Ually replaced by entirely Arabic texts written by a new scribal class, most of whom were recruited from among the large number of early converts to Islam or the swell of immigrants arriving from the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Arabian Peninsula. So great was the prominence of Arabic as the mode of contact with the authorities that even the religious teaching texts of the Coptic church became bilingual toward the end of the tentli century.
Second, as the scanty sources imply, there was very little pressure on the Egyptian population to convert. However, advancement and full admission to governing status entailed conversion to Islam. Early in tire eight century local Coptic dignitaries were replaced by Arabic-spealdng Muslims as tax collectors and adjudicators, and the scene for accelerated conversion was set. Exact figures are rare, but the greater part of the population seems to have been Muslim at the time of the Fatimid conquest in ah 358/969 ce.
Third, a process of acculturation began with soldiers from the conquering army who setded down in Egypt and immigrants in ever-increasing numbers from Greater Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and even Iran. The long history of the Nile Valley dictated an adaptation to the mores and regulations (particularly agricultural) so delicate that to impose otiiers too harshly would disturb the rich ebb and flow of daily life. Very soon the setders found themselves celebrating national feasts of pharaonic origin, utilizing the millennial norms of planting and harvesting to schedules drat followed Ptolemaic and Coptic formulas and finding themselves accommodating rather than dictating.
Politically, Egypt mirrored the shifts of power within the dar al-hlam without substantial injury. The seizure of the caliphate by the ‘Abbasids in ah 132/750 ce signaled litde to the population except at Fustat when a new government precinct called al-Askar appeared slighdy to the north. When Ahmad ibn Tulun became governor in 254/868, the calm was somewhat broken as he assumed autonomous authority. He reduced the revenues paid to Baghdad and used tills extra income to raise his own army with which he arrogated the role of protector of Syria. These new moneys also permitted an ambitious building program centered on Ibn Tulun’s new ruling quarter of al-Qata’i (“the fiefs,” which were parceled to his most loyal officers) to tire northeast of Fustat-Askar. Ibn Tulun’s crowning works were his palace at die foot of the Muqattam Hills; his Friday mosque, one of the pearls of Islamic arcliitecture, on Jabal Yashltur; and an aqueduct to carry water to al-Qata’i. Mosque.]
Nevertheless, the Tulunids remained loyal to the 'Abbasid caliphate. Egypt was prosperous and generally at peace. However, a new and powerful threat attended from the west where the heterodox Isma’ili Fatimid dynasty had established its own caliphate. Baghdad reacted quickly, sending in 292/905 an army under Muhammad ibn Tughj, who ruled under the tide of al-Ildishid. The ‘Abbasids repelled the early Fatimid attacks and concentrated tiieir efforts on maintaining the prosperity of the counti-y. A large number of Iraqi Arabs and Turks came to Egypt as soldiers and bureaucrats. Eventually, Baghdad was too strapped to send yet anotlier army when the Fatimid forces under Gawhar appeared in 358/969. Egypt was taken and loyalty was sworn to a Shi‘i caliphate for the next two centuries.
The Fatimid dynasty (ah 358-567/969-1171 ce) represents a watershed in Egyptian Islamic history. Because the Fatimids could not destroy the Sunni ‘Abbasid caliphate and were unable to maintain their ascendancy in the Maghrib, they concentrated on Egypt. They gave to the country an independence diat capped the autonomy achieved by the Tulunids. Egypt enjoyed an unparalleled prosperity based on improved agriculture; on control of the trade with China and southwestern Asia; and on discovery of large gold deposits in the Wadi Allaqi in Nubia. The Fatimids regularized trade between Egypt and inner Africa, which offered slaves and ivory, and welcomed European and Byzantine merchants with whom they expanded tlieir commercial and industrial endeavours, particularly in textiles.
The Fatimids had a high sense of tlreir mission to win the allegiance of the entire dar al-Islam and particularly to propagandize of their family descent from the Prophet’s daughter. It would seem that they were imbued witli an almost Byzantine sense of ritual and ceremonial. All of these aspirations were bodied fortli in their splendid new walled capital of Cairo (Ar., al-Qahira, “the Victorious”), laid out as a formally divided rectangle with eight gates to the northeast of the amalgamated Fustat-Askar-Qata’i. Within were two palaces divided by a plaza and al-Azhar Mosque, originally an institution for training Fatimid propagandists. Later the mosque of al-Halcim was built immediately adjacent to the two principal northern gates and dedicated in 400/1010.
Fatimid piety echoed die ancient Egyptian veneration of tire dead and tire importance of the tomb structure. Domed mausolea appeared in the Southern Cemetery honoring ancestors and immediate family. The purported head of the Prophet’s grandson Husayn was interred in a splendid mau-soleum-cum-mosque within the royal quarter. All of these shrines were visited and venerated by Sunni and Shi'i alike.
This glamour and prosperity were threatened. The Seljuk Turks who took over die ‘Abbasid hegemony declared an aim of destroying the heretical Fatimid dynasty. Despite the conquest of Anatolia and the incursion of die Crusaders against the Seljuks, the Fatimids did not take advantage of their reprieve, except to rebuild the walls of Cairo in stone and to enclose the mosque of al-Hakim. They could not govern either their armies or their bureaucracy. Succession was attended by family friction, deceit, and tire mishandling of policy by successive viziers, some of whom were Christians and Jews, who were proof of Fatimid tolerance. Low Nile floodings caused famine. The new Seljuk principates of Syria were pressing upon the Crusader states; both hungered for the riches of Fatimid Egypt and by 564/1169 botlr were marching on it. The vizier Shawar set fire to the older parts of the city, particularly Fustat, and tlien invited the Syrian army to enter Cairo to protect it from the forays of the Crusader army. The commander, Shirkuh, had himself proclaimed vizier, and after his death his nephew, Salah adDin (Saladin) assumed command and deposed the Fatimid caliph in 567/1171.
The peaceful transition of religious allegiance to the 'Ab-basid Sunni caliphate was proof of just how little tlie Fatimid ideology had penetrated tire Egyptian community. Salah adDin introduced strict Sunnism on Egypt inspired by the thrust of what can be termed tlie “Seljuk dispensation.” With the introduction of the madrasah (theological school), he insured an orthodox legal system and a cadre of specifically trained bureaucrats. He imposed the iqta system whereby the productive land of Egypt was tied to the maintenance of the army with a consequent diminution of private property. When his nominal ruler, Nur ad-Din of Damascus, died, Salah ad-Din assumed tlie title of sultan and took charge of the counter-Crusade that eventually restored Jerusalem to the dar al-Islam and secured Greater Syria to the rule of his dynasty, tlie Ayyubids. The final portion of tire dispensation, the khanqah (a convent for tlie training of Sufis to eliminate the possibility of any Shi'i strain talcing root), was firmly established in Egypt through the patronage of the sultan and his family.
In all otlier respects the Ayyubids built on the heritage of the Fatimids. They destroyed none of the mausolea, which through visitation and invocation had become part of Cairene life; indeed tliey went furtlier by turning the idea toward Sunni ends witli the erection of the large domed structure in file Soutliern Cemetery, which housed the remains of Imam Shafi'i (d. 204/820), the founder of the madhhab (legal school) now professed by the majority of Egyptians.
Where taste was concerned, tlie earlier Fatimid tendencies toward revived classical and Maghribi models were replaced by tliose emanating from Greater Syria. This was particularly noticeable in the great Citadel (initiated by Salah adDin) built on the middle peaks of the Muqattam hills witli walls spreading to take in al-Qahira to tlie north and much of Fustat to the south. By tlie end of the twelfth century CE Egypt was orthodox in belief, prosperous, well protected, and connected to tlie markets of the Mediterranean, the Far East, and southeast Asia. In the following century, tliis strong entity eliminated the Crusader states and protected itself from die Mongols.
[Se« also ‘Abbasid Caliphate; Ayyubid-Mamluk Dynasties; Cairo; Fatimid Dynasty; and Fustat.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For the only synoptic surveys of Islamic Egypt, see Stanley Lane-Poole, A Histoiy of Egypt in the Middle Ages (London, 1901,) and Gaston Wiet, L’Egypte arabe (Paris, 1937.) A deeper, more idiosyncratic study of the evolution of Egypt’s history in the lslamic period is available in Jean-Claude Garcin, Espaces, pouvoirs et ideologies de I’Egyple medUvale (London, 1987.)
The classic study of tiic Conquest remains Alfred J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt, edited by P. M. Fraser (Oxford, 1978.) A far more mettlesome argument is conveyed in Vassilies Christides’ article on the period 602-750, “Misr,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, newed., vol. 7, pp. 152-160 (Leiden, i960-).
For the development of the capital tiirough the Fatimid period, see tlie article on Fustat. For more particular aspects of the Fatimid period, see Leila Al-Imad, The Fatimid Vizierate, 969-/772 (Berlin, 1990), and Paula Sanders, The Court Ceremonial of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt (Syracuse, 1994). Important economic data is provided in Claude Cahen, Makhzumiyyat (Leiden, 1977). Wheeler M. Thackston’s fully annotated translation, Nasir-i Khusraw’s “Book of Travels” (Albany, N. Y., 1986), adds depth to the received view of Cairo’s apogee of prosperity in the first half of the eleventh century CE. The architecture of the period is surveyed in K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1940,) and The Muslim Architecture of Egypt, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1952-1959.)
Short though it was, the Ayyubid period was of vast importance in that it set tlie scene for the Mamluks. See the crucial bibliography in Heinz Halm, “Misr,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 7, pp. 16416s (Leiden, i960-), covering tlie period 1171-1250 CE. For the urban growtli of Cairo, see Neil D. Mackenzie, Ayyubid Cairo: A Topographical Study (Cairo, 1992).
George T. Scanlon
World History
