History of Egypt from the 7th Century - Islam conquest of Egypt (2024)

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History of Egypt from the 7th Century - Islam conquest of Egypt? ›

After the fall of Rome, Egypt became part of the Byzantine Empire, until it was conquered by the Muslim Arabs in 641 CE. Throughout the Middle Ages, from its conquest by the Islamic Empire in the year 641 until 1517, Egypt was governed as part of a series of Arab Caliphates.

From the mid-seventh century, Muslim Arab armies from Saudi Arabia began to travel north into Central Asia and west across Africa, invading the countries they passed. The Sasanian Empire, exhausted from many years of war with the Romans, was spectacularly defeated and Iran and Iraq were soon conquered.

In 639, Rashidun troops led by Amr ibn al-As were sent to conquer Egypt. The Rashidun army crossed into Egypt from Palestine and advanced rapidly into the Nile Delta. The Muslim forces eventually defeated a Byzantine army at the 640 Battle of Heliopolis. Alexandria and the Thebaid surrendered shortly after that.

The Arab conquest of Egypt, led by the army of 'Amr ibn al-'As, took place between 639 and 642 AD and was overseen by the Rashidun Caliphate. It ended the seven-century-long Roman period in Egypt that began in 30 BC, and widely speaking Greco-Roman period that had lasted about a millennium.

There was no attempt to force, or even to persuade, the Egyptians to convert to Islam; the Arabs even pledged to preserve the Christian churches.

In the 7th century, a pivotal era in religious history, Islam emerged in the Arabian Peninsula. It was the beginning of the Islamic Conquests. Following the Islamic conquest, the status of Jewish communities in these regions shifted.

There are many reasons why Islam spread so quickly. First Mecca was connected to many global trade routes. Another important reason was their military conquered lots of territory. A third factor was the Muslims fair treatment of conquered peoples.

After the fall of Rome, Egypt became part of the Byzantine Empire, until it was conquered by the Muslim Arabs in 641 CE. Throughout the Middle Ages, from its conquest by the Islamic Empire in the year 641 until 1517, Egypt was governed as part of a series of Arab Caliphates.

Ancient Egypt was the preeminent civilization in the Mediterranean world for almost 30 centuries—from its unification around 3100 B.C. to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. From the great pyramids of the Old Kingdom through the military conquests of the New Kingdom, Egypt's majesty has long entranced ...

During the reign of Umar, the second caliph of the Arabs, Arab armies under the leadership of Amr ibn al-As invaded and conquered Egypt in 639 AD. Egypt was then a province of the Byzantine empire, ruled by a governor residing in Alexandria, the capital city.

What religion was Egypt before Islam? ›

The majority of Christians belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church, which was the dominant religion in Egypt before Islam. There are only a handful of Jews left in Cairo - about two hundred. Most of Egypt's Jewish population has emigrated in the last fifty years to Israel or the United States.

Arabic was spoken in parts of Egypt such as the Eastern Desert and Sinai before Islam. However, Nile Valley Egyptians slowly adopted Arabic as a written language following the Muslim conquest of Egypt in the seventh century. Until then, they had spoken either Koine Greek or Egyptian in its Coptic form.

The Egyptians are not Arabs, and both they and the Arabs are aware of this fact. They are Arabic-speaking, and they are Muslim—indeed religion plays a greater part in their lives than it does in those either of the Syrians.

THE ANCIENT PERIOD The ancient Egyptians worshipped various classes of gods: animal gods like cats and baboons; cosmic gods such as Ra and Hapi or the Nile; human gods and goddesses like Osiris, Horus, and Isis; abstract gods like Ptah, Thot, and Maat; and foreign gods like Baal and Ashtorathe.

Christianity developed out of Second Temple Judaism in the 1st century CE. It is founded on the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and those who follow it are called Christians. Islam developed in the 7th century CE.

Who lived in Egypt before the Arab invasion? Good question. There were three different groups in Egypt: the Byzantine Greco-Romans who controlled Egypt and were a small minority, the Egyptian Coptic Christians who were the majority and all over Egypt, the Nubians who were in the South past Thebes.

Under the Rashidun there were the conquests of Syria (637), Armenia (639), Egypt (639) and North Africa (652). Under the Umayyads the continuing conquest of North Africa (665), the second Arab siege of Constantinople (717-718) and the conquest of Tbilisi (736).

At their height, the territory that was conquered by the Arab Muslims stretched from Iberia (at the Pyrenees) in the west to India (at Sind) in the east; Muslim control spanned Sicily, most of the Middle East and North Africa, and the Caucasus and Central Asia.

During the seventh century, after subduing rebellions in the Arabian peninsula, Arab Muslim armies began to swiftly conquer territory in the neighboring Byzantine and Sasanian empires and beyond. Within roughly two decades, they created a massive Arab Muslim empire spanning three continents.

Between 1354 (when the Ottomans crossed into Europe at Gallipoli) and 1526, the Empire had conquered the territory of present-day Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Hungary. The Empire laid siege to Vienna in 1683.