Arabic emerged as a spoken language in Nabatea in northern Arabia. Thereafter, the Ishmaelites came to be knownas Arabs.
Prophet Mohammed receiving Divine Revelations in the 610-622AD period gestated Islam and united diverse Arab tribes into a unified nation.
By 710 AD, Islamic armies had conquered Coptic Christian Egypt (which ruled Palestine), north Africa, much of the east bank of Spain, and all landseast of Arabia up to the Indus River’s east bank. Almost half of Christendom was lost!
In the next five centuries, its popes, emperors and kings waged wars to retrieve this territory, particularly the ‘Holy Land’’. These were named “Crusades”. There were eight of them. The first, launched by Pope Urban II in 1096 retrieved Jerusalem. All Moslems and Jews there in were massacred and the ‘Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem established. The next seven Crusades could only retrieve Antioch, Tripoli and Edessa, where Christian principalities were set up.
In July 1187, Egypt’s Sultan Salauddin won the historic Battle of Hattin and drove out the Crusaders from all the mentioned cities and re-established Egypt’s firm control over Palestine and Syria
The Crusader wars caused a sharp deterioration in Europe’s economic and social conditions and triggered the Bubonic Plague (1347–1351), which killed almost 30 million people.TheJews, already long reviled as “Christ killers,” were blamed for it as their “Ghettos” were the most unhygienic parts of every city and town, and were massacred. This raised the death toll by a further million.
In 1227, Pope Gregory IX instituted the ‘Inquisition’, to investigate “heretical depravity” among religious and lay cosmologists who interpreted Biblical passages contrary to Church dogma. Many were found guilty and condemned. Prominent among them were Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei. The former was “burned at the stake” in Rome’s Campo Fiori in 1600; the latter was sentenced to life imprisonment.
In 1492, Spain’s Catholic King decreed the Inquisition in his country. In the next 100 years, approx. 150,000 Muslims and Jews were tried, of whom approx. 4000 were found guilty and “burnt at the stake”.
In 1559, Pope Paul IV issued the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) to “protect the faithful from theologically, culturally, or politically disruptive” books.
These Papal proclamations and Royal decrees gave Christendom of the 1200 – 1600 period the ‘Saeculum Obscurum’ (Age of Obscurantism) adage.
In sharp contrast, in the same period, universities were set up at Baghdad (‘House of Wisdom’), Cairo (‘Al Azhar’), Fez (Al Quaraouiyine) and astronomical observatories at Baghdad, Damascus, Maragheh and Samarkand. At all these places, ancient Sumerian, Greek, Indian and Persian texts on philosophy, astronomy, medicine and other sciences were studied, translated and elaborated upon by Muslim, Jewish and Christian Scholars.
This was the second golden age for the Jews. In all the mentioned countries, the Emirs were Muslim, but many astronomers, mathematicians, geographers, physicians, pharmacists and translators were Jewish. They moved freely from one University /astronomical observatory to another. Moses ben Simon, (“Maimonides”), philosopher, astronomer, physician and Sephardic rabbi is the best example. Born in Cordoba in 1138, he first moved to Morocco, then to Egypt where he died in 1204 and is buried. While in Egypt, he was the personal physician to Sultan Saladin.
Will Durant, in his ‘Story of Civilisation’ has written “Only at the peaks of history has a society produced so many illustrious men – in government, education, literature, philology, geography, history, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, philosophy, and medicine – as Islam did in the four centuries between Harun al-Rashid and Averroes. Part of this brilliant activity fed on Greek leavening, but much of it, above all in statesmanship and Philosophy, was original and invaluable.”
Until Israel’s creation in 1948, Cairo and Alexandria had thriving Jewish communities totalling about 40,000. Most of them emigrated to Israel. The few who remain are aged and dedicated to preserving Jewish heritage sites. Most important of these are: Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo (legendary spot where Moses was found and a major repository of ancient Jewish texts) and Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria.
(to be continued)
