Egypt’s Revolt, 644-6

Posted on May 25, 2021 by Ruth

During Uthman’s rule, it became obvious that if the Islamic State was going to maintain its place among the nations, it needed to create a navy. East and South Arabians had always been sea-going, but their cultural ways were not at the heart of Islam. Both Mecca and Medina were inland cities, although Mecca shipped goods through a nearby port on the Red Sea. Abu Bakr and Umar mistrusted ships, and Umar specifically decreed that Muslim armies could only go where camels could take them. (He may have learned this from a failed invasion of Ethiopia by ship in the Red Sea.) But Uthman, whose family may have been more involved in international shipping, knew that this small port was not adequate to their new needs. He ordered a new port in Jeddah to be developed.

But the new port in Jeddah would not take anyone into the Mediterranean, where Roman naval power was still supreme. Syria and Egypt had both been conquered by land, but they could be retaken by sea. Byzantine Cyprus was very close to newly-Muslim Syria; Mu’awiya claimed that they could hear dogs barking on Cyprus. That wasn’t true, but on a clear day, you could see Cyprus on the horizon. If the Romans chose to attack from there, they could quickly retake port cities.

The Roman navy had been making plans to retake their Egyptian province. After Umar died in 644, the Roman navy sailed to Alexandria, while the residents of Alexandria rose up and killed the thousand Arab soldiers in the city garrison. The Roman forces began systematically retaking the cities of the Nile Delta. Umar had fired Amr, the general who conquered Egypt, replacing him with Abdullah ibn Sa’ad, a Qurayshi man who was renowned for his cleverness—-and Uthman’s adopted brother. But Abdullah was not able to push the Roman invasion back, so Amr was re-appointed.

Amr chose to fight at the driest place in the Delta: the eastern town of Nikiou, where he had won a battle before. Hard fighting at Nikiou began to push the Roman invasion west, backing up until they reached Alexandria, where they could use the fortress and their ships at harbor. Re-taking Alexandria required serious fighting with a high body count, unlike the city’s first surrender. In 646, Amr entered the city again as a real conqueror, and his soldiers were allowed to loot and destroy, while killing or enslaving the residents. The east-facing side of Alexandria’s defenses was torn down.

At this time, Christian Egypt was divided. In the eyes of Rome and Constantinople, the native bishops had been cast out of the church for heresy. In the eyes of the native Christians, there had been no heresy but only a power play against Egypt. The cities of the Delta typically had a native Coptic Bishop and a Greek “Melkite” Bishop. Melkite takes the Semitic root for “king,” melek, and turns it into a Greek word. The Melkite bishops were appointed by Constantinople.

The Greek Melkite churches had been involved in the revolt, but the Coptic churches had not been. The Coptic Patriarch, Benjamin, argued to Amr that his native people had not been disloyal, so they should not suffer dispossession. Amr judged in his favor. Not only were Coptic lands (and people as possible) protected, but he returned to them the sum of half the taxes they had paid that year. It’s an interesting example of the social contract between ruler and ruled: the Arabs had failed to protect “their” city of Alexandria against attack, so they had not kept their side of the bargain.

Amr was again fired. He was very popular with the army, and he was allowed to live as military leader in Fustat, the City of Tents. But he was not allowed to govern, which entailed tax collection and management. Umar and Uthman both feared that Amr might set himself up as an independent ruler in Egypt. So instead, Abdullah ibn Sa’ad was reappointed. It was an even easier choice for Uthman, since Abdullah was his adopted brother and a fellow Umayyad.

But Abdullah ibn Sa’ad was a good example of the way Uthman was forcing Umayyads on everyone. That Abu Bakr gave him any authority in Amr’s invasion force showed great pragmatism, for while Amr had been a late convert, Abdullah ibn Sa’ad was something worse. He was an early convert who went back to Meccan paganism, now cursing Muhammad and probably spreading rumors about him. When Mecca surrendered and the Prophet was handing out pardons left and right, he drew the line at Abdullah. Abdullah was finally pardoned when Uthman begged, but his character stood out as unworthy compared to the others, the true Companions or even those who had at least stood with Muhammad in a battle or two. And yet there he was, Governor of Egypt, with all the financial records in his hands. Uthman didn’t seem to care so much if he enriched himself, as long as he would maintain family loyalty.

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Zayd ibn Thabit and the Quran

Posted on May 24, 2021 by Ruth

During Muhammad’s lifetime, his revelations were mostly conveyed by listening, remembering, and repeating. But even then, a few literate Muslims were writing them down on whatever materials were at hand. The written copies could be used as memory prompters or they could be taken to other towns as learning materials. Four Medinans are credited with the bulk of this task, and one of them, Zayd ibn Thabit, went on to be the chief editor of the final Quran during Uthman’s Caliphate.

Zayd was a young boy in Medina when the Prophet arrived. By the time he was 11 or 12, he was actively seeking a larger role in the community. Since he was too young to fight, he devoted himself to memorizing and reciting. We don’t know when he learned to read and write, but some Meccan prisoners of war worked off their ransoms by teaching children in Medina, and Zayd may have been one of these.

Many men who were able to recite the Quran died in the Ridda Wars, but the need to teach more Muslims was greater than ever. What if such a battle threatened the loss of the text? Caliph Abu Bakr appointed Zayd to collect all of the written copies he could find. Zayd reported in a hadith that he found copies on date palm stalks, stones, and pieces of leather (parchment?). His collection went into Abu Bakr’s keeping, then to Umar, then to Umar’s daughter, the widowed Mother of the Believers Hafsah.

Caliph Uthman faced a new problem: somehow, the recitation of the Quran had changed in the territories. In Basra and Damascus, they were repeating slightly different verses. Which version was correct? So he brought back Zayd ibn Thabit to work with a committee to create an authoritative full copy that could be sent to the provinces.

One problem was with Arabic dialect. The Qurayshi Arabic was slightly different from the Medinan, not to mention all of the other dialects that were now mixed together in the Muslim community. The Quran was not written with vowel markings or punctuation, so the spoken version clarified which word was intended, when the consonants were not clear. In addition to Zayd, Uthman appointed three aristocratic Meccans: Abdullah, Sa’id and Abd Al-Rahman (ibn Harith.

These four men sifted and put in order the full set of revelations of the Quran. They specifically made no actual changes to the Quran as it was then recited in Medina. If two verses seemed to conflict, they didn’t reconcile them. A later verse is said to take the place of an earlier verse, if they don’t agree; but the Quran is not in time order, so we can only make educated guesses. The surahs were not titled at that time, but they were put in order. It was probably an order that had become customary during all-night recitations; the longer surahs came first. Only two surahs are thought to be in time order, the first and the last.

They made five master copies of the Quran, each bound as a book. It took four months to make a full copy of the Quran! By this time, books were bound as pages with a spine, not as long rolls the way early Bible copies were. The pages were on parchment, a specially treated and bleached leather. In the animal-rich economy of Arabia, this type of writing material made sense, but it was still expensive. There would be few full Quran copies until paper technology arrived later. The copies were the most precious resource. Each was to be kept wrapped in silk and always stored on a high shelf.

One copy stayed with Caliph Uthman in Medina, while other copies were sent to the provinces. The provincial governors were ordered to have more copies made and distributed, but also to destroy alternative versions of the Quran. All through Medina and Mecca, this destruction was also carried out. And so the Quran was standardized as the empire grew.

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Uthman’s Umayyad Clan Problem

Posted on May 23, 2021 by Ruth

Uthman was the heir of two very wealthy clans of the Quraysh, and he was also a second cousin of Muhammad. His great-grandfather was Umayyah, the patriarch of the clan known as Umayyads. They had been ruling in Mecca, and they assumed that this privilege just belonged to them.

Uthman knew how to read and write the new Arabic script that was just catching on. He was a very devout, serious Muslim who had used his wealth for alms and provisioning the army. He also had always been considered a shy, modest man who didn’t like to put himself forward. But on the other hand, he had been a central advisor to Umar, so he was able to step in seamlessly as Caliph. One of the first decisions he made was to impose only a monetary fine, blood-money, on Umar’s son who had killed five random Persians. He may have also paid it himself, letting the younger man go free. Why? He may have been a bit insecure at that point, and not ready to put to death the son of the much-admired former ruler.

Uthman had one looming problem: his clan. But it didn’t seem like a problem to Uthman, rather, his clan provided the solution to the problem of administering government to a large and growing empire. Each region needed a governor who would oversee local justice, but who would above all collect tribute and taxes, keep accurate records, pay the men on its list of stipends, and send the rest to Medina. He had to increase the state’s land holdings to house state-owned horses and camels, and businesses that were operated for charity to support the poor. He needed secretaries, messengers, tax officials, inspectors, and governors.

The governor of Damascus was already Uthman’s Umayyad cousin, Mu’awiya son of Abu Sufyan and Hind. Mu’awiya was by now an experienced soldier who took command of the Syrian army after his brother died of plague. He led the last conquests of remaining cities in the region, then settled into Damascus to watch over it all.

Nearer at hand, Uthman decided to reverse a ban that had been imposed on one of his clansmen by Muhammad. This man was one of the few whose opposition to Islam had not been forgiven when Mecca surrendered. He and his sons had to go live in the nearby town of Ta’if. It was a nice place to live, but he was sidelined from the power politics. Now, his son Marwan was recalled from exile by Uthman. Marwan became Uthman’s top secretary. “Secretary” here didn’t just mean typing up letters; Marwan was more like Chief of Staff or Executive Assistant. He had a finger in everything, and later (spoiler alert) he would use this power to become Caliph, himself.

Uthman ruled for twelve years, during which he appointed Umayyad relatives to many similar top posts, both in Medina and in the territories. Other Arab generals looked forward to retirement in a governing position, but they were passed over, leaving them resentful. The administrative state expanded more and more, but power remained concentrated in the hands of one clan.

Uthman rebuilt and expanded the mosque in Medina. Until then, it was the old courtyard with date palms for shade. Uthman bought adjoining houses and land to enlarge the courtyard, and he replaced the palms with pillars. Adjoining the larger new mosque, he built a new house for himself and his family. It was several stories high, with enclosed gardens. There were offices, guest houses, and official stables for horses and camels. It was decorated with marble pillars, carpets, sofas, and gold utensils. The Umayyads knew how to live. The Caliph’s kitchens expanded, too. Instead of simple hand-ground grains, the Caliph ate wheat bread and every delicacy that could come from the territories: rice, preserved fish, cheeses, and fruit.

The regional governors followed suit, and so did even some of the Companions of Muhammad. They bought land in the new territories and built estates and compounds. Zubayr owned houses in both Medina and Mecca, and also Damascus, and moreover Kufa and Basra, too. We have no reason to think that Ali and his family took this route, but others grew rich and left the wealth to their sons, creating an inherited upper class. The late Caliph Umar’s worst fears were coming true.

Uthman provided for mosques to be built out of state money. Muhammad always expected a community to work together to do this, but volunteer labor isn’t always practical. All of the new territories needed mosques. Uthman also provided for the call to prayer to happen not just at dawn, but at noon. Again, with so much expansion, so many people mixed together, they might not remember on their own. Since the muezzins now called twice a day, he made it a salaried position, and in a large mosque, they needed several muezzins. The mosques also needed sundials so that the muezzins could be sure of calling at exactly noon.

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The Election of Caliph Uthman, 644

Posted on May 23, 2021 by Ruth

As Umar lay dying, he appointed six Companions of the Prophet to determine which of them would become his successor. They were Muhammad’s foster son and son-in-law Ali; Uthman, an early wealthy convert who was twice Muhammad’s son-in-law; and four of the first male converts in Mecca: Talhah, Zubayr, Sa’ad and Abd al-Rahman.

Umar died, and he was buried in the third and last grave in A’isha’s old room. It was not a large room; A’isha recalled it as so small that when the Prophet did his prayer prostrations, she had to squish herself up in the corner. So after Muhammad, Abu Bakr, and Umar, there was no more space. At some point in the next days, Umar’s son killed five Persians in Medina as blood-revenge. Umar himself would certainly have executed his son for doing this, since Muhammad had specifically outlawed blood feuds in his last sermon. But with no Caliph in charge, the matter just waited.

The six-man shura went into a closed room and began to debate. Talhah was out of town at the time, so it was really only five. Abd al-Rahman proactively stated that he would not become Caliph, but instead would be the meeting’s moderator. Early deliberation made it clear that both Uthman and Ali had higher status than the other early believers, who formed a second rank of candidates. They would not put themselves forward unless Uthman and Ali were somehow ruled out, so tacitly it might be assumed that the same committee could make the next choice of Caliph, after either Uthman or Ali had passed away.

If you are Talhah, Zubayr, Sa’ad or Abd al-Rahman, and you are privately interested in becoming Caliph, who would you rather see become Caliph now? Your choices are Ali, who is about 45, and Uthman, who is 70. If you want to establish a long-lasting reign, you go with Ali, but what if you want to see another chance at Caliph turn-over within a year or two? Then you vote for Uthman. And that is what happened.

I’m presenting it in the most cynical light. The less cynical way is that these men knew each other very well and over a long time. Several of them had been in the Abyssinian migration together, while Ali had stayed in Mecca. They had many ties of friendship and family, and perhaps many other obligations that we no longer know about. Perhaps Uthman’s age made him seem more venerable and worthy of this honor.

In any case, the three day meeting adjourned with a vow of allegiance to Uthman. The believers who thought that Ali had been the real successor all along had to make the choice again to accept another leader for the sake of peace.

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Death of Caliph Umar: What Now? 644

Posted on May 23, 2021 by Ruth

Umar’s sudden death came directly from the breadth of the conquests during his reign. Medina was no longer an isolated town of date farmers who all knew each other; it was an imperial capital with embassies. It had probably outgrown its original city buildings and had shanty-towns starting to spread to the lava beds. It was filled with not only “foreign” Arabs (Yemenis, Iraqis, Syrians) but with Persians, Aramaic Syrians, and Egyptians.

In spite of all this, Caliph Umar rigidly adhered to the rule of living as simply as Muhammad had done. He would have no aristocracy growing up on his watch; he fired governors for creating walls and locks to keep people out. He himself walked to the mosque to lead prayers, doing it alone and as simply as when they had first come as Emigrants to Medina. No bodyguards.

A Christian man had been captured into slavery from Persia. He had lived in Medina long enough to learn Arabic, and his master did not provide work for him but expected him to hustle up work and pay a daily fee of two dirhams out of his earnings. It probably would have been an easier life to just be given work and meals, so he had the worst of freedom and the worst of slavery. This man Firuz, also called Abu Lulu in Arabic, decided to bring his bitter complaint to Umar himself.

Caliph Umar took time to speak to him in the mosque or the street just outside it. But he didn’t think that Abu Lulu’s plight was so serious. The Persian was a carpenter, so surely there was enough building work in Medina to keep him in lucrative work. He saw no reason to interfere, either freeing the slave or decreeing a reduced fee.

But Abu Lulu’s griefs went deeper than just his economic hardship. As a slave, he had also been impressed into the Muslim army to attack his homeland. He saw the Persian defeat at Nahawand and witnessed masses of captives being led away. And then it turns out, it went even deeper than that. His childhood had been spent as a Byzantine-captive slave, too! He had only gotten home again, perhaps after the return of the True Cross relic, in time to be captured by Arabs. He had a lot of grief and trauma.

So the next day he jumped on the Caliph as he knelt to pray at the mosque. He stabbed him many times and then stabbed himself.

Umar didn’t die on the scene; he was carried home and made comfortable, although the outcome was certain. He had time to think about the succession.

There were essentially three Arab models for passing on power. Simple family inheritance of land and power was ruled out; Umar was definitely not going to treat the holy office of Successor to the Prophet as worthy of one of his sons. The dying ruler could appoint a successor, as Abu Bakr had appointed him. Or the dying ruler could leave the choice to a conclave, a shura, as Muhammad had apparently done.

Or had Muhammad left the decision to the Muslim community? That’s the Sunni belief; Muhammad said that if they were in agreement, they could not go wrong. Of course, the alternative is that Muhammad had appointed a successor as Abu Bakr did, and if so, it was Ali. And Ali was right there at Umar’s right hand, having served and advised him loyally while also carrying out the major role of discipling the hundreds of new students flocking to Medina. Ali and Umar had a family tie, since Umar had married Ali’s very young daughter. Ali could step in and take over seamlessly.

The fact that Umar didn’t simply appoint Ali raises suspicions that the division between the blood-tie and marriage-tie relatives of Muhammad had not dimmed. As Umar lay dying, whatever went through his mind, and whoever was talking to him, we know the outcome. He appointed a six-man shura to make the choice after he was gone. This group would choose one from among themselves, so he was essentially choosing six candidates, any of whom would be acceptable. He chose only the earliest believers, no recent converts, so all with Meccan roots. One of them was Ali…

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The Battle of Nahavand, 642

Posted on May 10, 2021 by Ruth

The rest of Persia, the territory that makes up the modern nations of Iran, Azerbaijan, and Afghanistan, was conquered by two separate military campaigns. The first was a defensive action by the Arab commanders in Iraq, while the second invasion came from the sea, a first for the Islamic State at Medina.

The Persian king, Yazdgerd, was down but not out. Pushed to his eastern margins, he asked the Turkic Khan of Ferghana to assist him in winning back his homeland. Around 642, he put out a call to all remaining loyal cities and officers to gather at a place called Nahavand. From there, they’d move toward Iraq, probably attacking the Arab garrison town of Basra, which was not walled.

But you can’t mass an army of tens of thousands without someone noticing. Arab scouts brought the news back to Basra, then to Medina. Caliph Umar and his top advisers considered what to do. Some argued that a massive army should be raised from Arabia, Iraq, and Syria. Ali argued that the forces in Iraq should be sufficient if they moved quickly before the Persians were ready. So that order went out: mobilize as soon as possible, and move toward Nahavand to dispatch the Persians there.

At Nahavand, the Persians were camped between a ridge of hills and a stream. When they suddenly had to create a defensive formation, they spread caltrops—basically, the shape that we know as the children’s toy “jacks”—along the stream bank. These metal spikes would lame any horses who stepped on them. The stream, caltrops, and hills made a natural fortress during which the Persians were safe for several days of fighting.

The Muslim commander took a break from large assaults to study the situation. During this break, he had his army circulate a rumor that Caliph Umar had died. He waited for spies to carry the rumor back to the Persian camp. A week passed. Then the Muslims began an orderly retreat that would be consistent with a leadership crisis in Medina, but a large unit of cavalry also slipped behind a hill to reposition near the back of the Persian camp. The Persians took the bait and moved out of the safety of their camp. The Muslims then turned and began an open battle with many deaths. The cavalry unit started attacking the back of the Persian lines.

The battle turned quickly when both commanders were killed. In the Arab army, there was an experienced command structure of officers who had fought in the other major battles. Someone quickly took over. But the long war with Rome and their major loss at Qadisiyah had deprived the Persian army of experienced officers. The masses gathered at Nahavand were mostly recruits or men from distant places with language barriers. When the commander died, nobody took over, and the men turned to flee. Especially with a cavalry unit attacking at the back, this flight sealed their defeat. It was an unmitigated disaster for Persia and ensured that no central army could be massed again for a long time to come.

A separate Arab force had moved out of eastern Arabia across the Persian Gulf around 639. Umar was very uncomfortable with any military operations in ships, but the Arabs along the coast had always been going to sea (recall the Bronze Age shipping between Sumer and India). They were the men of modern Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. In 639, they established an Arab base on an island and began the invasion of the Persian homeland, Fars. They had begun draining off some of Yazdgerd’s war reserves by making him defend Fars.

After the major victory at Nahavand, the East Arabians could establish a permanent base, a misr, on the Persian shore. Yazdgerd was in the city of Istakhar. Fars was mountainous, an easy place to defend, a hard place to attack. But without a major central force to come rescue them, each city had to make its own choices. Some surrendered, others fought as they could. Much of Iran lay open now, and some of the Arab armies went far east and north, receiving terms and tribute from places as far as the edges we now call Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan.

It took combined Arab forces to dislodge Yazdgerd from Istakhar. The governor of Basra had improved his town with irrigation canals, and more and more people were settling there. Basra could now send most of its fighting men into Iran. The city of Jur was impregnable until someone noticed a dog running toward the city. He followed the dog who knew the way through a pass and up to a back gate. With that knowledge, the Arabs made short work of Jur.

Istakhar held out longest, and it may have surrendered for a short time, then rebelled. Its walls were pounded by catapults, then the city was invaded for bloody urban fighting. When the Arab victory was assured, the commander ordered a mass execution of the Persian nobles who had gathered there. Tens of thousands were executed, and the fire temples were destroyed. Sacred fires were put out, walls torn down, and votive riches seized. It is the only city that is recorded as being razed.

Yazdgerd escaped to the border of the Turkic lands. The Arabs pursued him, forcing cities along the way to surrender as their nobles fled. They went into all of the eastern and northern provinces until the Islamic State controlled modern Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and some of Afghanistan, in addition to Iran. One of the outlying cities, Zaranj, agreed to colorful terms: annually one million dirhams of silver and one thousand slave boys each carrying a golden cup (Kennedy, 187). The outlying city of Merv marked the extent of the Muslim advance.

Yazdgerd was running ahead of them all this time. The status of a fugitive king is different from a retreating one; when the king is a fugitive, he is toxic to be near. The king was passed along from one town to another, always trying to form alliances to turn things around. He ended up in Merv, too. Chased out of the town by the governor’s fear when he heard of the Muslim advance, he could have gone into Turkic or even Chinese lands. Instead, he turned back to go quietly toward central Iran and attempt a rebellion. When he took shelter in a mill, the local ruler ordered the miller to kill him. Local Nestorian monks found his body and reverently prepared it for burial.

Yazdgerd’s final end didn’t come until 651, well into the reign of the next Caliph. The Sassanid dynasty was over, and with it, Persia as it had been. During the coming Muslim years, Persia would struggle along as small principalities fighting each other and trying to stave off eastern invasions. It would not be a unified country again until 1501.

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First Muslim Cities of Egypt

Posted on May 8, 2021 by Ruth

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.

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Conquest of Egypt, 636-42

Posted on April 29, 2021 by Ruth

We need a wide range of dates to cover the conquest of Egypt because histories conflict so much as to when things happened and in what order.

General Amr ibn al-As, who had led his army to Gaza in the first wave of invasion, survived both the Battle of Yarmouk and the plague. As the others moved into the north, conquering Syria and Lebanon, he moved south to Gaza again, securing it. He really wanted to head south, as his friends were heading north. He moved down the Mediterranean coast to Arish, on the Egyptian border. There he sent word to Umar, asking permission to move on. Umar was understandably concerned that the Muslims were spread too thin. Amr would have no more than 4000 men to invade a place with serious forts and entirely unfamiliar geography.

But Amr gradually moved past Arish, and when Umar’s letter arrived, he found that it said “Don’t go into Egypt. But if you already did, don’t retreat, go forward.” Funny how that works, when you keep creeping forward while waiting for permission.

Egypt, a Roman stronghold since Caesar Augustus conquered the last Greek Pharaoh, Cleopatra, was the richest Roman province outside of Italy. It had been an early adopter of Christianity, and by now it was thickly dotted with churches and monasteries. Due to irrigation around Lake Fayoum, in addition to the regular Nile inundations, Egypt was able to grow enough wheat to essentially feed the Roman army. That’s why Heraclius had reacted so strongly to Persia’s seizure of Egypt, in the closing years of the 6th century. Without Egypt, he really could not feed his army.

But Rome’s defeat in Syria had been profound enough that even a threat to Egypt now could not move them. There were garrisons and officers in Egypt, and one of the best forts of the ancient world was near modern Cairo. But they didn’t have very many men in these garrisons. Egypt itself was underpopulated at this time, because of the multiple visitations of the bubonic plague, starting in 541. Additionally, some city walls and buildings had been ruined during the war between Persia and Rome, and they had not been rebuilt. Roman Egypt was caught up mainly in a sectarian struggle, as Constantinople tried to impose its control on the Egyptian church. They were not at all prepared for a new invasion.

There were some battles for the cities of the Delta. Amr was able to sweep out a few strongholds, but when he faced a difficult, potentially losing, situation at Heliopolis, Umar was able to send reinforcements to meet him. The first serious challenge was the siege of a very well-built fort, Fort Babylon. The name is confusing because the Babylon mentioned in the Bible was in Iraq, but this Babylon was built by Alexander the Great, much more recently. This Babylon was near modern Cairo, at the point where the Nile branches into the smaller rivers of the Delta.

Babylon’s defense was assisted by the annual Nile flooding, which kept the Muslims from coming close. During the waiting period, the Coptic Patriarch Cyrus sent to ask Emperor Heraclius if he could surrender, since no help was on the way. Heraclius demanded that he come in person, and there Cyrus found himself mocked and exiled. But back at Fort Babylon, the water began to recede, while the Romans tried to hold out. The Muslims were able to move a very small force onto a wall, where their archers kept the Romans away. It was only a matter of time until this small force got a gate unlocked. And with that, Fort Babylon surrendered.

The Roman general retreated. When Amr approached another city in the Delta, he retreated again, and then again. After a week of battles around a fort near Alexandria, the Romans retreated again. Morale was very low, since they knew no outside help was coming. The men in Alexandria were not willing to meet the Muslims in the field. They could not sustain serious loss of life, they could only hang on and see if conditions improved their lot.

But during this time, Heraclius died. Constantinople again lived through a rapid turnover of leadership, with competing sons and military coups. They wanted to send an army, but they weren’t able. Patriarch Cyrus was returned to Alexandria to calm the turmoil, but by then the turmoil inside the city amounted to a small civil war. Under such conditions, no city can defend itself well. And yet Alexandria was a city nearly impossible to besiege, since it sat so much on the water and was of vast size, impossible to circle. The Muslims were not able to get any grip on how to assault it.

Amr left a token force at Alexandria and went on to establish control over the other parts of Egypt, including the key regions of Lake Fayoum and the ancient capital of Thebes. There were small battles, but nothing serious like Yarmouk or Qadisiyah. In the stronghold of Babylon, Amr began setting up Egypt’s administrative offices to collect taxes.

The Patriarch Cyrus, exiled by Heraclius then returned by his son, now caught in a civil war in the city, traveled secretly to meet Amr. He offered peace terms that were beyond Amr’s imagining. Egypt would pay a poll tax of two dinars per person and the Roman forces in Egypt would leave unilaterally. And that was that, Alexandria came under Muslim rule without fighting—and without burning its library. Later Roman emperors sent ships to try to retake Alexandria, but the efforts did not succeed. Egypt was lost to Rome forever.

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The New Cities in Iraq: Kufa, Basra and Mosul, 636-40

Posted on April 29, 2021 by Ruth

The Muslim forces were a small population of conquerors in a very large settled agricultural society. Now that they controlled it, they were free to settle or build in it. They could have begun a massive migration from dry Arabia to the Fertile Crescent. If they had blended into the Iraqi population, they would have learned Aramaic and farming, and they might have vanished into the existing demographics as thoroughly as the Goths vanished into Italy. But partly due to concerns about the new climate’s humidity, Caliph Umar ordered the men who stayed in Iraq to do something quite different.

Umar said that they could only settle in a place where camels could thrive, so the humidity of the central Jezirah (“island”) was ruled out. Scouts rode out to find a good place, and the first location they selected was a site on the southern bank of the Euphrates River, where the ground was firm and stony. It was between Ctesiphon and the road to Medina, but it was also centrally situated along the river, so it could easily access other parts of Iraq. Sa’d moved most of his men away from Ctesiphon, where they had camped while tracking down runaway enemies, to the new site that they named Kufa.

Kufa was the first planned Muslim city. They built first a mosque, which was not so much defined by a building, as by an open area. An archer measured out the masjid, the open gathering space, by shooting arrows in all directions. Sa’d laid out the dimensions for a palace, which would chiefly be the government offices, not a lavish house. The treasury had to be in the palace, so they planned the back of this building to face the mosque, where people came at all hours, to make bank robbery less appealing. Around these two central institutions, they laid out markets.

The roads were carefully planned. They radiated out from the city center, and main streets had to be 20 meters wide, while no alley could be narrow than 3 meters. Houses were permitted to be built only outside the bounds of the mosque and market. At first, they built using river reeds, but as the city grew, Umar granted them permission to use clay and stone. The Caliph’s chief concern for this new city was that it should be an ideal Muslim town, not an imitation of Ctesiphon or Damascus. Houses were to be small and egalitarian. Markets were to sell necessities. All gathered in the mosque for prayers on an equal plane, equally bowed before Allah.

To the south near the Persian Gulf, near newly-Muslim Khuzestan, they built a second new town called Basra. The modern city of Basra has moved a bit, just as the modern town of Kufa has merged with nearby Najaf. Basra was created on the same plan as Kufa, and so were other new cities built by the Muslim conquerors. To the north, they also began laying out Mosul, a larger settlement where a small village had been.

Because the Muslim Arabs stayed in these new cities, instead of blending into the existing towns, they maintained their language and culture. There was little resistance to them in the countryside, where the farmers just wanted to live quietly and pay their taxes. Just having these garrison towns full of 20,000 armed Arabs was enough to keep rebellions from starting. Even if some of them married local women, their home language of Arabic was necessary for the market, mosque and government, so the wives had to learn Arabic, and Aramaic didn’t get established in Kufa or Basra.

Just as the fighting units had been raised from clans and tribes, the men who settled in Kufa and Basra built neighborhoods according to their old clans and tribes. It’s who they knew well. This, too, kept the culture preserved. They were forbidden to move into the countryside or take up life as nomads again. The Caliph wanted them to be city-dwellers, no matter what they had been in the old country.

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Caliph Umar’s Administrative Headaches

Posted on April 29, 2021 by Ruth

The Islamic State of Medina had been a relatively simple organization. Tribute came in, it was collected near the mosque, and it was immediately spent on alms or provisions for an expedition. Caliph Abu Bakr kept things simple too, continuing to distribute treasure as soon as it arrived. But as the state grew to be a wide empire that included both Syria and Iraq, things had to change. Under Caliph Umar, the foundation of an administrative state was set up. It is remembered as the Forty-One Laws of Umar, but we’ll look at only some of them.

One simple problem was just where to store all of the stuff that the army was sending home. Even if it were sold (one can imagine how the markets of Arabia boomed with international buyers) and turned into Persian and Roman coins, these still needed a treasury building. They were looking at millions and millions of dirhams (the Persian coin). So the Bayt al-Mal, the House of the Treasury, was set up. The taxes and tribute even just from within Arabia, which now united Bahrain, Yemen, the Red Sea and the interior, was more than any one man could handle. Official treasurers and accountants were appointed, with great emphasis on keeping accurate records so that Islam could remain scrupulously fair and charitable to the poor. Syria and Iraq also needed regional treasuries with record-keepers, so that they could pay locally and remit taxes to Medina in an orderly way. All of these treasuries needed armed guards, too.

Fighters began to need salaries, and in Medina the Companions of Muhammad who were still there needed stipends so they could focus on teaching Islam to the many students who were sent from newly-converted cities. So a system was set up to maintain lists of who got stipends and salaries. These lists went on for a few generations, with greater income for the descendants of veterans of famous battles (like the really old ones, Badr and Uhud, or now like Yarmouk and Qadisiyah). Barnaby Rogerson (221) quotes some stipend amounts, in dirhams:

  • Battle of Badr: 5000
  • Oath of the Tree at Hudaybiya: 4000
  • Ridda Apostasy Wars: 3000
  • Yarmouk or Qadisiyah: 2000
  • ordinary soldiers: range of 200-500

There were many others who received stipends (Rogerson, 222). Cousins and widows of the Prophet had stipends; the widows got 10,000 dirhams a year, but A’isha got 12,000. Umar wanted to support the injured and sick, who were disabled from working, as well as the elderly and orphaned children. With so many military campaigns, there were plenty of injured men and orphans. Umar created the first alms-giving Trust, or Waqf. He bought property for the Waqf to own and manage so that they could pay stipends out of its ongoing income. The Waqf also had a treasury with regular generous payments from the conquest income.

They now needed a vast bureaucracy of governors, tax collectors, and accountants for every treasury and trust. Now Caliph Umar had a dilemma. He was himself a very austere man who wore patched robes, slept on the floor, and lived in the same simple house as before. He was a violent and harsh man, but he was also very disciplined toward himself and his family. When one of his sons misbehaved publicly while drunk, Umar ordered him to be flogged according to the law, even though the flogging led to his son’s death. He did not allow anyone to wear fine robes or live in luxury around him. He was a fanatic about equality and free access of the common man to a leader.

Umar wanted to promote other early converts who had simple lifestyles, who had really internalized the Prophet’s values. But as many of these men as there were, he ran short because he was also sending them to lead armies to east and west. Also, they needed literate men, and literacy among the Arabs was still uncommon. The best source of literate, capable governors and accountants was the old Meccan aristocracy of the Quraysh.

How ironic, with the Qurayshi love of luxury and power enshrined in the Quran as a wicked thing, to need to promote Quraysh members who had resisted Islam to the end. But so it was. And foremost among the Quraysh were the Umayyad clan. Uthman, an early convert and close friend (and son-in-law) of Muhammad, was of the Umayyad clan, and he was already one of Umar’s closest advisers and friends. But there were many more Umayyads: Abu Sufyan’s and Hind’s sons, Yazid and Mu’awiyah, and many cousins and nephews in that branch. They began to climb the ladder of power. Yazid and Mu’awiya went out with the army to Syria, where Mu’awiya became the governor in Damascus. He needed lieutenants he could trust, so of course he promoted his Umayyad cousins.

Umar hated the idea of a ladder of power. He set limits on the wealth his officials were allowed to accrue. He threatened them with dismissal if they started to look like a higher social class from the average man on the street. He stressed that the treasury money was for the public good, for people, not for fancy buildings. Umar’s strict idealism about not showing wealth finally ended the career of Khalid, his most successful general. Khalid paid a poet who had declaimed a poem in celebration of one of his northern Syrian victories. When Umar heard of it, he fired Khalid. To Umar, it sounded like Khalid was doing what a king would do: being the patron to a poet. Khalid could easily become a rebel king in northern Syria, with his family now resettled at their new home. Khalid accepted his firing quietly and went into retirement in Emessa/Homs. He died a few years later.

Umar had a major administrative difference from Muhammad’s original ways. He mistrusted wealth, but he also mistrusted women. Remember his lack of sympathy for his daughter Hafsah when her complaints to Muhammad had contributed to his withdrawal from his wives’ company. As Caliph, he believed women should be kept apart. Muhammad had encouraged women to speak up, come to the mosque, and travel, including on the Hajj. But Umar told women to stay home.

One last Umar note: it was Umar who decided that his government would count time with the move to Medina as Year One. The Latin year 622, then, was AH 1. It might make purer sense to have chosen the year of Muhammad’s first revelations as Year One, but apparently even then there could be arguments about how many years ago that was. After moving to Medina, they had lived with careful record-keeping. They used the pre-Islamic Arabic lunar calendar.

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