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This chapter discusses the Arab conquest of Egypt; post-conquest Muslim rule and government; Arab settlement in the Egyptian countryside; the administrative structure; and Arab presence fifty years after the conquest. The new Muslim rulers did not have the manpower to replace the Byzantine administration immediately after the conquest of Egypt in 642. However, in the post-conquest period, Muslims were involved in the fiscal administration of the country. While being challenged militarily and morally during this early period, the Arab conquerors were able to establish stable rule in Egypt on their own terms, and using local practice and knowledge in combination with their own strategic and political experiences and insights.

As discussed here, we can situate the Persian-Egyptian conflict within a much more extensive story of Near Eastern-Egyptian opposition. Seen in this context, the Persian-Egyptian conflict was especially significant for drawing far western peoples—Greeks and then Macedonians—into the framework of the ongoing Near Eastern–Egyptian war. Subsequent ancient history is marked by ongoing eastern core–western core conflict, with Mesopotamia and Egypt as the cores. Thus post-Alexander polarities such as Seleucids vs. Ptolemies are really a continuation of East-West conflict, as are the Parthian-Roman wars and later Sasanid Persian wars. Arab conquests briefly unite eastern and western cores, but only for a time, as the creation of Baghdad as the center of the Islamic world reconstituted a distinct eastern core and set the stage for renewed East-West conflict.

This chapter examines the history of ecclesiastical colonialism and the challenges faced by the Egyptian Church during the period from 451 to the rise of Islam. It aims to provide a better understanding of how the social and theological identity of the Egyptian papacy was conditioned by imperialist discourses of power and by the complications of political resistance. It also traces the circuitous history of the papal resistance to the Chalcedonian Church up to the Arab conquest of Egypt in 642, an event that ultimately reshuffled the political landscape for Egyptian Christians and posed new possibilities and new challenges for Coptic papal leadership.

This concluding chapter argues that late Roman Syria was a place where linguistic frontiers did not translate into cultural boundaries. The Arab conquests of the seventh century did not change this; instead, the prestige their new scripture enjoyed added a third literary language, Arabic, to the mix of a region with an already rich history of intercultural exchange. Moreover, religious dynamics continued as they had for centuries—viewed against the background of post-Chalcedonian Christian–Christian interaction, the scope and nature of Christian–Muslim interaction looks very familiar. Ultimately, in trying to place the existence of the Middle East's population of simple Christians not just into this story, but at its center, this book has attempted to capture some of the excitement and interest of this process in a way that does justice to all of the people living there, not just a small subset of them.

This chapter examines the fate of both the theory and reality of pentarchy from the 640s until the 880s, a period that links the Arab conquests of the Near East with the Eighth Ecumenical Council. The pentarchy formalized the existence of a hierarchy of five major sees—Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—which assumed collective responsibility for the united direction of the entire church within the confines of the Byzantine Empire. The chapter considers the replacement of the rule of five by a distinct authority vested in the bishop of Rome by virtue of his Petrine tradition. It looks at two great intellectuals of the ninth century, Pope Nicholas I and Patriarch Photios, who developed quite different theories of ecclesiastical authority. It shows how the conversion of the Bulgars triggered a new conflict between the Christians of East and West that inevitably brought the pentarchy into question. It also discusses East–West divisions over the filioque.

The sixth and seventh centuries constitute an extended period of contested hegemony bridging the more stable Late Roman and Early Islamic eras. The period of Ethiopian hegemony begins with the delegation of the Red Sea frontier by Byzantines to the Aksumites, wherein the Byzantine-backed Aksumsite conquest of Himyarite Yemen is discussed. The period of Persian hegemony spans the Sasanian conquest of Yemen and Egypt, which is located within the wider ‘cold war’ between the Byzantines and Sasanians. The period of Arab hegemony considers the Muslim co-option of post-Himyarite Yemen and conflict with Aksumite Ethiopia, culminating in the Arab conquest of Egypt, in which the Red Sea is shown to have played an important role.

This chapter deals with the degree to which the earliest phase of Islamic history (seventh and early eighth centuries) exhibits continuity with the patterns of urban and rural life in the preceding centuries (i.e. late antiquity). The first section deals with the earliest archaeological evidence for the new Muslim community in the seventh century, and concentrates upon monumental inscriptions and texts found on portable objects such as coins and papyri. The second section presents a brief survey of the archaeology of late antiquity in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. The final section is concerned with the elite residences (qusur) constructed in Greater Syria during the late seventh and the first half of the eighth century. The distribution and morphology of these structures is considered in relation to the architectural patronage of other Arab groups between the fifth and the early seventh centuries.

This chapter presents some final thoughts about the Arab conquest of Egypt. The detailed discussion of Arab administration from the conquest of Egypt in the mid-seventh century into the eighth century demonstrates flexibility, sophistication, and involvement of Arab administrators in the running of the rich province of Egypt. The dossier of letters written to and by two Egyptian provincial administrators some three generations after the Arab takeover of the country that forms the core of the discussion in this book provides a detailed view into a level of the administration and at a period that so far remained quite impenetrable.

Once the liturgical tradition of Jerusalem has been presented, Chapter 2 examines the historical context of Byzantinization, narrated from the perspective of liturgy through the example of pilgrims, monks, bishops, emperors, and caliphs. It is within this context that we approach the interaction between Jerusalem and Constantinople. Christological controversies played a role in defining Christian communities in Jerusalem, but it was contact between the monks from St Sabas Lavra in Palestine and the monks from the Stoudios Monastery in Constantinople that left a lasting mark on Jerusalem’s liturgy. Their liturgical interaction—and not, say, a political ideology of the Byzantine empire to consciously export the liturgy of Constantinople, or the influence of the exiled Jerusalemite patriarchs in Constantinople—provides answers to questions of liturgical Byzantinization.

To date, the literatures produced in the lands subject to Muslim rule following the Arab conquests of the first/seventh century have seldom been read in accordance with the hermeneutic strategies that have emerged from the works of such postcolonial critics as Edward Said and Homi Bhabha. When the Muslim and Christian texts produced within the late ancient and early medieval dār al-Islām are read in this fashion, however, they reveal much about the imperial context within which their authors imagined and wrote. This chapter suggests that monastic space—that imagined and topographical space associated with Christian monks and monastic institutions and traditions—provided Muslim and Christian authors alike a venue in which to fantasize about relations between their respective communities. These texts suggest much about the economies of desire, imagination and power that abided within the diverse and increasingly interconnected Muslim and Christian communities of the post-conquest Muslim empire.

This chapter draws some conclusions from the researches laid out in the previous chapter. It considers the extent of the Indian contribution to the inventory of medicinal substances in the early Islamic period, as well as how evidence of such contributions seems so scarce in comparison. The chapter also discusses the distribution of these drugs and how they were spurred on by ‘strong market forces’ — namely, the new trading routes and economic conditions created by the Arab conquests and their governmental policies. Literature and translations were just one way to transmit medical knowledge from the Classical to the Arab world and from there to the West; others were trade, diplomacy, pilgrimage, and waves of conquests. The chapter thus shows how the Arabs rendered a transformation of the entire medieval world, including the comprehensive dominance of Greek pharmacology along with Persian and Ayurvedic drugs.

This chapter presents Arabic sources that describe Christianity and monasticism in the city of al-Bahnasa during the centuries after the Arab conquest of Egypt. Arabic sources describe Al-Bahnasa as flourishing due to its ancient Egyptian temples, Coptic monasteries, and churches. John of Nikiou mentions the city while writing about the Arab conquest of Egypt. Abu al-Makarim also writes that the churches of this city and the neighborhood are several and specifically mentions the church of St. Ammon (Abamun). He mentions the existence of about 360 churches in the area of al-Bahnasa. Among them are the church of Mary and the church of St. John or Abu Hanna the martyr. Al-Maqrizi (d. AH 845/AD 1441) mentions that the city of al-Bahnasa was built by a Copt named Minawish ibn Minqawish. He also writes about the Monastery of the Holy Virgin Mary, outside Tanbda, a small village away from the main road.

This chapter discusses the rise of legal Coptic. The proliferation of legal and administrative documents in Coptic is not surprising after the Arab-Muslims severed the link between Egypt and the Greek-speaking Byzantine state. From then on, nothing prevented the more visible use of Coptic in society. The chapter also explores the legal acts in Coptic prior to the Arab Conquest. Rather than going over them one by one, it seeks to present this corpus according to several criteria, that is, their type, the transaction that they enact, their writer, and their provenance. The chapter then addresses whether it is possible that the ascendance of legal documentation in Coptic fits more generally within the context of the decline of Greek and more broadly of Hellenism.

This chapter considers the writings of Sophronius of Jerusalem in the context of contemporary disputes over Christology and the tumultuous events of the Arab conquest. In face of imperial ‘heresy’ and military defeat, Sophronius distanced himself from the history of the Roman Empire through emphasis on the liturgy. Liturgy presented an apolitical history, a commemoration of the past that avoided the Eusebian connection of church and state.

Chapter 36 provides a brief chronology of the history of the world from the first human couple to the Arab conquest; this chronology differs in important respects from the apocalyptic history found in chapter 33. The chapter closes with two dates that mark the composition of the chapter, and perhaps of the Bundahišn as a whole.

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's service to the Coptic Orthodox Church. Simaika's interest in the ancient Coptic churches was first aroused by the study of Dr. Alfred Joshua Butler's work on these churches, The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt, published in two volumes in 1884. It was while staying at Butler's house in Oxford in the autumn of 1890 that Simaika met Somers Clarke, the architect responsible for restoring English cathedrals. Simaika also wrote a book in which he provides a brief account of the dawn of Christianity in Egypt. The chapter considers the emergence of Christian monasticism in Egypt and the role played by monks and missionaries in the formation of the Coptic Orthodox Church's character of submission, simplicity, and humility. It also describes the impact of the Arab conquests on the Copts and the rise of lay Coptic notables such as Muʻallim Ghali.