FORGOTTEN CHILDREN

Caring for the Orphaned and Abandoned

CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES AND ISLAMIC ACTIVISTS battled in the 1930s over the bodies and souls of Egyptian children on the field of social welfare. The tug of war was most pronounced in the efforts to "save" or "liberate" the orphaned and abandoned. The struggle, which shaped the Muslim Brotherhood, seeded the welfare state, and sealed the fate of missionaries in Egypt, was a long time in the making. Tracing its roots, and the reasons missionaries came to have a near monopoly on orphan care, is critical to understanding the confrontation that culminated in the 1933 Port Said orphan scandal.

Among those who were considered the deserving poor, orphaned and abandoned children stood out in Muslim societies, but there were very important differences in their legal status and place in the social imaginary. According to Islamic law, an orphan (yatim; pl. aytam, yatama) was one who had lost a father. Foundlings (laqit; pl. luqata'), or abandoned children, in contrast, were often presumed to be the result of illicit sexual relations, though children were also abandoned due to penury. Islamic inheritance law, which Copts followed, set the parameters for caring for these children, with the law clearly distinguishing between those whose paternity could be established and those whose paternity was unknown or contested: one was to be specially protected, the other ostracized for their unknown pedigree.

Islamic law has a great deal to say about the care of orphans, encouraging kind treatment, detailing the responsibilities of guardians, and protecting inheritances. The child's mother, if still alive, was not responsible for supporting the child financially; and she had no rights over the child's upbringing or claims to his or her property after the child had passed a certain age. Inheritance was set by fixed Qur'anic shares and could only be assigned to those in the blood line. By regulating and assigning guardians, usually a male family member, the law sought to protect the inheritance of orphans. The law prohibited adoption, barring admission into a family to those outside the male bloodline, and did not allow the giving of a new paternal name to a child. These rules effectively excluded orphans from becoming legally knit into a new family on the same terms as other offspring. Fostering and giving the gift of care, in which children without parental care were taken into other families but kept their own names, existed. Hidden or secret adoption was also practiced, but these unsanctioned arrangements ran the risk of becoming undone at critical moments.

The regulations surrounding orphans shored up the notion of the family as a set of blood relatives with a shared pedigree and patrilineal descent. The social and legal emphasis on biological as opposed to adoptive parenthood created challenges for those who were infertile and could not reproduce. And it left those without a patrimony—abandoned children—in a social wilderness. Bearing the stigma of the act of illicit sex and carrying the stain of a misbegotten birth, they were sometimes perceived to have "tainted" blood. Whether the sexual act through which they were conceived was voluntary or forced, their mothers were considered to have dishonored the family by having premarital or extra-marital relations. Stigmatizing children born out of wedlock and branding the mothers was obviously not unique to Egypt, but it meant that single motherhood was not an option, and it left illegitimate children on the margins of society. They were not legally orphans, which would have given them certain protections.

In practice the "orphans" in the story presented here came from a variety of family situations and did not adhere to a strict legal definition: they were abandoned, disabled, motherless, fatherless, or simply had no relatives who were able or willing to care for them. They were, in short, children without parental care. The Ottoman-Egyptian state strove to build up a social welfare network that would help orphans who lacked resources or family members willing to raise them; abandoned children, who had no knowledge of their families at all; and all others who fell through the cracks of family networks. Its work was interrupted by the British occupation of 1882, after which state investment in social welfare declined. Here is where missionaries found a special calling and a niche. Protestant missionaries had begun arriving on the shores of Egypt in the mid-nineteenth century with the gospel in hand and a vision to save Egyptians. When the locals did not turn out in large numbers to hear their message, evangelicals started building schools, hospitals, and later orphanages to guarantee a captive audience. Partaking of social welfare came with an obligation to study the Bible, sit in on services, and listen to prayer. Egyptians initially took this to be a small price to pay for services which were in short supply.

"Managing" the Poor: The Ottoman-Egyptian State

Social welfare in premodern Egypt had been a prerogative, or responsibility, of religious authorities, with each religious community taking care of its own poor and establishing trusts for this purpose. The modernizing state under the Ottoman viceroy Mehmed 'Ali (r. 1805–49) eyed the assets of Islamic religious endowments and began assuming administration of them. The state gained oversight over institutions set up to serve those who were not sufficiently provided for by the safety net of the family or by other forms of religious charity. The latter included large multifunctional complexes established by sultans and other wealthy donors, which had previously operated autonomously from the state. The Maristan Qalawun, a medieval mosque and hospital complex, was one such institution. It came to have an orphanage and foundling home, which took in abandoned children found on the streets of Cairo and those whose parents could not properly care for them.

The Ottoman-Egyptian state was interested in "managing" the poor, whether those in need were widows, sick, elderly, or orphans. In addition to taking over administration of religious endowments, the state started its own social welfare operations. Prominent among these was the Madrasat al-Wilada (School for Midwives). Established in the 1830s in the Civilian Hospital of Azbakiyya, the school contained a home for...