The Chaliphate - Muir - The Search For Mecca

A.ij. 640-1] Er.vrT 159
heathen days. After the fall of Cc-esarea, the able A.H. 19-20.
and ambitious general chafed at a life of inaction in
Palestine. On the Caliph's visit to Syria, he urged a
descent upon Eg}'pt, at once to enfeeble the enem\-'s
power and augment their own. The advice was good
;
for Egypt, once the granary of Rome, now fed Constantinople
with corn. Alexandria, though inhabited largely by
natives, drew its population from every quarter. It was
the second city in the Empire, the seat of commerce, luxur}-,
and letters. Greeks and Armenians, Arabs and Copts,
Christians, Jews, and Syrians, mingled here on common
ground. Ikit the life was essentially Byzantine ;
although
the government was ever and anon interrupted by revolt
and by the uprising of the native Egyptians, both among
themselves, and against their foreign ruler.s. The vast
population was provided, in unexampled profusion, with
theatres, baths, and places of amusement.^ A forest of
ships congregated in its safe and spacious harbour, from
whence communication was maintained with all the
seaports of the realm. Alexandria was thus a European,
rather than an Egyptian, city.
•
, r 11 •\- •
r towards
the pmnacle of civilisation to the dreary wastes of Byzantine
Monasticism, and the depths of poverty and squalor. '"'^•
it was otherwise with the rich valley beyond. Emerging Egypt
from the luxurious city, the traveller dropped at once from disaffected
ICgypt was then, as ever, the servant of nations. The
overflowing produce of well-watered fields served but to
feed the great cities of the empire. And the people of
the soil, ground down by exaction and oppression, were
ever ready to rise against their rulers. Hatred was
embittered here, as elsewhere, by the never-ceasing
endeavour of the Byzantine rulers to convert the inhabitants
to Orthodoxy, while the Copts held tenaciously by
the Monophysite creed.'- No sooner had Egypt been
evacuated by the Persians, who had occupied it for some
'
The male population alone is given at 600,000. There were 70,000
(according to others 40,000) male Jews of an age to pay the poll-tax, and
200,000 Greeks, of whom 30,000 efifected their escape by sea before the
siege; 4000 baths, 400 theatres, and 12,000 vessels of various size.
These numbers are no doubt exaggerated.
-'
.See Palmer's On>ines IJ/urj^tco', vol. i., j). .S2 ;
and TAe Story of
the Chiuxli of Egypt, vol. i., noticed below.