This interview was conducted with Mr. Fady Ghaṭṭās, publications director for the Alexandria School, on Tuesday, November 19^th, at the Alexandria School offices in Heliopolis, Cairo. The interview covers some of the history of the Alexandria School, their publications, and aspects of their broader orientation as an important voice shaping modern Coptic Orthodoxy in Egypt. Mr. Ghaṭṭās has a BSc in pharmaceutical sciences from Ain Shams University and an MTh in Orthodox theology from Agora University. The interview was conducted by Dr. Matthew Anderson, executive editor for Dialogue Across Borders.

 Can you tell me how you understand the origins of the Alexandria School?

It was started by some young people, a small group of Coptic Orthodox Christians who wanted a channel and a community to share our ideas about how to navigate our religious questions in the contemporary world. I think Facebook played a role here, because around 2007 and 2008, Facebook really became a thing. So these young people approached St. George’s-Sporting church in Alexandria and Fr. Tādrus Yaqūb Malaṭī (b.1937), a senior Coptic Orthodox scholar who had been publishing a fair amount of patristic commentary on the Bible. At the time, people didn't really have access to patristic writings. So when you have someone providing patristic commentary in Arabic on the Bible, it was interesting for people.

 He's quite elderly, right?

Maybe in his late 80s. He lived in the United States for a while and then came back to Alexandria. I don't know the circumstances of him traveling abroad. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a huge immigration flow from here due to wars and economic conditions. So the Coptic Orthodox people who travelled needed priests. During the papacy of Pope Kyrillos VI and Pope Shenouda III, they started sending clergy there to do pastoral activity. So he traveled at this time, but I don't know the precise context of his travel.

So they approached him and the Monastery of al-Baramous in Wādī al-Naṭrūn where Fr. Seraphim al-Baramousy is based. They came up with the idea of having a journal. And they started trying to have access to broader academic scholarship. One of the main challenges was at that time we didn’t have access to academic journals, because it's very expensive, right? So they were approaching schools and people studying or teaching abroad. And they would ask, “Okay, can you get this article for us? We really would like to have a look at it.” And then they might translate it. So they started giving people here in Egypt  high-quality material they don't usually have access to. People liked what they were reading, and the journal became distributed through St. George’s-Sporting church in Alexandria, which has a wide channel for book distribution. And then year after year, they started publishing the journal. Some books are published as well. And it worked like that until they find their first real physical place in Heliopolis where they started in 2015.

 Do you know some of the early books that they published?

They published a book about the Holy Spirit by Didymus the Blind, another on Tertullian and other patristic works. But from the first day the approach of the Alexandria School was multidisciplinary. We didn’t limit ourselves to early patristic writings or spiritual writings. We have many different readers, some of whom are young. You cannot give them a heavy text. And then you have scholars who want to read a philosophical or theological text. And so you have to provide for all of them. I joined as the editor in 2019 and started building from what was there.

We developed an editorial department and tried to be up to date with publications worldwide, while trying to understand what is missing in the Arabic library. This is our motive. And I'm speaking here simply about the publications, because the Alexandria School has many different components. In my experience, when trying to decide which titles we want, we have an Arabic library in our mind. We have a survey where we know which books have been published before us and we try to fill in the gaps or introduce new genres or new fields that have not been studied before in Arabic. And we also have seminaries and theological colleges around us. But there is a huge spectrum of Egyptians who are not very proficient in English or other European languages. They need something academic to read, too. After some years, seminaries can develop some programs totally in Arabic. This has been a huge need to provide resources for people who don’t read English or other European languages.

So this is something new happening and we have seen its impact on people. Because, as you have said about our annual summer Epiphany Conference, I don't think that, without our work and a few other publishers in the last decade or so, many people would be able to attend this conference and engage in that way. So I think that the Alexandria School and other publishers have done good job here. But, we are still in the beginning.