“The First Duty of Charity”

Abstract From its conceptualization during the late nineteenth century to its grand opening in 1927 and through subsequent decades, the Coptic Hospital has been a fixture in the geographies and genealogies of sectarianism in Cairo. When Boutros Ghali Pasha established the Great Coptic Benevolent Society with other Coptic laity in 1881, he and the board of directors envisioned medical care for the Coptic poor as the organization's first and primary duty. When they faced a myriad of challenges in erecting the hospital, they pivoted to a broader purview of the society's mandate by expanding service to all Egyptians regardless of religious affiliation amid the most polemical sectarian encounters and debates of the early twentieth century. They mediated these tensions by employing a language of sectarian neutrality and claiming to contribute to Egypt's march toward “civilization” through the establishment of the country's first Egyptian-established and -operated private hospital. Yet many aspects of the hospital's development—from appointing department directors to tracking patients—continued to center religious identity as a salient category of medical management. This article examines the discursive and material trajectories of the Coptic Hospital through the prism of medical philanthropy and sectarian infrastructures in modern Cairo.