The Great Arab Conquests

The story of the conquest is elaborated in the Arabic sources with a mass of confusing detail.² Egypt in the eighth and ninth centuries produced its own school of history-writing that was completely separate from the Iraqi tradition on which we depend for the history of the conquests of the Fertile Crescent and Iran. The great Baghdad-based historian Tabarī, who devotes hundreds of pages to collecting the stories of the conquests of Syria, Iraq and Iran, dismisses the conquest of Egypt in fewer than twenty.³ A strong local tradition of history-writing developed early in Egypt, however. Stories about the Muslim conquest of the country were collected and written down by a historian called Ibn Abd al-Hakam (c. 805-71) in the mid ninth century.⁴ He came from an Arab family whose ancestors had come over with the conquest, and he sought to record and preserve the memory of the great deeds of that time. He wrote at a time when the old Arab aristocracy of Egypt was being replaced as the ruling elite by Turkish soldiers brought in from the east, and his accounts are tinged with nostalgia for the days when his family, and families like them, had ruled the land. He derived his information from a variety of works, now lost, which were composed in Egypt in the eighth and early ninth centuries⁵ and were probably themselves based on local oral tradition and reflect a real early Islamic social memory about the conquests. It is useful to consider these texts as a separate body of literature and I shall refer to this material as the Egyptian-Arab writing.

At the same time, the Muslim conquest is recorded in a contemporary Christian chronicle written by John, Bishop of Nikiu, a small city on the western margins of the Delta.⁶ John was a near-contemporary of the events he describes, so his account is a reflection of attitudes of the time. He also provides us with some clear dates, which help to anchor the swirling confusion of the Arabic narratives in a chronological framework. The chronicle is not, however, without its problems. The Coptic original is long since lost and survives only in a single manuscript translation into Ge’ez (the ancient and liturgical language of the Ethiopian Church), made in the twelfth century. The translation is clearly confused in places and it is hard to know how accurately it reflects the original. There are also gaps at crucial points, such as the surrender of the fortress at Babylon. John does, however, give a reasonably coherent narrative and provides a useful check on the Egyptian-Arabic tradition.

In modern times the history of the conquest of Egypt was covered in Alfred Butler’s The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of Roman Domination.⁷ In his expansive and orotund late Victorian prose, Butler provides a memorable picture of the dramatic but confused events. Butler was a great enthusiast for the Copts and felt able to make sweeping moral judgements about their enemies and those who cast aspersions on them in a way modern historians are very reluctant to do. He was also a great scholar, however, and even though he wrote before the original text of Ibn Abd al-Hakam became readily available, many of his insights and conclusions have stood the test of time.

But by the time the Muslim armies first crossed the Egyptian frontier, it was almost a thousand years since the last of the pharaohs had been deposed by Alexander the Great (the same span of time that separates us from the Battle of Hastings and the Norman conquest of England).⁸ In the intervening period, the country had been ruled by Alexander’s successors, the Ptolemies, and had then become a rich and valuable province of the Roman Empire, supplying much of the grain for the capital. Nowadays Egypt is a major importer of food, as the resources of the Nile valley cannot possibly feed 70 million inhabitants. In Roman times, however, there were probably no more than 5 million people living in the area: in the later Roman period, as a result of plague, it may well have been no more than 3 million.⁹ Properly managed, the rich lands along the river, irrigated and fertilized by the annual flood, could produce a regular surplus.

The fourth and fifth centuries were something of a golden age for Egyptian Christianity.¹⁰ The patriarchs of Alexandria now became some of the greatest officials of the eastern empire, immensely wealthy and influential. At the same time St Pachomius (d. 346) led the movement to establish large communal monasteries, the first in the Christian world, and it was in Egypt more than in any other area of the early Christian world that monasticism was first developed. Hermits like St Antony (d. 356) lived in the fearsome deserts that bordered the Nile valley and set an example for Christian ascetics everywhere.

If it was a time of beginning and hope for the Christians, it was also the end of an era for ancient Egyptian paganism and the culture that went with it. In Hellenized Alexandria the famous Serapeum was sacked on the orders of the patriarch Theophilus (385-412) and was converted to a church dedicated to St John the Baptist while the temple and Serapeum at Canopus became a church dedicated to Saints Cyril and John. The last pagan intellectuals fled in fear of their lives, while monks took to squatting in the ruins of antique grandeur. The myth that the Arabs burned the library at Alexandria, and with it the great heritage of classical learning, has a long history and is still trotted out by those wishing to discredit early Islam. The sad reality is that the great library of the Ptolemies was probably destroyed in 48 BC when Julius Caesar fired the fleet in the harbour and the flames spread. The temple libraries that succeeded it were probably destroyed or dispersed by the Christians at the end of the fourth century.¹¹

At the same time as the classical heritage was coming under sustained attack in Alexandria, the traditions of the more ancient Egypt of the pharaohs were finally coming to an end. The last dated hieroglyphic inscription, recording the birth festival of Osiris, was carved on 24 August 394 on the temple of Philae at Aswan.¹² Long before the Muslims conquered the country, the knowledge of the old script, which had recorded the doings of pharaohs, their priests and their ministers, had been lost beyond recall and remained so, even to Egyptians, throughout the Middle Ages.

The establishment of Christianity as the sole official religion of Egypt, and the conversion of most of the population to the new religion, did not mean the end of ideological strife. The Monophysite schism that had so divided the church in Syria was, if anything, even more fiercely fought out in Egypt. The great majority of Egyptian bishops and monks adamantly rejected the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which had established Diophisite Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire. From this point onwards, there was an open and often violent rift between the imperially appointed patriarchs in Alexandria and the rest of the Egyptian Church. The opposition, which can now be described as the Coptic Church, elected its own patriarchs and bishops. In the small towns and villages of the Nile valley and the numerous monasteries along the fringes of the desert, the imperial Church of Alexandria was regarded as alien, oppressive and above all heretical. Few were likely to rally to its support if it was attacked by an outside power.

As in other areas of the Middle East, Byzantine rule had been shaken by a series of catastrophes from the mid sixth century onwards. In 541 Egypt was the first country in the Mediterranean basin to be visited by the plague that caused such devastation throughout the area. The first outbreak was followed by others, and it has been suggested that the population declined to about 3 million as a result.¹³ Egypt became a half-empty land. The great Persian wars, which began in 602, also had their effect in Egypt. At first the campaigns were confined to northern Syria and Anatolia, but after the fall of Jerusalem to the Persians in May 614, Egypt was in the front line. The country was flooded by refugees escaping from the invaders. In 617 a Persian army entered Egypt along the coast road from Palestine. They took Pelusium, sacked the monasteries and then headed south to the apex of the delta. There are no reports of any resistance at the Roman fort of Babylon, which guarded this important strategic point, and the Persian armies then headed north-west along the western edge of the delta to Alexandria. Here they encountered the only serious military resistance of the entire campaign. The city walls were clearly in good condition. A contemporary Syrian source tells us that the city had been ‘built by Alexander in accordance with the advice of his master Aristotle, a city girt with walls, encircled with the waters of the Nile and furnished with strong gates’.¹⁴ These walls were actively defended and the Persian army settled down to besiege the city. They also took the opportunity to sack and pillage the suburban monasteries that surrounded it. The inhabitants may have been demoralized by the cutting off of food supplies from the rest of Egypt and the lack of any prospect of relief from Constantinople, but we also have a story of treachery and betrayal by one of the inhabitants. In the end, it seems that the Persians entered the city by the harbour and the water gates, which were less strongly defended than the land walls, and in 619 they made themselves masters of Alexandria. The Persian armies then marched south, pillaging the country and sacking numerous monasteries, until the whole of the Nile valley as far south as Aswan had been subdued.

The resumption of Roman control was not marked by an outbreak of peace and harmony. As often in this period, the real cause of conflict was the enmity between different Christian sects, in this case the majority Monophysite Coptic Church and the minority Chalcedonians, who enjoyed the support of the government in Constantinople. In the case of Egypt, matters were exacerbated by a vigorous personal rivalry. The Coptic patriarch Benjamin came from a wealthy landowning family.¹⁶ At Christmas 621, during the Persian occupation, he had entered a monastery near Alexandria and had soon distinguished himself by his piety and his learning. According to his admiring biographer, he was ‘handsome and eloquent, calm and dignified in his speech’.¹⁷ He soon moved to the city as chief assistant to the Coptic patriarch Andronicus, and before he died in about 623, Andronicus appointed Benjamin, then probably about 35 years old, as his successor. In the comparatively benign environment of Persian rule, the new patriarch set about the business of reforming his Church, going on a tour of inspection to Babylon and Hulwān, welcomed everywhere by popular acclaim.

The reimposition of Byzantine rule brought an end to this period of tolerance. As he had been in Syria, Heraclius was determined to reunite the Christian Church in Egypt under imperial authority. To achieve this, he appointed a man called Cyrus, known in the Arabic sources, for reasons that are quite unclear, as al-Muqawqis. Like many of Heraclius’s supporters, he came from the Caucasus, having previously been Bishop of Phasis. Unlike Benjamin, he had no roots in Egypt and no experience of the country. He was now appointed Patriarch of Alexandria and also civil governor of Egypt, a veritable viceroy. On Cyrus’s arrival in the autumn of 631, Benjamin fled the city, warned, it was said, by an angel in a dream. Before he did, he summoned the clergy and laity, exhorting them to hold fast to their faith, and he wrote to all the bishops, advising them to flee to the mountains and the deserts to hide from the wrath to come. He then left the city by night, at first heading west to the city of St Menas (Mina) and then along the western side of the delta, finally making his way to a small monastery near Qus in upper Egypt, which remained famous for centuries as his place of refuge.¹⁸

Cyrus arrived armed with the full weight of imperial authority and entrusted with the task of uniting Diophysite Chalcedonians and Monophysite Copts with the emperor’s ingenious Monothelite theological formula, which attempted to find a middle ground between the two. As far as we can tell, Cyrus was a determined but somewhat charmless man, to whom command came more naturally than persuasion. He held a council in Alexandria but the meeting was not a success. The Chalcedonians felt that too much had been surrendered and their support was only grudging; the Copts rejected it entirely. For them the formula was not a compromise at all, just another attempt to impose the hated doctrines of the Council of Chalcedon. Far from being smoothed over, the rift between the Greek-speaking ruling and military class in Alexandria and the majority Coptic population was as deep and unbridgeable as ever.

Roman garrisons were established throughout the country and Cyrus sought to impose imperial authority by force. The Coptic sources - the lives of saints and patriarchs - conjure up a vivid picture of ruthless and systematic persecution, with Cyrus in the role of those pagan emperors who had conducted the persecutions of the third century. The replacement of Persian by Christian rule was of no advantage to the Coptic Church. As Butler put it, ‘Chastisement with whips was to be followed by chastisement with scorpions.’¹⁹ Stories multiplied of the cruelty of Cyrus and the imperial authorities, and the heroic resistance of the Copts. Benjamin’s own brother, Menas, became a martyr, and the tortures he suffered for his faith were lovingly recalled. First he was tortured by fire ‘until the fat dropped down both his sides to the ground’. Next his teeth were pulled out. Then he was placed in a sack full of sand. At each stage he was offered his life if he would accept the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon; at each stage he refused. Finally he was taken seven bow-shots out to sea and drowned. Benjamin’s biographer left no doubt who the real victors were. ‘It was not they who were victorious over Menas, that champion of the faith, but Menas who by Christian patience overcame them.’²⁰

It was against this background, that of a very recently reinstated Roman administration and the sharp divisions between Romans and Copts, that the Muslim conquest of Egypt began. As Cyrus attempted, with little success, to impose his will on Egypt, the Muslim conquests were gathering pace in Syria. By 636, when Gaza and most of the coast of Palestine were in their hands, the authorities in Alexandria must have been seriously concerned. Reactions to this new menace were mixed. Cyrus was prepared to offer tribute to the Muslims in exchange for a non-aggression pact, and even suggested that a marriage alliance should be made between the emperor’s daughter Eudokia and Amr b. al-Ās, commander of Muslim forces in southern Palestine, after which Amr, like so many other barbarians in Byzantine history, would be baptized, ‘for Amr and his army had confidence in Cyrus and regarded him with affection’.²¹ Tribute may indeed have been paid in the period between the loss of Syria and the Muslim invasion of Egypt. In 639 or possibly 640 Heraclius’s policy changed. He denounced the treaty made by Cyrus and replaced the patriarch/governor with a military man who was given instructions to organize a more robust defence. Cyrus was sent into exile in Cyprus and Constantinople, protesting in a public hearing that if his plan had gone ahead and he had raised taxes for the Arabs by a tax on trade, they would have remained at peace. The suspension of the payment of tribute seems to have been the immediate trigger of the Muslim invasion.²²

The Egyptian-Arabic accounts of the conquest begin with a legend about Amr b. al-Ās discovering the wealth of Egypt at first hand. Before the Muslim conquests began, he had come with a group from Quraysh to trade in Jerusalem. They took it in turns to pasture their camels on the hills around the city. One day, when it was Amr’s turn to do this, he came across a deacon, wandering in the hills. It was very hot and the deacon was half dead from thirst. Amr gave him a drink from his waterskin and the deacon then lay down and went to sleep. As he lay there, a huge snake emerged from a hole next to where he lay. Amr saw the snake and shot it with an arrow and killed it. When the deacon woke up, he asked what had happened. When Amr explained, the deacon was overwhelmed that his man had saved his life, not once but twice, both from dying of thirst and from the snake. He asked what Amr was doing and Amr explained that he was trading, hoping to make enough money to acquire a third camel to add to his two existing ones. The deacon asked how much blood money would be offered among Amr’s people for saving another man’s life, and was told that it would be one hundred camels, to which he replied that they had no camels in his country, but what would it be in dinars? One thousand was the answer.

We would be right to be very sceptical about the details of this story, but it makes the point that Amr, possibly alone among the early Muslim military leaders, knew something of Egypt and the opportunities it afforded. He seems to have consulted the caliph Umar in person, possibly when he came to Jābiya on his visit to Syria, about his plan to invade Egypt. Umar gave his consent to the project, although there are indications that he had his doubts about it. Amr set out with a force of between 3,500 and 4,000 men, chosen from tribes, notably the tribe of Akk, whose members lived in the Yemen, in the villages of the Tihāma plain along the shores of the Red Sea. These were not the tent-dwelling nomads of the Arabian and Syrian steppe, but men who lived in reed or brushwood huts by the coast, or in the stone houses of the mountain villages, and who tilled the fields. They were usually physically smaller and slighter than the Bedouin of the steppes, but just as tough and hardy. They were also used to a settled life, if not in towns at least in villages, and would not have brought flocks that needed to be pastured; in many ways they might have found the towns and villages of the delta and the Nile valley a familiar environment, though there was nothing in their native land to compare with the splendours of Alexandria.

It was an extremely bold undertaking. This tiny army would have to cross Sinai and then, in the unfamiliar territory of the delta, defeat the local Byzantine army and take a number of well-fortified cities. They would be far from help if things went wrong. According to one well-known story, the caliph changed his mind and wrote to Amr, saying that if he was already in Egypt he should go on but that if he had not already crossed the frontier he should abandon the project. Amr guessed the contents of the letter and refused to open it until he had reached al-Arīsh, which marked the beginning of Egyptian territory,²³ on 12 December 639.²⁴ He could then claim that he had the caliph’s sanction for what he was doing.

The first town of any consequence was Farāma, ancient Pelusium, which lay near the coast just to the east of Port Said. The site is now uninhabited but it was important in pharaonic and Roman times. The fragmentary illustration in the Madaba map shows a town with colonnaded streets, surrounded by a wall with towers. The Romans in Egypt must have been aware of the earlier Arab conquest of Palestine, if only from the refugees who arrived from there, but Farāma seems not to have had a strong garrison. The Arabs besieged it for a month before taking it, but we have no real details of the conflict.

The arrival of the Muslims seems to have been seen by at least some of the Copts as an opportunity to cast off the authority of the hated Romans. Butler was shrilly dismissive of the idea that the Copts helped the Muslims at all, and says that the idea is only to be found in very late sources,²⁶ but his affection for the Copts and the absence of any edition of Ibn Abd al-Hakam clouded his judgement. (Ibn Abd al-Hakam, who certainly reflected eighth-century perceptions among the Arabs, makes a sharp distinction between the Copts and the ‘Rūm’. While the Rūm were the chief enemies of the Muslims, men with whom no compromise was possible, the Copts played a more ambiguous role.) He says that when the Arabs arrived, the Coptic patriarch Benjamin wrote to his followers saying that Roman rule had come to an end and ordering them to go to meet Amr. As a result the Copts of Farāma were an active (a^cwna) help to Amr in the siege.²⁷

The Muslims then marched up the eastern side of the delta, probably keeping to the desert rather than being delayed by the canals and villages of the settled lands. At Bilbays the Byzantines put up some resistance and it took a month to reduce the town. They then went on to Umm Dunayn, probably on the Nile to the north of modern Cairo. According to the Egyptian tradition, the Byzantines had fortified themselves in an earthwork with gates and had scattered iron caltrops (hasak hadīd) in the open spaces. The fighting was hard and victory was slow.²⁸ After the victory, Amr distributed some modest rewards to his followers: a dinar, a jubba, a burns, a turban and two pairs of shoes. The jubba and the burns were typically Egyptian garments: the Yemenis were beginning to adopt the customs of the country.²⁹

What happened after the hard-won victory at Umm Dunayn is not clear. For the Muslims, the main objective must have been the great fortress of Babylon (Old Cairo), strongly held by a Byzantine garrison. But Amr may have felt that this was beyond his power until he received reinforcements from Arabia. It is at this point that the Christian source, John of Nikiu, takes up the story (the pages that may have described the first Arab incursions being lost). According to him, Amr decided to bypass the fortress until reinforcements arrived from Arabia and to move south to the fertile oasis of the Fayyum. From Umm Dunayn he crossed the River Nile and marched past the pyramids and the ruins of the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, through the palm groves and fields of the Nile valley to the entrance of the Fayyum. The Fayyum is a large oasis about 70 kilometres south-east of Cairo. In Roman times it was famous for its grain production, and it must have been a tempting target for Amr and his men as they waited for reinforcements.

Amr’s expedition to the Fayyum is not recorded in any of the Arabic sources, but is described by John of Nikiu.³⁰ Access to the oasis was defended by the local garrison and the Arabs seem to have been unable to penetrate very far, contenting themselves with seizing sheep and goats from the high ground on the edge of the cultivated area. They did take the little town of Bahnasā, however, which they sacked, slaughtering all the men, women and children they came across. Amr’s movements were being shadowed by the commander of the local militia, called John, with about fifty men, but Amr discovered their presence. The Byzantine forces tried to escape to their fortress at Abwit, travelling by night and hiding up in the gardens and palm groves by day. They were betrayed by a local man, however, surrounded and all killed. John was drowned in the river. It seems that Amr then heard of the arrival of the expected reinforcements and made his way back north to begin the assault on the fortress of Babylon.

The raid on the Fayyum and the death of John seem to have caused consternation among the Byzantines: raiding along the desert margins of the delta was one thing, penetrating into the Nile valley was altogether more serious. The body of the dead John was rescued from the river with a net, embalmed and sent eventually to Constantinople. The emperor Heraclius is said to have been extremely angry at what had happened and the commander of Byzantine forces in Egypt, Theodore, hurried to the Fayyum to see what he could do. Another general called Leontios was sent to the Fayyum to stabilize the defences. According to John of Nikiu, ‘he was obese in person and unacquainted with warlike affairs’, and after leaving half his troops in the oasis, he returned to Babylon. The Fayyum was saved for the empire, but only temporarily.

Meanwhile, Muslim reinforcements were approaching along the eastern side of the delta, just as Amr had done. When he returned from the Fayyum, he had to cross the river again to meet up with them. It was a dangerous moment, but the Byzantine commanders failed to take advantage of their opportunity and Amr successfully joined the newcomers. The new army was said to have numbered 12,000 men,³¹ commanded by Zubayr b. al-Awwām. Zubayr had been one of the earliest followers of Muhammad and had great prestige as an early Muslim, but this was Amr’s expedition and there was no doubt that he would remain in charge. Zubayr is described as of medium height, good looking (hasan al-qma) with a pale complexion, a thin beard but thick hair on his body. He was brave, even rash, in battle, but Amr was the brains of the whole operation and he remained in overall command.³²

The united Muslim armies camped at the ancient city of On (Heliopolis), now a suburb of greater Cairo but then on the fringes of the desert. The city had been of great importance in antiquity but was now largely abandoned: ‘When the Arabs came, little of the ancient grandeur remained beyond some broken walls, and half-buried sphinxes, and the solitary obelisk which stands to this day as a memory of a vanished world.’³³ The site was on high ground and well provided with water. Amr made it his base. Knowing that he lacked the equipment or technical expertise for a siege, he attempted to lure the defenders out of their fortress and engage them in battle in the open country. The main Byzantine force under Theodore advanced towards Heliopolis across the flat lands between the River Nile and the Muqattam hills, where modern Cairo now stands. The two armies probably met in July 640. Amr’s main force engaged the Byzantines but he also sent a small cavalry detachment of some five hundred men through the hills by night so that they could ambush the enemy from the rear. The strategem worked. As the main forces were engaged the ambush party attacked and the Byzantine army was thrown into confusion. Some succeeded in reaching the safety of the walls of Babylon, but many perished as they tried to flee by land and river.³⁴

The next objective for the invaders was the fortress of Babylon itself. This fortress was a massive product of Roman military engineering, ³⁵ probably built in around AD 100 by the emperor Trajan in response to a Jewish rebellion in Alexandria. It lay at a crucial point at the head of the delta where the Rawda island narrowed the Nile so that it could be crossed on a bridge of boats. The name Babylon, by which it always seems to have been known in ancient times, gave rise to a number of legends about its foundation by Nebuchadnezzar or later refugees or colonists from the original Babylon in Iraq. The Arabs came to know it as Qasr al-Shama, but its old name lingered on in medieval Europe, where the Sultan of Egypt was often known, confusingly, as the Soldan of Babylon. Almost triangular in plan, the great brick and stone walls,12 metres high and almost 3 metres thick, ran along the river bank to the west and through gardens and monastic compounds to the east and north. At the south there was a massive gate flanked by D-shaped towers, known as the Iron Gate, which gave on to the Roman port. Overlooking the river bank there were two more massive towers, 30 metres in diameter. With an area of 5 hectares, it contained about ten churches or monasteries within its walls and a substantial civilian population, as well as the garrison. It may have been over six centuries old at the time of the Muslim invasion, but it had lost nothing of its military strength. Before the early twentieth century the fortifications remained virtually intact, sheltering within their walls Coptic churches and a synagogue. Since then, however, much of the fabric has been demolished, and only traces remain of its ancient grandeur.

It was around the beginning of September 640 that Amr began his investiture of the fortress. It has been suggested that there was a garrison of 5,000 or 6,000 men, well provided with supplies to withstand a siege. Against these mighty walls, the Arabs could only muster some puny siege engines and attempt to scale the ramparts using ladders. If there had been hope of relief or widespread support from the people of the surrounding countryside, it might well have held out. But no Byzantine army came to the rescue and Cyrus’s oppressive policy towards the Copts had ensured that they looked on his fate with indifference or even hostility.

Meanwhile, in Babylon, the defenders still held out. There is no coherent account of the siege and we have only a few improving anecdotes, intended to show the warlike puritanism of the Muslims. In one of these Zubayr and Ubāda were surprised by the enemy when they were praying, but they leapt on their horses and drove their attackers back to the fortress. As they retreated, the Byzantines threw off their valuable belts and ornaments in the hope that the Arabs would pause to pick them up. The Muslims, however, showed their customary scorn for worldly wealth, pursuing their enemies to the city walls, where Ubāda was injured by a stone thrown from the ramparts. The two heroes then returned to their devotions, leaving the valuable spoils untouched.

According to one version, it was Zubayr who finally took the city. He brought ladders to climb the walls and shouted out ‘God is great’, on hearing which there was a mass assault and the defenders gave up hope and surrendered.³⁷ On the face of it, this is a classic narrative topos, suspiciously similar to the account of how Khālid b. al-Walīd stormed the walls of Damascus. On the other hand, the Muslims of Egypt certainly took the story seriously. Zubayr’s ladder was kept as a relic. Balādhurī, writing in the second half of the ninth century, records that Zubayr built a house, later inherited by his son and descendants, in which the ladder was still preserved in his day.³⁸ A later source says that it survived until it was destroyed in a house fire in the year 1000, more than three and a half centuries later.³⁹

The facts of the story are also important because the surrender of Babylon was a catastrophic blow for Byzantine power in Egypt, ‘a source of great grief to the Romans’, as the contemporary Coptic historian John of Nikiu put it with considerable schadenfreude. He had no doubts about the reasons: ‘They had not honoured the redemptive passion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave his life for those who believe in Him.’ In particular they had persecuted the Orthodox Christians (by whom, of course, he meant his fellow Copts). Throughout the siege it seems that Coptic leaders had been kept imprisoned in the fortress. On Easter Sunday the prisoners were released but ‘enemies of Christ as they were they [the Byzantines] did not let them go without first ill-using them; but they scourged them and cut off their hands’.⁴⁰

It was probably at this time that the document known as the Treaty of Misr (Egypt) between the Muslims and the Byzantine authorities was drawn up, though the exact context of this document remains unclear.⁴¹ It is in many ways similar to the treaty Umar had made with Jerusalem and was presumably modelled on it. It begins with a general clause safeguarding the people their religion (millat), their property, their crucifixes, their lands and their waterways. They would be obliged to pay the jizya (tribute) every year when the rise of the Nile (ziyādat nahrihim) was over.⁴² If the river failed to rise properly, payment would be reduced in proportion. If anyone did not agree to it, he would not pay the tribute but he would not receive protection. Romans and Nubians who wanted to enjoy the same terms might do so and those who did not were free to leave. There are more clauses which specifically relate to the Nubians: they were not to be settled in people’s houses and those who had accepted the treaty would contribute so many slaves and so many horses. In return, they would not be raided and their trade would not be interrupted. The treaty was witnessed by Zubayr and his sons Abd Allāh and Muhammad and was written by Wardān.

This treaty is just one of a number of slightly differing accounts which we have of the terms that were made with the people of Egypt.⁴³ In many of them the tax to be paid was assessed at 2 dinars per adult male except for the poor. Some also said that the Egyptians should provide the Muslims with supplies.⁴⁴ Each landowner (dhī ard) was to provide 210 kilos of wheat,^d 4 litres of oil, 4 litres of honey and 4 litres of vinegar (but, of course, no wine).^e They were also to get clothing: each Muslim was to be given a woollen jubba, a burns or turban, a pair of trousers (sarāwīl) and a pair of shoes. It may be that many of these south Arabians had arrived very ill prepared for the coolness of an Egyptian winter.

Now that Babylon was in Muslim hands, Amr hastened to make preparations for the inevitable assault on Alexandria. It was only three months before the rising of the Nile would make mobility very difficult. The walls of the fortress were repaired and put in order. Then he ordered the restoration of the bridge of boats across the Nile. According to a story lovingly preserved in the Arabic tradition, a dove made her nest in Amr’s tent just before it was to be taken down for the expedition. He ordered that she be left in peace: ‘She has taken refuge under our protection [taharamat bi jawrin]. Let the tent stand until she has hatched her brood and they are flown away.’ The story is further embellished by having a sentry stand guard so that the dove was not disturbed.⁴⁵

As usual the actual course of the campaign is confused. The first objective seems to have been Nikiu, home of the bishop-chronicler. It was a strong fortress on the western branch of the Nile near modern Manuf. The Roman commander Theodore had left one of his subordinates, Domentianus, in command of the garrison and the fleet of river boats, but he panicked on the approach of the Arab army and fled by boat to Alexandria. Finding their leader gone, the garrison threw down their arms and attempted to escape by boat, but the boatmen had already fled to their villages. The hapless soldiers were caught by the Arabs as they stood by the water and were all put to the sword apart from one man called Zacharia, who is said to have been spared for his bravery. The Muslims entered the city unopposed on 13 May 641 and, according to John, ‘slaughtered everyone they found in the streets and churches, men women and infants and showed mercy to none’.⁴⁷

The Muslims now followed the Roman army under Theodore as it retreated northwards towards Alexandria. It was not always plain sailing for the Arabs. At one point the commander of the Muslim vanguard, Sharīk b. Shuway, was surrounded by Roman troops and in danger of being overwhelmed. He ordered one of his men, who had a bay horse renowned for its speed, to gallop to find Amr, 26 kilometres in the rear at Tarnūt, to tell him of the danger. The Romans set off in pursuit of the messenger but were unable to catch him up. On hearing of Sharīk’s plight, Amr advanced as quickly as possible and the enemy retreated, being unwilling to face him in battle. Ever after that, the place was known as Kūm Sharīk (Sharīk’s Hill).

Many of the soldiers in that [Arab] army must have seen beautiful cities in Palestine, like Edessa, Damascus and Jerusalem;⁵¹ some may even have gazed on the far famed splendours of Antioch or the wonders of Palmyra; but nothing can have prepared them for the extraordinary magnificence of the city which now rose before them, as they passed among the gardens and vineyards and convents abounding in its environs. Alexandria was, even in the seventh century, the finest city in the world: with the possible exception of ancient Carthage and Rome, the art of the builder has never produced anything like it before or since. As far as the eye could reach ran that matchless line of walls and towers which for centuries later excited the enthusiasm of travellers. Beyond and above them gleamed domes and pediments, columns and obelisks, statues, temples and palaces. To the left [as the Arabs approached from the south-east] the view was bounded by the lofty Serapeum with its gilded roofs, and by the citadel on which Diocletian’s Column stood conspicuous: to the right the great cathedral of St Mark was seen, and further west those great obelisks called Cleopatra’s Needles,⁵² which even then were over 2,000 years old, or twice as old as the city’s foundation. The space in between was filled with the outlines of brilliant architecture: and in the background, stood that stupendous monument known as the Pharos, which rightly ranked as one of the wonders of the world. Even these half-barbarian warriors from the desert must have been strangely moved by the stateliness and grandeur, as well as by the size and strength, of the city they had come to conquer.

Archaeological evidence suggests, however, that some of the glory of classical Alexandria had long since departed.⁵³ The Pharos was still intact, lighting up the entrance to the harbour, and the main street of the city still ran along the course of the ancient Via Canopica, but much of the eastern part of the ancient city had been abandoned. Furthermore the important southern harbour on Lake Mareotis had been ruined by fighting between the supporters of the emperor Phocas and his rival Heraclius in 608-10, which had destroyed the canal systems. In the aftermath of this destruction, much of the southern part of the city was also abandoned. When the Abbasid caliph Mutawwakil (847-61) ordered the building of a new set of city walls in the ninth century, they enclosed only about a third of the ancient city. Earthquakes, the destruction of the city by Crusader raiders from Cyprus in 1365 and the rebuilding of the city on the orders of Muhammad Ali in the early nineteenth century have obliterated most of ancient and early medieval Alexandria. The sparse archaeological evidence does suggest, however, that the city the Arabs conquered had shrunk within its ancient walls and that many areas were abandoned. The fortifications, dating from the heyday of the city in Ptolemaic times, may have been much too lengthy for the diminished population to defend effectively.

The emperor Heraclius had died on 11 February 641, two months before the surrender of Babylon. He had ordained that imperial authority should be shared between his two sons, Constantine and Heraclius. It was never a workable scheme, and Constantine took effective charge. He summoned Cyrus back from exile and the military commander in Egypt to a conference, at which he agreed that he would send more troops to Egypt. Preparations for the expedition were already under way when, on 24 May, Constantine suddenly died. Power now passed to his younger half-brother Heraclius and his ambitious mother, Martina. The new government seems to have been determined to make peace with the Muslims and Cyrus was now sent back to Alexandria, not to strengthen the resistance but to see what terms could be negotiated. The new rulers in Constantinople may have felt that they needed all their military resources to maintain their position in the capital. Cyrus may have hoped that he could re-establish the tribute arrangements he had put in place before 639. After all, the Byzantines had often paid subsidies to barbarians to keep out of their territory before, and this small group of marauders might be prepared to accept terms.

Meanwhile there were bitter disputes in Alexandria between two rivals for the post of military commander: Domentianus, the man who had surrendered first the Fayyum and then Nikiu, and Menas, who is said to have been more popular. The two men were each supported by one of the circus factions, Domentianus by the Blues and Menas by the Greens. Rival circus factions, named after colours, originally supported rival charioteers. They were an important focus of loyalty and strife in big cities in late antiquity but none of them survived the Muslim conquest. The two generals could and did call their supporters out on the streets. It is not clear whether this hostility was more than personal rivalry: John of Nikiu speaks of religious tensions but gives no further explanation. There may also have been a difference in policy: Domentianus agreed with Martina and Cyrus about reaching an accommodation with the Arabs.

Cyrus returned to Alexandria on the morning of the Feast of the Holy Cross, 14 September 641. He stopped first at the monastery of Tabensi near the port where a fragment of the True Cross, sent on the orders of the great Heraclius, was kept. Cyrus then took it in procession through the streets to the famous church of the Caesarion. John of Nikiu tells how the people covered the way with carpets and chanted hymns in his honour, and the crowds were so great that they trampled on each other.⁵⁴ It is interesting that the Coptic historian records the popular welcome given to the arch-enemy of his Church. He preached a sermon on the subject of the True Cross but at the end of the service a deacon gave out the wrong psalm, hoping to please the patriarch with a direct reference to his return. The people shook their heads at this departure from the proper order and sagely predicted that Cyrus would never see another Easter in the city; or so we are told.

In October Cyrus left the city quietly and went to negotiate with Amr in Fustāt. It was the time of the Nile flood and Amr, who had been campaigning in Middle Egypt, had returned to his base. According to John, Amr welcomed the patriarch, saying, ‘You have done well to come to us’, and Cyrus replied that ‘God has delivered this land into your hands: let there be no enmity between you and Rome’. According to a Syriac chronicle, Cyrus explained that he was not responsible for the breaking of the treaty and the non-payment of tribute and ‘he beseeched [the Muslims] eloquently to accept the gold he was offering but Amr replied to him: “Now that we have taken the country, we will not abandon it.”’⁵⁵ Cyrus felt that he had no alternative but to accept the fait accompli and peace was finally agreed on 28 November 641. The people of Alexandria were to pay tribute. The Roman army was to leave the city with its possessions and treasures and return to Constantinople by sea. There was to be an armistice for eleven months until September 642 for these arrangements to be put into effect. In the meantime, the Muslims would keep 150 soldiers and fifty civilians as hostages to ensure that the terms of the agreement were implemented.

Cyrus now returned to Alexandria to sell his agreement to the military commander Theodore and to inform the emperor. All the people of the city came to pay tribute to him but he did not dare to explain what he had done. It was not until an Arab force appeared to collect the first instalment of the tribute that the population of Alexandria realized that peace had been made. When they saw the Muslim force, the Alexandrians gathered their arms to make ready for battle, but the military commanders announced that the city had been surrendered. The immediate popular reaction was very hostile and the patriarch was threatened with stoning. At this point Cyrus came clean: with tears of grief, he urged the people to accept the terms, saying that he had made the treaty to save them and their children. Finally they were won over; the money was collected and paid on 10 December 641, which was the first day of the Muslim year 21.

Meanwhile, Alexandria was adjusting to the new situation. Many Romans, including we must suppose the bulk of the army, set sail for Constantinople or other areas still in Byzantine hands. Cyrus himself died peacefully of natural causes. It is a measure of the normality that reasserted itself that his successor as Chalcedonian patriarch was duly elected. Meanwhile the Coptic patriarch Benjamin reappeared from hiding and was able to return to the city. The last Byzantine troops under Theodore set sail for Cyprus on 17 September and the final act was played out when, at the end of the eleven-month truce, Amr formally entered the city without meeting any resistance on 29 September. A thousand years of Graeco-Roman rule were at an end.

In a number of ways, however, the Muslim conquest did mean major changes. Most obviously, orders now came from Medina not Constantinople, and the governors were Arabic-speaking Muslims, not Greek-speaking Christians. Indicative of this change was the shift in the direction of grain exports. Grain from Egypt had sustained first Rome, then Constantinople. After the conquest, it sustained Medina and Mecca. One of the first projects undertaken by the new Muslim government was to reopen the ancient canal that ran from the Nile at modern Cairo to the Red Sea. Grain could now be shipped directly from the fertile fields of Egypt to the capital of the new empire.

The story goes that Amr had intended to make Alexandria his capital, which would have been the natural move, but that he was prevented from doing so by the caliph Umar, who feared the Christian and Hellenic influence of the city. Instead, the governor and the army of conquest were established just north of the fortress of Babylon, on a site that became the nucleus of old Cairo. The Egyptian-Arab tradition claims that the decision was made by the caliph Umar, who, as in Kūfa and Basra, did not want the Muslim armies to be separated from Arabia by water. It was also in a superb strategic position at the head of the delta, only a few kilometres away from the capital of the pharaohs at Memphis. Here the first mosque was built. Although most of its fabric is later, the mosque is still known as the Mosque of Amr and occupies the site on which he built it. Around it the Arabs pitched their tents and built their shelters. The names of the different tribal groups who settled there were lovingly preserved in the Egyptian-Arabic tradition, and for at least two centuries to have ancestors who had come over with the conquest meant not just social prestige but entitlement to a share of the tax revenues. The list shows that the overwhelming majority of the settlers were southern Arabs, from the settled areas of the Yemen and the Hadramawt in south Arabia. The settlement became known as Fustāt, either from one of the numerous Arabic words for tent or as a corruption of the Greek word fossaton or ditch. Compared with the Islamic new town at Kūfa in Iraq, which seems to have been laid out with broad streets and an open urban centre, Fustāt was much more haphazard and organic. Different tribes and families settled where they liked and the streets developed from the winding paths they walked to go down to the Nile for water or to find their way to mosque and market. The settlement was very spread out, running about 5 kilometres from north to south along the banks of the Nile and at least a kilometre from west to east. People settled in their kinship groups, each 300 to 350 men being allotted a khitta or plot on which to build their houses. The first Fustāt was, according to its greatest historian, ‘a conglomerate of thirty or forty tribal (or multi-tribal) settlements of several hundred tents and huts made of reeds or clay, set more or less close together and separated by vast expanses of uninhabited land’.⁵⁶ More recent archaeological research has confirmed that much of the site was open and unbuilt on at the time of the Muslim conquest and that the building of permanent, brick houses was begun at a very early stage.⁵⁷

This haphazard settlement was to have a glorious future. From the time that Amr founded it in 641 to the present day, the city at the head of the Nile delta has never ceased to be the capital of Egypt. True, the centre of power has gradually shifted north, through the ninth-century official quarter laid out on the northern boundaries of Fustāt to the walled city of Cairo (al-Qāhira, the ‘Victorious’), founded by the Fatimids in 969, but despite this slow migration north, Fustāt remained a centre of population and commerce until 1171, when much of it was burned at the time of a threatened Crusader invasion. Since then much of the site has been a ruin, where low mounds of debris conceal the remains of houses, mosques and baths. But the old fortress of Babylon has remained a centre of the Coptic cult and culture, and Muslims still worship in the mosque that bears Amr’s name, venerated as the oldest in Egypt.

The foundation of Fustāt put an end to the role of Alexandria as a capital. For almost a millennium, Egypt had been ruled from this Mediterranean city by a Greek-speaking elite. Contact across the Mediterranean with Rome and Constantinople was easy and frequent. In the truce between negotiation of the surrender of the city and the arrival of the Arab garrison, many of this elite left. Alexandria became a frontier town. In late 645 a Roman force under the command of a General Manuel landed in Alexandria and took the city with ease. From there they set out to ravage the delta but failed to strike home their advantage and attack Fustāt. Amr, who had by this time lost his position as governor, was hastily reappointed, and led the soldiers he had led so successfully in the first conquest. The Romans were driven back to Alexandria. In the summer of 646 the city was besieged. Some say the attacking Muslims battered down the walls with siege engines, others that it fell through the treachery of one of the gatekeepers. It is impossible to prove whether either of these versions is true. What is clear, however, is that the city was taken by force: some of the Roman soldiers escaped by ship, many more, including Manuel, were killed in the fighting. This time the arrival of the Arabs was accompanied by the burning of much of the city and widespread slaughter until Amr put an end to the killing at a place known ever since as the Mosque of Mercy.

Arab settlement remained very limited. It is unlikely that there were more than 40,000 men⁵⁸ and their families, say a total Arab immigration of around 100,000 souls.⁵⁹ Once they had secured the country and learned how to manage its wealth to their own advantage, they had no incentive or desire to encourage further immigration: that would just have meant spreading the resources more thinly. Nor did they have any desire to encourage the conversion of the Copts, for they too would have demanded shares. For most of the first century after the conquest, Arab settlement was restricted to Fustāt, the garrison at Alexandria and another at Aswan to defend Upper Egypt from attacks from Nubia. The overwhelming majority of the population remained Coptic Christians and the lower ranks of the administration were largely drawn from the same families and groups who had served the Roman and Persian imperial administrations before. Only the military and the highest ranks of the administration were Arabs.

Cyrus was now a broken man in mind and body. All his dreams of ambition had dissolved: his very hopes of personal safety were gone [because of the emperor’s anger at what he had done]. As he felt the shadows closing around his life, his conscience awoke to a sense of his crimes as well as his failures. Torn by unavailing remorse, he deplored his betrayal of Egypt with ceaseless tears. So plunged in gloom and despondency he fell an easy victim to a dysentery, which seized him on Palm Sunday and on the following Thursday, 21 March 642, he died.⁶⁰

The last years of the saintly Coptic patriarch Benjamin could hardly have been more different.⁶¹ We have some details in the highly partisan but near-contemporary biography of the patriarch. When Amr occupied Alexandria, a Coptic nobleman (duqs) called Sanutius persuaded him to send out a proclamation of safe conduct for Benjamin and an invitation to return to Alexandria. When he arrived, after thirteen years in concealment, Amr treated him with love and respect and said, ‘In all the lands I have conquered, I have never seen a man of God like this!’ He was then instructed by the governor to resume control over the Coptic Church and he set about reconciling those Copts who had deserted the faith during the period of Cyrus’s rule, including a number of bishops. He arranged for the restoration of the monasteries in the Wadi Natrun that had been ruined by the Chalcedonians, including the great house of St Macarius, which still exists as a functioning monastery in the present day. ‘The good works of the orthodox [i.e. the Copts] grew and increased and the people rejoiced like young calves when their halters are unfastened and they are set free to be nourished by their mother’s milk.’⁶² Now once again in Alexandria, seated in the midst of his flock, he established himself in the monastery of St Metras, because all the monks there were Egyptians (misriyūn) and they had not allowed it to be polluted by the hated Chalcedonians.

Benjamin also established good relations with Amr. Shortly after the fall of Alexandria, Amr prepared to set out on his expedition to Libya. He made a request of Benjamin: ‘If you pray for me so that I go to the west and the Five Cities and take possession of them as I have of Egypt and return in safety and speedily, I will do everything that you ask of me.’ The pious biographer then presents us with the striking image of the patriarch praying for the success of the Muslim commander against the (Christian) inhabitants of the Cyrenaica.⁶³

Amr survived Benjamin by another three years, but not continuously as governor of Egypt. In 645 he was dismissed by the new caliph Uthman, who was trying to centralize the government of the caliphate, and replaced by one Abd Allah b. Sa^cd b. Abī Sarh, who would not have such close ties with the conquering army and could be relied upon to send more revenue to Medina. But Amr was not finished yet. He played an important role as adviser to his distant cousin Mu^cāwiya b. Abī Sufyān, the first Umayyad caliph, in the struggle for power that followed Uthman’s death in 656. In 658 Mu^cāwiya appointed him to lead an army to take Egypt from the supporters of his rival Alī. Although it was now thirteen years since he had last governed the province, he could still attract support from the surviving conquerors and their children. In a fierce battle near Fustāt in the summer of 658 he defeated Alī’s supporters and entered the capital he had founded in triumph. He remained governor until, aged about seventy, he died of natural causes early in 664. He was buried at the foot of the Muqattam hills, which rise to the east of Fustāt, but the early Muslims made little attempt to mark the burial places of their dead and the site of his tomb has never been identified.

The historical sources give Amr a good reputation. Of his competence as a military commander and politician there can be no doubt - the results speak for themselves - but he also has a reputation for straight dealing and justice. In the Egyptian-Arab tradition, he is revered not just as a conqueror but as a man who upheld the interests of the soldiers and families of the conquering army against the central government in Medina or Damascus. He is portrayed on his deathbed as wise and pious, a man whom the Prophet himself had commended in person.⁶⁴ He also has a good image in the Coptic sources. We have already seen how the biographer of Benjamin describes the good relations Amr had with his hero. Even more striking is the verdict of John of Nikiu. John was no admirer of Muslim government and was fierce in his denunciation of what he saw as oppression and abuse, but he says of Amr: ‘He exacted the taxes which had been determined upon but he took none of the property of the churches, and he committed no act of spoliation or plunder, and he preserved them throughout all his days.’⁶⁵

While the country came under Arab-Muslim rule, it did not at this stage become an Arab or a Muslim land. For centuries, Arabic speakers and Muslims were in a minority, at first a very small minority which grew very slowly. If we suggest a total Arab population of 100,000 in a total population of 3 million we can have some idea just how small, about one in thirty, this minority was.⁶⁶ Paradoxically, however, the fact that the conquerors were so few may actually have made their rule easier. They did not initially exert intolerable pressure on resources and they did not deprive local people of their lands or houses; they lived off the proceeds of taxation and they built a new town to live in. Nor did they interfere in the religious practices or buildings of the Christians. The administration continued largely unchanged. Certainly a hundred years later, taxation was beginning to seem very oppressive and we hear of violent Coptic revolts, but by that time Muslim rule was too well established to be overthrown.

The Muslims came to rule Egypt because of their military success. They defeated the Byzantine army in battle on a number of occasions and took its bases at Babylon and Alexandria. Quite why the Byzantine forces performed so badly is not clear. It was certainly not superior numbers nor superior technologies which allowed the Muslims to win. Part of the problem may have been the contrast that the Arab sources love to make between the tough, austere Muslim soldiers and the plushy and coddled Romans, and it is interesting to note John of Nikiu’s comment about the overweight and unwarlike John, who failed to defend the Fayyum.

There was also a failure of leadership on the Roman side. One of the abiding mysteries attached to the Muslim conquest of Egypt is the policies of Cyrus towards the Arabs. He had spent the decade before the coming of the Muslims in a sustained and ruthless attempt to impose imperial authority over the land and the Church of Egypt. Yet the testimony of both Christian and Muslim sources makes it clear that he soon despaired of defending the land against the Muslims and set out to make terms. John of Nikiu’s description of his secret surrender of Alexandria is a particularly telling example of this. It is difficult to account for this attitude. For Butler, writing with a deep sense of moral outrage, he was a treacherous schemer, working to betray the empire to build up the power of the patriarchate.⁶⁷ He played a ‘dark and subtle part’ in events and ‘the guilt of deliberate treason to the Roman empire must remain an indelible stain on his memory’.⁶⁸ It is possible that he simply had a failure of nerve, but it is also possible that he imagined himself being viceroy for the caliphs as he had been for the emperors. Whether they were a product of incompetence or misguided realpolitik, it is clear that Cyrus’s policies were a significant if not determining factor in the course of events.

Part of the explanation for the speed of the conquest lies in the political structure of Egypt. From pharaonic times the administration of the country was highly centralized. In late antiquity, defence was in the hands of the governor and his army. Most of the population had neither arms nor military training. There were no semi-independent lords with their own military following who could continue resistance on a local basis. There is a clear contrast here with Iran, where local lords and princes preserved their local cultures and a measure of independence long after the central Sasanian government had been defeated.

The attitude of the Copts, the vast bulk of the population, remains the subject of controversy. Did they, or did they not, aid the Muslim conquest? For Butler the answer was clear: they did not and he repeatedly and adamantly denounces any writer who suggests that they may have done. Butler was a great authority on Coptic culture and he was clearly determined to exculpate them from any charge of betraying Christianity. Standing back from the controversies of the late nineteenth century, the picture is less certain. The Egyptian-Arab tradition makes repeated reference to Copts aiding the Muslims, but always in a supporting role, never as fighting soldiers. The Coptic patriarch Benjamin is said to have urged his followers to make friendly contact with Amr as soon as the invasion began. This is interesting evidence. There seems to be no good reason why the tradition should make this up, particularly because it was probably first written down in the eighth century, at a time when relations between Muslims and Copts were deteriorating. It is hard to see why the tradition would give credit to the Copts for some of the Arab military achievements unless it was an ancient and integral part of the record. These references are all the more telling because they seem to have no parallel elsewhere: the accounts of the conquest of Syria, for example, give no specific examples of the Monophysite Christians, whose relationship to the Roman authorities was not very different from that of the Copts, aiding the Muslims.

John of Nikiu’s testimony is even clearer. John was no apologist for Muslim rule. For him Islam was ‘the faith of the beast’.⁶⁹ Nevertheless, he records that at Antinoe in Middle Egypt the inhabitants of the province, who must have been overwhelmingly Coptic, submitted to the Muslims and paid them tribute. And they put to the sword all the Roman soldiers they encountered.⁷⁰ The Copts, in fact, are said to have helped the Muslims on a number of occasions, but this was by no means a general pattern, and they suffered like the Romans from the depredations of the Muslims and the effects of heavy and arbitrary taxation. The truth seems to be that the responses of the Copts were varied and perhaps confused: some of them at some times clearly welcomed and collaborated with the conquerors. At other times they are to be found fighting alongside the Romans. Many Egyptians in the villages and small towns of the Nile valley and the delta must have felt that they had simply exchanged one group of alien and exploitative rulers for another.