A.H. XIX. A.D. 641.
The year following the plague and drought was one of comparative repose. The arms of Islam were now pushing their way steadily into Persia. But I must reserve the advance in that direction, and first narrate the conquest of Egypt.
Amru casts an eye on Egypt.
The project is due to Amru. After the fall of Cæsarea, he chafed at a life of inaction in Palestine, which was now completely pacified. All around he looked for the ground of some new conquest. When the Caliph last visited Syria, he sought permission to make a descent upon Egypt, as every way desirable; for, to gain hold of a land that was at once weak and wealthy, would enfeeble the power of the enemy, and, by an easy stroke, augment their own. The advice was good; for Egypt, once the granary of Rome, now fed Constantinople with corn. Alexandria, though inhabited largely by natives of the country, drew its population from every quarter. It was the second city in the Byzantine empire, the seat of commerce, luxury, and letters. Romans and Greeks, Arabs and Copts, Christians, Jews, and Gentiles mingled here on common ground. But the life was essentially Byzantine. The vast population was provided in unexampled profusion and magnificence with theatres, baths, and places of amusement. A forest of ships, guarded by the ancient Pharos, ever congregated in its safe and spacious harbour, from whence communication was maintained with all the seaports of the empire. And Alexandria was thus a European, rather than an Egyptian, city.[366]
The land of Egypt disaffected towards Byzantine rule.
It was far otherwise with the rich valley irrigated by the Nile. Emerging from the environs of the luxurious city, the traveller dropped at once from the pinnacle of civilisation to the very depths of poverty and squalor. Egypt was then, as ever, the servant of nations. The overflowing produce of its well-watered fields was swept off by the tax-gatherers to feed the great cities of the empire. And the people of the soil, ground down by oppression, were always ready to rise in insurrection. They bore the foreign yoke uneasily. Hatred was embittered here, as in other lands, by the never-ceasing endeavour of the Court to convert the inhabitants to orthodoxy, while the Copts held tenaciously by the Monophysite creed. Thus chronic disaffection pervaded the land, and the people courted deliverance from Byzantine rule. There were here, it is true, no Bedouin tribes, or Arabian sympathies, as in the provinces of Syria. But elements of even greater weakness had long been undermining the Roman power in Egypt.
Amru invades Egypt, A.H. XIX., XX. A.D. 640, 641.
It was in the nineteenth or twentieth year of the Hegira that Amru, having obtained the hesitating consent of the Caliph, set out from Palestine for Egypt. His army, though joined on its march by bands of Bedouins lured by the hope of plunder, did not at the first exceed four thousand men. Soon after he had left, Omar, concerned at the smallness of his force, would have recalled him; but finding that he had already gone too far to be stopped, he sent heavy reinforcements, under Zobeir, one of the chief Companions, after him. The army of Amru was thus swelled to an imposing array of from twelve to sixteen thousand men, some of them warriors of renown.[367]
And reduces Misr and Upper Egypt.
Amru entered Egypt by Arîsh, and overcoming the garrison at Faroma, turned to the left and so passed onward through the desert, reaching thus the easternmost of the seven estuaries of the Nile. Along this branch of the river he marched by Bubastis towards Upper Egypt, where Mucoucus, the Copt, was governor—the same, we are told, who sent Mary the Egyptian bond-maid as a gift to Mahomet.[368] On the way he routed several columns sent forth to arrest the inroad; and amongst these a force commanded by his Syrian antagonist Artabûn, who was slain upon the field of battle. Marching thus along the vale of the Nile, with channels fed from the swelling river, verdant fields, and groves of the fig tree and acacia, Amru, now reinforced by Zobeir, reached at last the obelisks and ruined temples of Ain Shems, or Heliopolis, near to the great city of Misr.[369] There the Catholicos or bishop procured for Mucoucus a truce of four days. At its close, an action took place in which the Egyptians were driven back into their city and there besieged. The opposition must at one time have been warm, for the Yemen troops gave way. Reproached by Amru for their cowardice, one of these replied, ‘We are but men, not made of iron or stone.’ ‘Be quiet, thou yelping dog!’ cried Amru. ‘If we are dogs,’ answered the angry Arab, ‘then what art thou but the commander of dogs?’ Amru made no reply, but called on a column of veterans to step forth; and before their fiery onset the Egyptians fled. But, however bravely the native army may have fought at first, there was not much heart in their resistance. ‘What chance,’ said the Copts one to another, ‘have we against men that have beaten the Chosroes and the Kaiser?’ And, in truth, they deemed it little loss to be rid of the Byzantine yoke. The siege was of no long duration. A general assault was made, and Zobeir, with desperate valour, had already scaled the walls, and the place was at the mercy of the Arabs, when a deputation from Mucoucus obtained terms from Amru. A capitation tax was fixed of two dinars on every male adult, with other impositions similar to those of Syria. Many prisoners had already been taken; and a fifth part of their number, and of the spoil, was sent to Medîna. The same conditions were given to the Greek and Nubian settlers in Upper Egypt. But the Greeks, fallen now to the level of those over whom they used to domineer, and hated by them, were glad to make their escape to the sea coast.[370]