Arab conquest of Egypt

Egypt had only recently been recovered from the Persians, who had held it for a decade, and its Coptic majority, which rejected the Council of Chalcedon, was estranged from the imperial church represented in Alexandria by Cyrus, both patriarch and governor, who had driven the Coptic patriarch Benjamin into exile. After the fall of Syria, Amr ibn al-As, who knew Egypt from his days as a merchant, persuaded Umar to let him invade. He crossed the frontier near al-Arish with about 4,000 men in December 639, took Pelusium after a two-month siege and then Bilbeis, and in the summer of 640, joined by reinforcements under al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, captured Heliopolis. The fortress of Babylon, at the head of the Delta, held out for seven months, until April 641.

Heraclius died in February 641, and the court in Constantinople was divided. Cyrus, recalled from exile, negotiated a treaty with Amr: after an armistice of eleven months the Byzantine troops were to leave Alexandria by sea, the Egyptians were to pay tribute, and the churches and the Jews of Alexandria were to be left in peace; the first instalment was paid in December 641. On 17 September 642 the last Byzantine troops sailed for Cyprus, and at the end of the month Amr entered Alexandria, ending almost seven centuries of Roman rule. Umar would not have the capital at Alexandria, and Amr founded a new one beside Babylon: Fustat, around the mosque that still bears his name. In 645–646 a Byzantine fleet under Manuel reoccupied Alexandria, but Amr defeated him at Nikiou and stormed the city, which was then sacked.

The conquest ended the Graeco-Roman period of Egypt’s history, nearly a thousand years long. Christians kept their churches — Benjamin returned to Alexandria under Amr’s safe conduct and restored the monasteries — but paid a poll tax (jizya) of two dinars for each adult man, and Egyptian labour dug a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea for the new rulers. Egypt became the springboard for Arab campaigns into Nubia and North Africa. An important source for the conquest is the chronicle of John, bishop of Nikiu, probably written in Coptic but preserved only in an Ethiopic translation, together with later Arabic histories.