Under Justinian the pagan schools were again and from that time forward closed. Isidorus the platonist and Salustius the Cynic were among the learned men of greatest note who then withdrew from Alexandria. Isidorus had been chosen by Marinus as his successor in the platonic chair at Athens, to fill the high post of the platonic successor; but he had left the Athenian school to Zenodotus, a pupil of Proclus, and had removed to Alexandria. Salustius the Cynic was a Syrian, who had removed with Isidorus from Athens to Alexandria. He was virtuous in his morals though jocular in his manners, and as ready in his witty attacks upon the speculative opinions of his brother philosophers as upon the vices of the Alexandrians. These learned men, with Damascius and others from Athens, were kindly received by the Persians, who soon afterwards, when they made a treaty of peace with Justinian, generously bargained that these men, the last teachers of paganism, should be allowed to return home, and pass the rest of their days in quiet.
After the flight of the pagan philosophers, but little learning was left in Alexandria. One of the most remarkable men in this age of ignorance was Cosmas, an Alexandrian merchant, who wished that the world should not only be enriched but enlightened by his travels. After making many voyages through Ethiopia to India for the sake of gain, he gave up trade and became a monk and an author. When he writes as a traveller about the Christian churches of India and Ceylon, and the inscriptions which he copied at Adule in Abyssinia, everything that he tells us is valuable; but when he reasons as a monk, the case is sadly changed. He is of the dogmatical school which forbids all inquiry as heretical. He fights the battle which has been so often fought before and since, and is even still fought so resolutely, the battle of religious ignorance against scientific knowledge. He sets the words of the Bible against the results of science; he denies that the world is a sphere, and quotes the Old Testament against the pagan astronomers, to show that it is a plane, covered by the firmament as by a roof, above which he places the kingdom of heaven. His work is named Christian Topography, and he is himself usually called Cosmas Indicopleustes, from the country which he visited.
During the latter years of the government of Apollinarius, such was his unpopularity as a spiritual bishop that both the rival parties, the Gaianites and the Theodosians, had been building places of worship for themselves, and the more zealous Jacobites had quietly left the churches to Apollinarius and the Royalists. But on the death of an archdeacon they again came to blows with the bishop; and a monk had his beard torn off his chin by the Gaianites in the streets of Alexandria. The emperor was obliged to interfere, and he sent the Abbot Photinus to Egypt to put down this rebellion, and heal the quarrel in the Church. Apollinarius died soon afterwards, and Justinian then appointed John to the joint office of prefect of the city and patriarch of the Church. The new archbishop was accused of being a Manichean; but this seems to mean nothing but that he was too much of the Egyptian party, and that, though he was the imperial patriarch, and not acknowledged by the Koptic church, yet his opinions were disliked by the Greeks. On his death, which happened in about three years, they chose Peter, who held the Jacobite or Egyptian opinions, and whose name is not mentioned in the Greek lists of the patriarchs. Peter’s death occurred in the same year as that of the emperor.
Under Justinian we again find some small traces of a national coinage in Egypt. Ever since the reign of Diocletian, the old Egyptian coinage had been stopped, and the Alexandrians had used money of the same weight, and with the same Latin inscriptions, as the rest of the empire. But under Justinian, though the inscriptions on the coins are still Latin, they have the name of the city in Greek letters. Like the coins of Constantinople, they have a cross, the emblem of Christianity; but while the other coins of the empire have the Greek numeral letters, E, I, K, A, or M, to denote the value, meaning 5, 10, 20, 30, or 40, the coins of Alexandria have the letters 1 B for 12, showing that they were on a different system of weights from those of Constantinople. On these the head of the emperor is in profile. But later in his reign the style was changed, the coins were made larger, and the head of the emperor had a front face. On these larger coins the numeral letters are [A r] for 33. We thus learn that the Alexandrians at this time paid and received money rather by weight than by tale, and avoided all depreciation of the currency. As the early coins marked 12 had become lighter by wear, those which were meant to be of about three times their value were marked 33.
During the period from 566 to 602 Justin II. reigned twelve years, Tiberius reigned four years, and Mauricius, his son-in-law, twenty; and under these sovereigns the empire gained a little rest from its enemies by a rebellion among the Persians, which at last overthrew their king Chosroes. He fled to Mauricius for help, and was by him restored to his throne, after which the two kingdoms remained at peace to the end of his reign.
The Emperor Mauricius was murdered by Phocas, who, in 602, succeeded him on the throne of Constantinople. No sooner did the news of his death reach Persia than Chosroes, the son of Hormuz, who had married Maria, the daughter of Mauricius, declared the treaty with the Romans at an end, and moved his forces against the new emperor, the murderer of his father-in-law. During the whole of his reign Constantinople was kept in a state of alarm and almost of siege by the Persians; and the crimes and misfortunes of Phocas alike prepared his subjects for a revolt. In the seventh year Alexandria rebelled in favour of the young Heraclius, son of the late prefect of Cyrene; and the patriarch of Egypt was slain in the struggle. Soon afterwards Heraclius entered the port of Constantinople with his fleet, and Phocas was put to death after an unfortunate reign of eight years, in which he had lost every province of the empire.
During the first three years of the reign of Heraclius, Theodoras was Bishop of Alexandria; but upon his death the wishes of the Alexandrians so strongly pointed to John, the son of the prefect of Cyprus, that the emperor, yielding to their request, appointed him to the bishopric. Alexandria was not a place in which a good man could enjoy the pleasures of power without feeling the weight of its duties. It was then suffering under all those evils which usually befall the capital of a sinking state. It had lost much of its trade, and its poorer citizens no longer received a free supply of grain. The unsettled state of the country was starving the larger cities, and the population of Alexandria was suffering from want of employment. The civil magistrates had removed their palace to a distance. But the new bishop seemed formed for these unfortunate times, and, though appointed by the emperor, he was in every respect worthy of the free choice of the citizens. He was foremost in every work of benevolence and charity. The five years of his government were spent in lightening the sufferings of the people, and he gained the truly Christian name of John the Almsgiver. Beside his private acts of kindness he established throughout the city hospitals for the sick and almshouses for the poor and for strangers, and as many as seven lying-in hospitals for poor women. John was not less active in outrooting all that he thought heresy.
The first years of the reign of Heraclius are chiefly marked by the successes of the Persians. While Chosroes, their king, was himself attacking Constantinople, one general was besieging Jerusalem and a second overrunning Lower Egypt. Crowds fled before the invading army to Alexandria as a place of safety, and the famine increased as the province of the prefect grew narrower and the population more crowded. To add to the distress the Nile rose to a less height than usual; the seasons seemed to assist the enemy in the destruction of Egypt. The patriarch John, who had been sending money, grain, and Egyptian workmen to assist in the pious work of rebuilding the church of Jerusalem which the Persians had destroyed, immediately found all his means needed, and far from enough, for the poor of Alexandria. On his appointment to the bishopric he found in its treasury eight thousand pounds of gold; he had in the course of five years received ten thousand more from the offerings of the pious, as his princely ecclesiastical revenue was named; but this large sum of four million dollars had all been spent in deeds of generosity or charity, and the bishop had no resource but borrowing to relieve the misery with which he was surrounded. In the fifth year the unbelievers were masters of Jerusalem, and in the eighth they entered Alexandria, and soon held all the Delta; and in that year the grain which had hitherto been given to the citizens of Constantinople was sold to them at a small price, and before the end of the year the supply from Egypt was wholly stopped.
When the Persians entered Egypt, the patrician Nicetas, having no forces with which he could withstand their advance, and knowing that no succour was to be looked for from Constantinople, and finding that the Alexandrians were unwilling to support him, fled with the patriarch John the Almsgiver to Cyprus, and left the province to the enemy. As John denied that the Son of God had suffered on the cross, his opinions would seem not to have been very unlike those of the Egyptians; but as he was appointed to the bishopric by the emperor, though at the request of the people, he is not counted among the patriarchs of the Koptic church; and one of the first acts of the Persians was to appoint Benjamin, a Jacobite priest, who already performed the spiritual office of Bishop of Alexandria, to the public exercise of that duty, and to the enjoyment of the civil dignity and revenues.
The troops with which Chosroes conquered and held Egypt were no doubt in part Syrians and Arabs, people with whom the fellahs or labouring class of Egyptians were closely allied in blood and feelings. Hence arose the readiness with which the whole country yielded when the Roman forces were defeated. But hence also arose the weakness of the Persians, and their speedy loss of this conquest when the Arabs rebelled. Their rule, however, in Egypt was not quite unmarked in the history of these dark ages.
At this time Thomas, a Syrian bishop, came to Alexandria to correct the Syriac version of the New Testament, which had been made about a century before by Philoxenus. He compared the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles with the Greek manuscripts in the monastery of St. Anthony in the capital; and we still possess the fruits of his learned labour, in which he altered the ancient text to make it agree with the newer Alexandrian manuscripts. From his copy the Philoxenian version is now printed. A Syriac manuscript of the New Testament written by Alexandrian penmen in the sixth year of Heraclius, is now to be seen in the library of the Augustan friars in Rome. At the same time another Syrian scholar, Paul of Tela, in Mesopotamia, was busy in the Alexandrian monastery of St. Zacchæus in translating the Old Testament into Syriac, from the Septuagint Greek; and he closes his labours with begging the reader to pray for the soul of his friend Thomas. Such was now the reputation of the Alexandrian edition of the Bible, that these scholars preferred it both to the original Hebrew of the Old and to the earlier manuscripts of the New Testament. Among other works of this time were the medical writings of Aaron the physician of Alexandria, formerly written in Syriac, and afterwards much valued by the Arabs. The Syrian monks in numbers settled in the monastery of Mount Nitria; and in that secluded spot there remained a colony of these monks for several centuries, kept up by the occasional arrival of newcomers from the churches on the eastern side of the Euphrates.
For ten years the Egyptians were governed by the Persians, and had a patriarch of their own religion and of their own choice; and the building of the Persian palace in Alexandria proves how quietly they lived under their new masters. But Heraclius was not idle under his misfortunes. The Persians had been weakened by the great revolt of the Arabs, who had formed their chief strength on the side of Constantinople and Egypt; and Heraclius, leading his forces bravely against Chosroes, drove him back from Syria and became in his turn the invader, and he then recovered Egypt. The Jacobite patriarch Benjamin fled with the Persians; and Heraclius appointed George to the bishopric, which was declared to have been empty since John the Almsgiver fled to Cyprus.
The revolt of the Arabs, which overthrew the power of the Persians in their western provinces and for a time restored Egypt to Constantinople, was the foundation of the mighty empire of the caliphs; and the Hegira, or flight of Muhammed, from which the Arabic historians count their lunar years, took place in 622, the twelfth year of Heraclius. The vigour of the Arab arms rapidly broke the Persian yoke, and the Moslems then overran every province in the neighbourhood. This was soon felt by the Romans, who found the Arabs, even in the third year of their freedom, a more formidable enemy than the Persians whom they had overthrown; and, after a short struggle of only two years, Heraclius was forced to pay a tribute to the Moslems for their forbearance in not conquering Egypt. For eight years he was willing to purchase an inglorious peace by paying tribute to the caliph; but when his treasure failed him and the payment was discontinued, the Arabs marched against the nearest provinces of the empire, offering to the inhabitants their choice of either paying tribute or receiving the Muhammedan religion; and they then began on their western frontier that rapid career of conquest which they had already begun on the eastern frontier against their late masters, the Persians.
The Rise of Muhammedanism: The Arabic Conquest of Egypt: The Ommayad and Abbasid Dynasties.
The course of history now follows the somewhat uneventful period which introduced Arabian rule into the valley of the Nile. It is only necessary to remind the reader of the striking incidents in the life of Muhammed. He was born at Mecca, in Arabia, in July, 571, and spent his earliest years in the desert. At the age of twelve he travelled with a caravan to Syria, and probably on this occasion first came into contact with the Jews and Christians. After a few youthful adventures, his poetic and religious feelings were awakened by study. He gave himself up to profound meditation upon both the Jewish and Christian ideals, and subsequently beholding the archangel Gabriel in a vision, he proclaimed himself as a prophet of God. After preaching his doctrine for three years, and gaining a few converts (the first of whom was his wife, Khadija), the people of Mecca rose against him and he was forced to flee from the city in 614. New visions and subsequent conversions of influential Arabs strengthened his cause, especially in Medina, whither Muhammed was forced to flee a second time from Mecca in 622, this second flight being known as the Hegira, from which dates the Muhammedan era. In the next year, at Medina, he built his first mosque and married Ayesha, and in 624 was compelled to defend his pretensions by an appeal to arms. He was at first successful, and thereupon appointed Friday as a day of public worship, and, being embittered against the Jews, ordered that the attitude of prayer should no longer be towards Jerusalem, but towards his birthplace, Mecca. In 625 the Muhammedans were defeated by the Meccans, but one tribe after another submitted to him, and after a series of victories Muhammed prepared, in 629, for further conquests in Syria, but he died in 632 before they could be accomplished. His successors were known as caliphs, but from the very first his disciples quarrelled about the leadership, some affirming the rights of Ali, who had married Muhammed’s daughter, Fatima, and others supporting the claims of Abu Bekr, his father-in-law. There was also a religious quarrel concerning certain oral traditions relating to the Koran, or the Muhammedan sacred scriptures. Those who accepted the tradition were known as Sunnites, and those who rejected it as Shiites, the latter being the supporters of Ali, both sects, however, being known as Moslems or Islamites. Omar, a Sunnite, obtained the leadership in 634, and proceeded to carry out the prophet’s ambitious schemes of conquest. He subdued successively Syria, Palestine, and Phoenicia, and in 639 directed operations against Egypt. The general in charge of this expedition was Amr, who led four thousand men against Pelusium, which surrendered after a siege of thirty days. This easy victory was crowned by the capture of Alexandria. Amr entered the city on December 22, 640, and he seems to have been surprised at his own success. He immediately wrote to the caliph a letter in which he says:
“I have conquered the town of the West, and I cannot recount all it contains within its walls. It contains four thousand baths and twelve thousand venders of green vegetables, four thousand Jews who pay tribute, and four thousand musicians and mountebanks.”
Amr was anxious to conciliate and gain the affection of the new subjects he had added to the caliph’s empire, and during his short stay in Alexandria received them with kindness and personally heard and attended to their demands. It is commonly believed that in this period the Alexandrian Library was dismantled; but, as we have already seen, the books had been destroyed by the zeal of contending Christians. The story that attributes the destruction of this world-famous institution to the Arabian conquerors is so much a part of history, and has been so generally accepted as correct, that the traditional version should be given here.
Among the inhabitants of Alexandria whom Amr had so well received, says the monkish chronicler, was one John the Grammarian, a learned Greek, disciple of the Jacobite sect, who had been imprisoned by its persecutors. Since his disgrace, he had given himself up entirely to study, and was one of the most assiduous readers in the famous library. With the change of masters he believed the rich treasure would be speedily dispersed, and he wished to obtain a portion of it himself. So, profiting by the special kindness Amr had shown him, and the pleasure he appeared to take in his conversation, he ventured to ask for the gift of several of the philosophic books whose removal would put an end to his learned researches.
At first Amr granted this request without hesitation, but in his gratitude John the Grammarian expatiated so unwisely on the extreme rarity of the manuscripts and their inestimable value, that Amr, on reflection, feared he had overstepped his power in granting the learned man’s request. “I will refer the matter to the caliph,” he said, and thereupon wrote immediately to Omar and asked the caliph for his commands concerning the disposition of the whole of the precious contents of the library.
The caliph’s answer came quickly. “If,” he wrote, “the books contain only what is in the book of God (the Koran), it is enough for us, and these books are useless. If they contain anything contrary to the holy book, they are pernicious. In any case, burn them.”
Amr wished to organise his new government, and, having left a sufficient garrison in Alexandria, he gave orders to the rest of his army to leave the camp in the town and to occupy the interior of Egypt. “Where shall we pitch our new camp?” the soldiers asked each other, and the answer came from all parts, “Round the general’s tent.” The army, in fact, did camp on the banks of the Nile, in the vicinity of the modern Cairo, where Amr had ordered his tent to be left; and round this tent, which had become the centre of reunion, the soldiers built temporary huts which were soon changed into solid, permanent habitations. Spacious houses were built for the leaders, and palaces for the generals, and this collection of buildings soon became an important military town, with strongly marked Muhammedan characteristics. It was called Fostât (tent) in memory of the event, otherwise unimportant, which was the origin of its creation. Amr determined to make his new town the capital of Egypt; whilst still preserving the name of Fostât, he added that of Misr,—a title always borne by the capital of Egypt, and which Memphis had hitherto preserved in spite of the rivalry of Alexandria.
Fostât was then surrounded by fortifications, and Amr took up his residence there, forming various establishments and giving himself up entirely to the organisation of the vast province whose government the caliph had entrusted to him. The personal tax, which was the only one, had been determined in a fixed manner by the treaty of submission he had concluded with the Kopts; and an unimportant ground rent on landed property was added in favour of the holy towns of Mecca and Medina, as well as to defray some expenses of local administration.
Egypt was entirely divided into provincial districts, all of which had their own governor and administrators taken from among the Kopts themselves. The lands which had belonged to the imperial government of Constantinople, and those of the Greeks who had abandoned Egypt or been killed in the war against the Mussulmans, were either declared to be the property of the new government or given out again as fiefs or rewards to the chief officers of the army. All these lands were leased to the Koptic farmers, and the respective rights of the new proprietors or tenant farmers and of the peasant proprietors were determined by decisive and invariable rules. Thus the agricultural population enjoyed under the Mussulmans a security and ease which replaced the tyrannical annoyances and arbitrary exactions of the Christian agents of the treasury of Constantinople; for, in fact, little by little, there had disappeared under these Greek agents the sound principles of the old administration that had been established by the wise kings of ancient Egypt, and which the Ptolemies had scrupulously preserved, as did also the first governors under the Cæsars.
After all these improvements in the internal administration, the governor turned his attention to the question of justice, which until that moment had been subject to the decision of financial agents, or of the soldiers of the Greek government. Amr now created permanent and regular tribunals composed of honourable, independent, and enlightened men, who enjoyed public respect and esteem. To Amr dates back the first of those divans, chosen from the élite of the population, as sureties of the fairness of the cadis, which received appeals from first judgments to confirm them, or, in the case of wrongful decisions, to alter them. The decrees of the Arab judges had force only for those Mussulmans who formed a part of the occupying army. Whenever a Koptic inhabitant was a party in an action, the Koptic authorities had the right to intervene, and the parties were judged by their equals in race and religion.
One striking act of justice succeeded in winning for Amr the hearts of all. Despite the terror inspired by the religious persecutions which Heraclius had carried on with so much energy, one man, the Koptic patriarch Benjamin, had bravely kept his faith intact. He belonged to the Jacobite sect and abandoned none of its dogmas, and in their intolerance the all-powerful Melchites did not hesitate to choose him as their chief victim. Benjamin was dispossessed of his patriarchal throne, his liberty and life were threatened, and he only succeeded in saving both by taking flight. He lived thus forgotten in the various refuges that the desert monasteries afforded him, while Heraclius replaced him by an ardent supporter of the opinions favoured at court. The whole of Egypt was then divided into two churches separated from each other by an implacable hatred. At the head of the Melchites was the new patriarch, who was followed by a few priests and a small number of partisans who were more attached to him by fear than by faith. The Jacobites, on the other hand, comprised the immense majority of the population, who looked upon the patriarch as an intruder chosen by the emperor. The church still acknowledged as its real head Benjamin, the patriarch who had been for thirteen years a wanderer, and whose return was ardently desired. This wish found public expression as soon as the downfall of the imperial power in Egypt permitted its free manifestation. Amr listened to the supplications that were addressed to him, and, turning out the usurper in his turn, recalled Benjamin from his long exile and replaced him on the patriarchal throne.
But even here Amr’s protection of the Koptic religion did not end. He opened the door of his Mussulman town, and allowed them to live in Fostât and to build churches there in the midst of the Mussulman soldiers, even when Islamism was still without a temple in the city, or a consecrated place worthy of the religion of the conquerors.
Amr at length resolved to build in his new capital a magnificent mosque in imitation of the one at Mecca. Designs were speedily drawn up, the location of the new temple being, according to Arab authors, that of an ancient pyre consecrated by the Persians, and which had been in ruins since the time of the Ptolemies.
The monuments of Memphis had often been pillaged by Greek and Roman emperors, and now they were once again despoiled to furnish the mosque of Amr with the beautiful colonnades of marble and porphyry which adorn the walls, and on which, the Arab historians assure us, the whole Koran was written in letters of gold.
Omar died in 644, and under his successor, Othman, the Arabian conquests were extended in Northern Africa. Othman dying in 656, the claims of Ali were warmly supported, but not universally recognised, many looking to Muawia as an acceptable candidate for the caliphate. This was especially the view of the Syrian Muham-medans, and in 661 Muawia I. was elected caliph. He promptly transferred the capital from Medina to Damascus, and became in fact the founder of a dynasty known as the Ommayads, the new caliph being a descendant of the famous Arabian chieftain Ommayad. Egypt acknowledged the new authority and remained quiet and submissive. It furnished Abd el-Malik, who became caliph in 685, not only with rich subsidies and abundant provisions, but also with part of his troops.
The attachment of the Egyptians to their new masters was chiefly owing to the gentleness and wisdom of Abd el-Aziz ibn Merwan, who administered the country after Amr was put to death in 689. He visited all the provinces of Egypt, and, arriving at Alexandria, he ordered the building of a bridge over the canal, recognising the importance of this communication between the town and country.
Benefiting by the religious liberty that Mussulman sovereignship had secured them, the Kopts no longer attended to the quarrels of their masters. They only occupied themselves in maintaining the quiet peaceful-ness they had obtained by regular payment of their taxes, and by supplying men and commodities when occasion demanded it. During the reign of Abd el-Malik in Egypt the only remarkable event there was the election, in 688, of the Jacobite Isaac as patriarch of Alexandria. The Koptic clergy give him no other claim to historical remembrance than the formulating of a decree ordaining “that the patriarch can only be inaugurated on a Sunday.”
Isaac was succeeded by Simon the Syrian, whom the Koptic church looks upon as a saint, and for whom is claimed the power of reviving the dead. He nevertheless died from the effects of poison given him at the altar by some jealous rival. Arab historians relate how deputies came to Simon from India to ask for a bishop and some priests. The patriarch refused to comply with this request, but Abd el-Aziz, thinking that this relation with India might prove politically useful, gave the order to other and more docile priests.
The patriarchal seat was empty for three years after the death of Simon. The Kopts next appointed a patriarch named Alexander, who held the office for a little over twenty years. The Koptic writers who recount the history of this patriarch mention their discontent with the governor Abd el-Aziz. The monks and other members of the clergy had grown very numerous in Egypt and claimed to be exempt from taxation. Abd el-Aziz, whose yearly tax was fixed, thought it unjust that the poorest classes of the people should be made to pay while the priests, the bishop, and the patriarch, all possessing abundance, should be privileged by exemption. He therefore had a census made of all the monks and put on them a tax of one dinar (about $2.53), while he exacted from the patriarch an annual payment of three thousand dinars, or about $7,600. This act of justice was the cause of many complaints among the clergy, but they were soon suppressed and were without result.
After more than twenty years of a prosperous government of Egypt, Abd el-Aziz ibn Merwan died at Fostât in the year 708 (a.h. 86) at the very time when, with many fresh plans for the future, he had completed the building of a large and magnificent palace called ed-Dar el-mudahaba (the golden house), and a quarter of the town called Suk el-hammam (the pigeon market). The Caliph Abd el-Malik felt deeply the loss of this brother, whose qualities he highly appreciated and whom he had appointed as his successor.
He now named as his heir to the caliphate Walid, his eldest son, and replaced Abd el-Aziz in the government of Egypt with his second son, Abd Allah ibn Abd el-Malik. The Kopts hoped to obtain from the new governor the repeal of the act that exacted yearly tribute from the clergy, but Abd Allah did not think it fair to grant this unjust discrimination against the poorer classes of the Egyptians. Those monks who have written the history of the patriarchs have therefore painted Abd Allah in even blacker colours than they did his predecessor. For the rest, Abd Allah only held the reins of government in Egypt until the death of his father, which occurred a few months later.
Suleiman succeeded his brother Walid I. The new caliph vigorously put into execution all the plans his brother had formed for the propagation of the religion of the Prophet. In the first year of his reign he conquered Tabaristan and Georgia, and sent his brother Maslama to lay fresh siege to Constantinople. On his accession to the throne Suleiman placed the government of Egypt in the hands of Assama ibn Yazid, with the title of agent-general of finances.
The Koptic clerical historians, according to their usual habit, portray this governor as still worse than his predecessors, but in this case the Mussulman authorities are in agreement in accusing him of the most iniquitous extortions and most barbarous massacres. The gravest reproach they bring against him is that, calling all the monks together, he told them that not only did he intend to maintain the old regulations of Abd el-Aziz, by which they had to pay an annual tax of one dinar ($2.53), but also that they would be obliged to receive yearly from his agents an iron ring bearing their name and the date of the financial transaction, for which ring they were to make personal contribution. He forced the wearing of this ring continually, and the hand found without this strange form of receipt was to be cut off. Several monks who endeavoured to evade this strict order were pitilessly mutilated, while a number of them, rebelling against the payment of the tax, retired into convents, thinking they could safely defraud the treasury. Assama, however, sent his soldiers to search these retreats, and all the monks found without rings were beheaded or put to death by the bastinado.
Careful about all that related to the Egyptian revenues, Assama commanded the keeping up of the various Nilometers, which still served to regulate the assessment of the ground tax. In the year 718 he learned that the Nilometer established at Helwan, a little below Fostât, had fallen in, and hastened to report the fact to the caliph. By the orders of this prince the ruined Nilometer was abandoned, and a new one built at the meridional point of the island now called Rhodha, just between Fostât and Gizeh.
But of all the financial transactions of Assama, the one that vexed most the inhabitants of Egypt, and which brought down on him the most violent and implacable hatred, was the ordinance by which all ascending or descending the Nile were obliged to provide themselves with a passport bearing a tax. This exorbitant claim was carried out with an abusive and arbitrary sternness. A poor widow, the Oriental writers say, was travelling up the Nile with her son, having with her a correct passport, the payment of which had taken nearly all she possessed. The young man, while stretched along the boat to drink of the river’s water, was seized by a crocodile and swallowed, together with the passport he carried in his breast. The treasury officers insisted that the wretched widow should take a fresh one; and to obtain payment for it she sold all she had, even to the very clothes she wore. Such intolerable exactions and excesses ended by thoroughly rousing the indignant Egyptians. The malcontents assembled, and a general revolt would have been the result but for the news of the death of the Caliph Suleiman (717), which gave birth to the hope that justice might be obtained from his successor.
The next caliph was Omar II., a grandson of Merwan I., who had been nominated as his successor by Suleiman. In his reign the Muhammedans were repulsed from Constantinople, and the political movement began which finally established the Abbasid dynasty at Baghdad. Omar dying in the year 720, Yazid II., a son of Abd el-Malik, succeeded to the caliphate, and reigned for four years, history being for the most part silent as to the general condition of Egypt under these two caliphs. It is recorded that in the year 720, one of Yazid’s brothers, by name Muhammed ibn Abd el-Malik, ruled over Egypt. The Kopts complained of his rule, and declared that during the whole reign of Yazid ibn Abd el-Malik the Christians were persecuted, crosses overthrown, and churches destroyed.
Yazid was succeeded, in 724 A.D., by his brother Hisham, surnamed Abu’l-Walid, the fourth son of Abd el-Malik to occupy the throne of Islam, who, having been appointed by his brother as his successor, took possession of the throne on the very day of his death. Muhammed was replaced in Egypt by his cousin, Hassan ibn Yusuf, who only held office for three years, resigning voluntarily in the year 730 a.d., or 108 of the Hegira. The Caliph Hisham replaced him by Hafs ibn Walid, who was deposed a year later, and in the year 109 of the Hegira the caliph appointed in his place Abd el-Malik ibn Rifa, who had already governed Egypt during the caliphate of Walid I. Hisham made many changes in the governorship of Egypt, and amid a succession of rulers appointed Handhala to the post. He had already been governor of Egypt under Yazid II. He administered the province for another six years, and, according to the Christian historians of the East, pursued the same course of intolerance and tyranny that he had adopted when he governed Egypt for the first time under Yazid.
The Caliph Hisham enjoined Handhala to be gentle with his subjects and to treat the Christians with kindness, but far from conforming with these wise and kindly intentions, he overwhelmed them with vexations and tyrannous acts. He doubled the taxes by a general census, subjecting not only men but also their animals to an impost. The receipts for the new duty had to be stamped with the impression of a lion, and every Christian found without one of these documents was deprived of one of his hands.
In the year 746 (a.h. 124), on being informed of these abuses, the caliph deprived him of the government of Egypt, and, giving him the administration of Mauritania, appointed as his successor Hafs ibn Walid, who, according to some accounts, had previously governed Egypt for sixteen years, and who had left pleasanter recollections behind him. Hafs, however, now only held office for a year.
Nothing of political importance happened in Egypt under the long reign of Hisham, the only events noticed by the Christian historians being those which relate solely to their ecclesiastical history. The 108th year of the Hegira saw the death of Alexander, the forty-third Koptic Patriarch of Alexandria. Since the conquest of Egypt by Omar, for a period of about twenty-four years, the patriarchate had been in the hands of the Jacobites; all the bishops in Egypt belonged to that sect, and they had established Jacobite bishops even in Nubia, which they had converted to their religion. The orthodox Christians elected Kosmas as their patriarch. At that time the heretics had taken possession of all the churches in Egypt, and the patriarch only retained that of Mar-Saba, or the Holy Sabbath. Kosmas, by his solicitations, obtained from Hisham an order to his financial administrator in Egypt, Abd Allah ibn es-Sakari, to see that all the churches were returned to the sect to which they belonged.
After occupying the patriarchal throne for only fifteen months, Kosmas died. In the 109th year of the Hegira (a. d. 727-28) Kosmas was succeeded by the patriarch Theodore. He occupied the seat for eleven years. His patriarchate was a period of peace and quiet for the church of Alexandria, and caused a temporary cessation of the quarrels between the Melchites and the Jacobites. A vacancy of six years followed his death until, in the year 127 of the Hegira (749 a. d.), Ibn Khalil was promoted to the office of patriarch, and held his seat for twenty-three years.
Walid II. succeeded to the caliphate in the year 749. One of his first acts was to take the government of Egypt from Hafs, in spite of the kindness of his rule, the wisdom and moderation of which had gained for him the affection of all the provinces which he governed. He was replaced by Isa ibn Abi Atta, who soon created a universal discontent, as his administrative measures were oppressive.
In the year 750 the Ommayads were supplanted by the Abbasids, who transferred the capital from Damascus to Baghdad. The first Abbasid caliph was Abu’l-Abbas, who claimed descent from Abbas, the uncle of Muhammed. The caliph Merwan II., the last of the Ommayads, in his flight from his enemies came to Egypt and sent troops from Fostât to hold Alexandria. He was now pursued to his death by the Abbasid general Salih ibn Ali, who took possession of Postât for the new dynasty in 750. The change from the Ommayad to the Abbasid caliphs was effected with little difficulty, and Egypt continued to be a province of the caliphate and was ruled by governors who were mostly Arabs or members of the Abbasid family.
Abu’l-Abbas, after being inaugurated, began his rule by recalling all the provincial governors, whom he replaced by his kinsmen and partisans. He entrusted the government of Egypt to his paternal uncle, Salih ibn Ali, who had obtained the province for him. Salih, however, did not rule in person, but was represented by Abu Aun Abd el-Malik ibn Yazid, whom he appointed vice-governor. The duties of patriarch of Alexandria were then performed by Michel, commonly called Khail by the Kopts. This patriarch was of the Jacobite sect and the forty-fifth successor of St. Mark: he held the office about three years. He in turn was succeeded by the patriarch Myna, a native of Semennud (the ancient Sebennytus).
In the year 754 Abu’l-Abbas died at the age of thirty-two, after reigning four years, eight months, and twenty-six days, the Arabian historians being always very precise in recording the duration of the reign of the caliphs. He was the first of the caliphs to appoint a vizier, the Ommayad caliphs employing only secretaries during their administration. The successor of Abu’l-Abbas was his brother Abu Jafar, surnamed El-Man-sur. Three years after his accession he took the government of Egypt from his uncle, and in less than seven years Egypt passed successively through the hands of six different governors. These changes were instigated by the mistrustful disposition of the caliph, who saw in every man a traitor and conspirator, dismissing on the slightest provocation his most devoted adherents, some of whom were even put to death by his orders. His last choice, Yazid ibn Hatim, governed Egypt for eight years, and the caliph bestowed the title of Prince of Egypt (Emir Misri) upon him, which title was also borne by his successors.
These continual changes in the government of Egypt had not furthered the prosperity and well-being of the inhabitants. Each ruler, certain of speedy dismissal, busied himself with his personal affairs to the detriment of the country, anxious only to amass by every possible means sufficient money to compensate him for his inevitable deposition. Moreover, each governor increased the taxation levied by his predecessor. Such was the greed and rapacity of these governors that every industry was continually subjected to increased taxation; the working bricklayer, the vender of vegetables, the camel-driver, the gravedigger, all callings, even that of mendicant, were taxed, and the lower classes were reduced to eating dog’s flesh and human remains. At the moment when Egypt, unable to support such oppression longer, was on the verge of insurrection, the welcome tidings of the death of El-Mansur arrived.
Muhammed el-Mahdi, son of El-Mansur, succeeded his father and was the third caliph of the house of Abbas. He was at Baghdad when his father expired near Mecca, but, despite his absence, was immediately proclaimed caliph. El-Mahdi betrayed in his deeds that same fickleness which had signalised the caliphate of his father, El-Mansur. He appointed a different governor of Egypt nearly every year. These many changes resulted probably from the political views held by the caliph, or perhaps he already perceived the tendency shown by each of his provinces to separate itself from the centre of Islamism. Perhaps also he already foresaw those divisions which destroyed the empire about half a century later. Thus his prudence sought, in allowing but a short period of power to each governor, to prevent their strengthening themselves sufficiently in their provinces to become independent.