Arab Conquest Of Egypt

A lively, well-illustrated retrospective of 300 years of Egyptian history.

Recording Village Life presents a close study of over 140 Coptic texts written between 724–756 CE by a single scribe, Aristophanes son of Johannes, of the village Djeme in western Thebes. These texts, which focus primarily on taxation and property concerns, yield a wealth of knowledge about social and economic changes happening at both the community and country-wide levels during the early years of Islamic rule in Egypt. Additionally, they offer a fascinating picture of the scribe’s role within this world, illuminating both the practical aspects of his work and the social and professional connections with clients for whom he wrote legal documents. Papyrological analysis of Aristophanes’ documents, within the context of the textual record of the village, shows a new and divergent scribal practice that reflects broader trends among his contemporaries: Aristophanes was part of a larger, national system of administrative changes, enacted by the country’s Arab rulers in order to better control administrative practices and fiscal policies within the country. Yet Aristophanes’ dossier shows him not just as an administrator, revealing details about his life, his role in the community, and the elite networks within which he operated. This unique perspective provides new insights into both the micro-history of an individual’s experience of eighth-century Theban village life, and its reflection in the macro social, economic, and political trends in Egypt at this time. This book will prove valuable to scholars of late antique studies, papyrology, philology, early Islamic history, social and economic history, and Egyptology.

The Arab Conquest of Egypt: And the Last 30 Years of the Roman Dominion Paperback

The conquest of Egypt by Islamic armies under the command of Amr ibn al-As in the seventh century transformed medieval Egyptian society. Seeking to uncover the broader cultural changes of the period by drawing on a wide array of literary and documentary sources, Maged Mikhail stresses the cultural and institutional developments that punctuated the histories of Christians and Muslims in the province under early Islamic rule. From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt traces how the largely agrarian Egyptian society responded to the influx of Arabic and Islam, the means by which the Coptic Church constructed its sectarian identity, the Islamisation of the administrative classes and how these factors converged to create a new medieval society. The result is a fascinating and essential study for scholars of Byzantine and early Islamic Egypt.

Egypt occupies a central position in the Arab world. Its borders between sand and sea have existed for millennia and yet, until 1952, the country was ruled by foreigners. Afaf al-Sayyid Marsot explores the paradoxes of Egypt's history in an updated edition of her successful A Short History of Modern Egypt. Charting the years from the Arab conquest, through the age of the Mamluks, Egypt's incorporation into the Ottoman Empire, the liberal experiment in constitutional government in the early twentieth century, followed by the Nasser and Sadat years, the new edition takes the story up to the present day. During the Mubarak era, Egyptians have seen major changes with the rise of globalization and its effects on their economy, the advent of new political parties, the entrenchment of Islamic fundamentalism and the consequent changing attitudes to women. This short history is ideal for students and travelers.