Alexandria: A History and a Guide

by E. M. Forster

Temple of Serapis at Canopus: p. [180].

Temple of Serapis at Alexandria: p. [144].

Caesareum: p. [161].

Orthodox and Coptic Patriarchates: p. [211], 212.

Portrait of Dioscurus: p. [207].

THE ARAB CONQUEST (641).

We are now approaching the catastrophe. Its details though dramatic are confusing. It took place during the reign of the Emperor Heraclius, and we must begin by glancing at his curious career.

Heraclius was an able and sensitive man—very sensitive, very much in the grip of his own moods. Sometimes he appears as a hero, a great administrator; sometimes as an apathetic recluse. He won his empire (610) by the sword; then the reaction came and he allowed the Persians to occupy Syria and Egypt almost without striking a blow. Alexandria fell by treachery. She was safe on the seaward side, for the Persians had no fleet, and her immense walls made her impregnable by land; their army (which was encamped near Mex) could burn monasteries but do nothing more. But a foreign student—Peter was his name—got into touch with them and revealed the secrets of her topography. A canal ran through her from the Western Harbour, rather to the north of the present (Mahmoudieh) canal, and it passed, by a bridge, under the Canopic Way (present Rue Sidi Metwalli). The harbour end of the Canal was unguarded, and a few Persians, at Peter’s advice, disguised themselves as fishermen and rowed in; then walked westward down the Canopic Way and unbarred the Gate of the Moon to the main army (617). Their rule was not cruel; though sun-worshippers, they persecuted neither orthodox Christians nor Copts. For five years Heraclius did nothing; then shook off his torpor and performed miracles. Marching against the armies of the Persians in Asia, he defeated them and recovered the relic of the True Cross, which they had taken from Jerusalem. Alexandria and Egypt were freed, and at the festival of the Exaltation of the Cross—his coins commemorate it—the Emperor appeared as the champion of Christendom and the greatest ruler in the world. It is unlikely that in the hour of his triumph he paid any attention to the envoys of an obscure Arab Sheikh named Mohammed, who came to congratulate him on his victory and to suggest that he should adopt a new religion called “Peace” or “Islam.” But he is said to have dismissed them politely. The same Sheikh also sent envoys to the Imperial viceroy at Alexandria. He too was polite and sent back a present that included an ass, a mule, a bag of money, some butter and honey, and two Coptic maidens. One of the latter, Mary, became the Sheikh’s favourite concubine. Amidst such amenities did our intercourse with Mohammedanism begin.

Heraclius, now at the height of his power and with a mind now vigorous, turned next to the religious problem. He desired that his empire should be spiritually as it was physically one, and in particular that the feud in Egypt should cease. He was not a bigot. He believed in tolerance, and sought a formula that should satisfy both orthodox and Copts—both the supporters and the opponents of the Council of Chalcedon. A disastrous search. He had better have let well alone. The formula that he found—Monothelism—was so obscure that no one could understand it, and the man whom he chose as its exponent was a cynical bully, who did not even wish that it should be understood. This man was Cyrus, sometimes called the Mukaukas, the evil genius of Egypt and of Alexandria. Cyrus was made both Patriarch and Imperial Viceroy. He landed in 631, made no attempt to conciliate or even to explain, persecuted the Copts, tried to kill the Coptic Patriarch and at the end of ten year’s rule had ripened Egypt for its fall. There was a Greek garrison in Alexandria and another to the south of the present Cairo in a fort called “Babylon.” And there were some other forces in the Delta and the fleet held the sea. But the mass of the people were hostile. Heraclius ruled by violence, though he did not realise it; the reports that Cyrus sent him never told the truth. Indeed, he paid little attention to them; he was paralysed by a new terror: Mohammedanism. His nerve failed him again, as at the Persian invasion. Syria and the Holy Places were again lost to the Empire, this time for ever. Broken in health and spirits, the Emperor slunk back to Constantinople, and there, shortly before he died, Cyrus arrived with the news that Egypt had been lost too.

What happened was this. The Arab general Amr had invaded Egypt with an army of 4000 horse. Amr was not only a great general. He was an administrator, a delightful companion, and a poet—one of the ablest and most charming men that Islam ever produced. He would have been remarkable in any age; he is all the more remarkable in an age that was petrified by theology. Riding into Egypt by the coast where Port Said stands now, he struck swiftly up the Nile, defeated an Imperial army at Heliopolis and invested the fort of Babylon. Cyrus was inside it. His character, like the Emperor’s, had collapsed. He knew that no native Egyptian would resist the Arabs, and he may have felt, like many of his contemporaries, that Christianity was doomed, that its complexities were destined to perish before the simplicity of Islam. He negotiated a peace, which the Emperor was to ratify. Heraclius was furious and recalled him to Constantinople. But the mischief had been done; all Egypt, with the exception of Alexandria, had been abandoned to the heathen.