131 years ago on this day, the 19th February 1895, one of the great Coptic political activists, Ester Akhnoukh Fanous, was born.
Fanous was born into a highly successful and active Coptic family. Her father, Akhnoukh Fanous (1856-1946), was a key figure of the Coptic world, establishing the secular Egyptian Party in 1908, and most notably organising and funding the great Coptic Conference of 1911, also serving in Maglis al-Milli. Fanous would go on to, like her father, shape the social and political conscious of the modern Coptic scene.
Fanous emerged publicly during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, after a famous family friend, Makram Ebeid, visited her family home. During the visit she learned that Saad Zaghloul Pasha intended to travel to Britain to demand the lifting of the British mandate. Afterwards, she went on to join the revolt against the British. After Saad Pasha Zaghloul’s request to travel to England was denied, across Egypt, many began to protest, where protestors were shot at by the British. Fanous, in response, wrote to President Woodrow Wilson of the USA, writing:
“Four people were sent to fight in this battle, if it is urgent we will send four hundred, may be four thousand, or four million, to liberate the precedent of the four. Triple this number insists on establishing justice in our homeland. Elders regain their strength, men are valiant, and women are virile.”
Fanous’ words would grow to gain hundreds of women’s signatures in support. After travelling to Cairo, Fanous met with Safia Zaghloul, who proposed that she and Huda Shaarawi also add their signatures to the letter. Hundreds of women would go on to sign in support of Fanous’ words. It would lead to those hundreds joining a feminist women’s demonstration publicly.
These three women, Fanous, Shaarawi, and Zaghloul, with the impetus coming from Fanous, decided to form a committee to represent the women of Egypt, working in parallel with the Wafd political party. The Women’s Wafd Central Committee and the New Woman Society were respectively published in 1920.
The first ever meeting for this committee to represent the women of Egypt happened in a Christian space – in some ways symbolic of how the Coptic Church has a long history of feminist support.
On 13th December 1919, many women, including Muslim women, met at St Mark’s Cathedral (now known as the Markazian Cathedral Meeting) to protest against Youssef Wahba Pasha’s Prime Ministership and the Milner Commission (the British delegation led by Lord Milner to investigate the 1919 Egyptian Revolution). At the meeting, Fanous was selected as Secretary. It is estimated that nearly 3,000 other women were engaged with the Committee.
This committee would go on to lead many women’s protests and was even shot at by the British.
Fanous would go on to enter a mosque without veiling to attend and speak at the political meetings there to an audience of both men and women; she is remembered for having given strong and powerful speeches. She was such an incredible figure to speak and instruct at a Mosque as a proud Coptic woman.
Saad Pasha would later go on and say: “Egyptian women have participated creatively in our present renaissance and demonstrated their courage during the revolution. Let us all shout: Long live the Egyptian Woman!”
Fanous’s work did not stop; she remained a key feminist figure and political actor for the rest of her life. In 1923, Fanous and others would go on to establish the Egyptian Feminist Union for the social equality, betterment and improvement of women’s lives. Other activities she led included her involvement in the Young Women’s Christian Association and the Labour Association of Egypt.
To read more on her life, her son, Hanna Fahmy Wissa, published the book: ‘Assiout: the Saga of an Egyptian Family’. Link here.
