On the Road to Heaven: Poll Tax, Religion, and Human Capital in Medieval and Modern Egypt

Résumé

In the Middle East, non-Muslims are, on average, better off than the Muslim majority. Itrace the origins of the phenomenon in Egypt to the imposition of the poll tax on non-Muslims upon the Islamic Conquest of the then-Coptic Christian Egypt in 640. The tax,which remained until 1855, led to the conversion of poor Copts to Islam to avoid payingthe tax, and to the shrinking of Copts to a better off minority. Using new data sources that I digitized, including the 1848 and 1868 census manuscripts, I provide empirical evidenceto support the hypothesis. I find that the spatial variation in poll tax enforcement and taxelasticity of conversion, measured by four historical factors, predicts the variation in the Coptic population share in the 19th century, which is, in turn, inversely related to themagnitude of the Coptic-Muslim gap, as predicted by the hypothesis. The four factorsare: (i) the 8th and 9th centuries tax revolts, (ii) the Arab immigration waves to Egypt in the 7th to 9th centuries, (iii) the Coptic churches and monasteries in the 12th and 15thcenturies, and (iv) the route of the Holy Family in Egypt. I draw on a wide range ofqualitative evidence to support these findings.