‘Egypt’s True Spirit’: Christians And Muslims Swap Saints And Pray Side By Side
CAIRO — As a child, Shimaa al-Shawarbi's mother would take her on her day off to the moulid of Saint Barsum al-Aryan in Helwan, south of Cairo, accompanied by colleagues from work. The teasing between them was ritual.
“Just so you know,” one woman would say, “Anba Barsum is a great saint in our church’s history.”
Another woman would reply without missing a beat: “Actually, he was one of God’s righteous Muslim awliya (saints) his name was Sidi Mohamed al-Aryan. You took him from us and built a church where the shrine used to be. But in our generosity, we let you celebrate alongside us.”
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Al-Shawarbi, 40, lives in Ain Shams in east Cairo and works as a public relations officer at Insan Publishing House. She grew up hearing many such competing versions of shared religious figures claimed by both Christian and Muslim communities, told with more warmth than rancor.
Similar disputed narratives circulate around Saint George, whose churches dot Egypt from Alexandria to Aswan. His story, as told by Christians, is of a martyr tortured during the Roman period for refusing to abandon his faith, beheaded in 307 CE. A parallel Muslim tradition identifies him with al-Khidr, the enigmatic figure of Islamic scripture associated with divine knowledge and protection.
Al-Aryan and a Quranic verse inside a church
Shimaa said she grew up loving all houses of God, churches as much as mosques, and has passed that love to her children. Her family attends Christmas and Easter masses and visits religious moulids, or festivals, without distinction. One day at a church, a young woman was distributing pictures of a monk.
Shimaa asked for one and was told he was Saint Moses the Black, a former gang leader who encountered a group of monks, embraced the Christian faith, renounced his past life and became one of the Desert Fathers, before being killed in a raid on his monastery in 405 CE.
Sami Harak, a writer specializing in Egyptology and author of “The Monastery of Saint Barsum al-Aryan,” said the saint’s legend migrated into Muslim tradition under the name "Sidi Mohamed al-Aryan.”
As a result, his September festival draws Muslims and Christians in equal measure. Many Muslims believe the monastery was originally an Islamic shrine that was later converted into a church.
Only in Egypt will you find a church with a Quranic verse displayed inside its nave. This reporter visited the church of Saint Thérèse in Shubra Misr, north Cairo, on many occasions, growing up in the neighborhood. In the entrance hall, a large statue of the saint greets visitors; inside, the church's distinctive basilica architecture frames an inscription between two ornate crosses: "Enter in peace, secure" (Quran 15:46).
The walls of the church are lined with marble plaques bearing thanks for answered prayers, some signed by well-known figures from Egyptian arts, politics and media. Muslim visitors seeking blessing and healing outnumber the Christian worshippers on many days.
Women whisper competing theories about Thérèse’s identity; some believe she converted to Islam before her death and ordered the verse inscribed as a testament to her new faith. The story has little historical grounding, but the belief in her power to heal and intercede has made her a fixture in the lives of many women from this famously coexistent neighborhood.
Real — not legend
“I loved the moulid of Saint George in Mit Damsis in Dakahlia,” said a local, Mohamed al-Nimr, “and I used to visit the monasteries of Martyr Damiana in Dakahlia and Martyr Abanoub in Gharbia, in northern Egypt.”
He bristles at the suggestion that the shared stories surrounding these figures are mere folk mythology.
“There’s no complete legend that isn't partly true,” he said. “I see them as real, especially since all houses of God are sacred. Saint Abanoub, in particular, with the ancient well and the documented healings. Many Muslims visit him and are healed.”
Mohamed added that the miracles he has witnessed at the shrines of Lady Zeinab and Syed al-Badawi are, for him, proof enough of the blessings in churches and their patron saints.
Sami Harak noted that popular legends accumulate across generations, with each era adding details that speak to its own concerns. The official iconography of Saint George shows a knight on horseback killing a beast with a lance, an image that directly echoes ancient Egyptian depictions of Horus striking a hippopotamus with a spear, representing his defeat of the god Set. That iconography passed through centuries and emerged in Islamic tradition as al-Khidr, a continuous symbol of protection across civilizations.
The martyr Damiana, tortured and killed by the Romans in 304 CE for refusing to renounce Christianity, according to the Coptic account, exists in parallel Muslim tradition as a woman named Jamiana who converted to Islam, was persecuted and killed by her own family for it, and gave her name to the village.
Harak reads these parallel stories as an ancient Egyptian inheritance: a deep love of moulids, gods, and communal celebration that predates both Islam and Christianity, compelling each generation to dress existing festivities in whatever religious language feels most natural.
The moulids also served practical purposes — rulers used them to deliver proclamations and reach the population directly. They were seasonal markets and spaces for entertainment: female dancers, conjurers, magicians, stick-fighting, the horse dance and an entire economy that activated around them. That layered function, Harak argues, is why they survive and evolve.
What makes Egypt’s case singular, he said, is that Muslims and Christians mix in celebrating each other's moulids in ways not seen between other faith communities anywhere in the world.
Saint George, al-Khidr and al-Aryan the snake tamer
The late Dr. Essam Statati, in his book, “The Coptic Moulids,” describes visiting a little-known moulid called Abu George in Assiut, where the principal offerings left by both Muslim and Christian devotees were rice pudding, henna, oil and candles.
He also writes of hearing about a flask of water from a saint's shrine said to have cured cases of kidney failure and cancer after medicine had failed.
Statati writes that Muslims claim Barsum al-Aryan as their own, calling him “Sidi Mohamed al-Barssoumi” or simply “al-Aryan.” This fluid ownership, he noted, has led foreign researchers to observe that Egypt’s blessed atmosphere draws Christians and Muslims alike to visit each other's mosques and churches openly, and to seek blessings from each other's shrines without discomfort.
He writes of witnessing this himself at the al-Aryan moulid: “I rested beside a Christian family and a Muslim family.”
Dr. Saeed Sadek, professor of political sociology, said that religious differences dissolve in the pursuit of blessing. He said that the popular moulids are an essential feature of Egyptian life, tied to food, games, chanting, liturgical song and circles of dhikr, experienced by many participants more as a community festival than as a religious observance.
Muslims and Christians exchange prayers at each other's shrines, particularly during moulid season, seeking barakah, or divine blessing. Official religious institutions do not encourage this blurring of lines, but the reality on the ground asserts itself regardless.
Moulids, vows and old customs
“I can't enter a church without lighting a candle and praying before the Virgin,” said Reem Mukhtar. “Her place in my heart is like Umm Hashim, Lady Zeinab and Nafisa.”
Reem, originally from the city of Minya, credited Saint Moses the Black with a significant change in her own character. She makes a point of attending the moulid of the Virgin Mary every August.
“It has everything, an atmosphere of closeness to God, like the Hussain moulid, and a closeness between people,” she said.
She does not go to argue over historical facts but to embody what she calls Egypt’s true spirit. The most circulated shared story, she notes, is the identification of Saint George with al-Khidr, as if the two are, in the popular imagination, a single figure, a shared symbol of protection.
Reem also mentions the story of the Seven Girls in the Beni Mazar area of Minya, nuns who fed the Muslim armies during the Islamic conquest of the village, were then killed by the Romans, and have been venerated by women of all faiths ever since. A story circulates that a woman who rolls in the sand near their shrine will be blessed with fertility and good fortune.
Statati describes standing at the moulid of Saint George in Sidment watching an elderly woman pray before an image of the saint, rub her hands across her own body, a gesture identical to what he had seen at Muslim shrines, then light a candle and turn to listen to a sermon inside the church.
Outside, sweets were being sold just as at the moulid of Syed al-Badawi, and children were riding fairground swings.
“Here, you cannot tell Muslim from Christian,” Statati said. “Everyone is Egyptian. The features are the same. The customs are the same. Everyone celebrates in an atmosphere of tolerance. I would have thought everyone was Christian if not for the women in niqab and hijab. Many Muslim and Christian families had arrived in the same car.”
Manal Hussein, a Cairo businesswoman, said her roots “go between Assiut and Alexandria.”
“I never miss the moulid of the Virgin Mary. She is honored in the Quran, she gave birth to a prophet, and she has a surah [a passage of the Qur’an] named after her,” she added.
At the moulids, families gather and practice old customs: praying for daughters to find husbands, circumcisions performed by a traditional barber-surgeon, and the offering of vows. The same customs appear at Sufi shrines in Alexandria, observed by members of both faiths together. "I find in all of it a beautiful expression of love and coexistence."
Statati also records a remarkable episode from the moulid of the Virgin at Jabal al-Tayr in Minya, which occurred approximately five years before his book was published. Security forces had moved to bar Muslims from participating.
Father Matta Kamel, the vicariate's deputy, responded by canceling the celebration entirely and forbidding prayers at the monastery until Muslims were permitted to join. A large demonstration of thousands of Christians followed in solidarity with the excluded Muslims, and security was eventually forced to allow Muslim participation.
At the moulid of the Virgin in Mostorod, northeast of Cairo, Statati met a Muslim man who travels the moulid circuit year-round, tattooing the Abu Zeid al-Hilali folk epic symbol at Islamic moulids and crosses and saints' images at Christian ones.
This story was published in collaboration with Egab.
Faten Sobhi is an Egyptian journalist who covers women’s issues, refugees, health and climate change.