The two great modern cities of Egypt are the same ones that became great under Muslim rule. Ancient Egypt had had Thebes, which never got its primary status back, and other cities had come and gone. Alexandria is still great, and the early conquest period saw the establishment of what grew to be Cairo.
The name “Alexandria” was quickly shifted into Arabic as al-Iskandria. Alexandria was smaller by the time Amr rode into the city in triumph, a year after its surrender. Some of Old Alexandria, the city of Alexander the Great, had already been destroyed by an earthquake-driven tsunami in 365 that sent much of the Royal Quarter under water. Egypt will be building an underwater museum to show off some of these wonders.
But Alexandria still had the Pharos Lighthouse, a wonder of the ancient world, and the official Tomb of Alexander, when Amr entered it officially a year after the Patriarch negotiated its surrender. Pharos was an octagonal tower on an island, with a round cap. It had a huge lantern to warn ships away from the island’s environs. The lantern failed in 700, and although they tried to repair the lighthouse, finally two earthquakes in the 12th and 14th centuries finished it off. During the early conquest period, though, the lighthouse was in full splendor and its symbolism, lifting light to the sky, was beloved of Arabic poets.
You may be wondering about the great Library of Alexandria. This institution had the largest collection of books in the ancient world; it probably had a full set of all of the Greek plays and philosophical treatises, as well as many works of mathematics and science. Today we make do with a fraction of the old works, often only surviving in Arabic form translated back into Greek. It’s often said that Amr’s men burned the library, but most scholars believe that it was already gone when the Muslims got there. Barnaby Rogerson, in The Heirs of Muhammad, links the fire to the death of Hypatia around 415.
During the time of the last pagan Roman emperors, Egyptian Christians had been severely persecuted. Now that the Christian religion was official, tables had turned on the pagans. Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, a famous mathematician, and was a leading scholar of pretty much everything. She did not convert to Christianity, but during most of her life, the Patriarch of Alexandria was on friendly terms with her. Then the mood turned dark. A new Patriarch in 412 led the city into urban civil war, Christian factions and Jews battling in the streets, and one outcome was that Hypatia was killed. Did they also burn down the library, or at least remove many pagan books and burn them? It’s certainly as likely as any hypothesis; the civil unrest of 412-6 was brutal.
Would Amr have burned the library? It doesn’t seem likely. The Muslims had a general rule to leave any city undisturbed that surrendered peacefully—and did not rebel. Cities that were destroyed always had some kind of rebellion, treason, or at least breaking of a promise. And although the Arabs were newly literate—Amr might not have been able to read—the fact that the Quran was being written down made them generally respectful of books. As we’ll see, one of Islam’s great contributions to the world was to spend millions of dirhams and dinars on efforts to collect and translate all the books in the world.
But Alexandria was a terrible place for camels. Umar’s ruling had been that Arabs could only put down permanent roots in places that had a good environment for camels. Alexandria—and the whole Delta—was humid and green, with lush grass that was really too rich for camels. Camels and the Arabs’ horses got fungal foot infections in wet climates. So while the Muslims could be proud of the city now in their orbit, they couldn’t live there.
Amr established the permanent Muslim base at Fort Babylon, near ancient Heliopolis, at the base of the Delta rivers branching off. It was a perfect place because it never ran out of water, but it was on the edge of desert. He called it Misr al-Fustat, the City of Tents. “Misr” means both “Egypt” and “city,” so it could also mean the Tent of Egypt. The garrison cities built by the Arabs were generally called “amsar,” that is the plural of “misr.” Kufa and Basra were amsar; so were Damascus, Emesa/Homs, Tiberias, and Ramla.
A misr city had a permanent Muslim Arab population organized around the government palace, a mosque, and a market, exactly like Basra and Kufa. It served as a main army base and tax collecting station. Settlers from around Arabia, many from Yemen, moved to Fustat. Fustat was one of the places where the old Egyptian language, Coptic, died out first. It was truly an Arab city. It also had a large population of Jews, perhaps ones who moved from Arabia. The more it became an ethnic melting pot, the more prominent Arabic became as the common tongue. When the Fatimid dynasty later established Cairo, Fustat was left behind as the old city and became a Jewish stronghold. It was in Fustat that scholars in the 19th century discovered centuries’ worth of letters and wills, including some signed by Maimonides himself.
Amr lived in his new Fustat, sending out deputies to explore and conquer parts of the Sahara. In 644, he preached a celebratory sermon that called Egypt “a white pearl, then golden amber, then a green emerald, then an embroidery of colors.” (Rogerson, 219) But in 645, Caliph Umar called him back to Medina and relieved him of command. Umar just didn’t trust his successful generals who became governors. He was sure they were setting up as aristocrats, and that was one thing he was not going to have.
- The Heirs of Muhammad, by Barnaby Rogerson
- Great Arab Conquests, by Hugh Kennedy
- The War of the Three Gods: Romans, Persians, and the Rise of Islam, by Peter Crawford.