presently restricted to Lower Egypt; Upper Egypt, which was divided into three provinces, being assigned to Abdallāh b. Saʽd, on whom the third caliph conferred the government of Lower Egypt also, ʽAmr being recalled, owing to his unwillingness to extort from his subjects as much money as would satisfy the caliph. In the troubles which overtook the Islamic empire with the accession of Othman, Egypt was greatly involved, and it had to be reconquered from the adherents of Ali for Moawiya (Moʽawiyah) by ʽAmr, who in A.H. 38 was rewarded for his services by being reinstated as governor, with the right to appropriate the surplus revenue instead of sending it as tribute to the metropolis. In the confusion which followed on the death of the Omayyad caliph Yazīd the Egyptian Moslems declared themselves for Abdallāh b. Zobair, but their leader was defeated in a battle near Ain Shams (December 684) by Merwān b. Ḥakam (Merwān I.), who had assumed the Caliphate, and the conqueror’s son Abd al-ʽAzīz was appointed governor. They also declared themselves against the usurper Merwān II. in 745, whose lieutenant al-Ḥautharah had to enter Fostat at the head of an army. In 750 Merwān II. himself came to Egypt as a fugitive from the Abbasids, but found that the bulk of the Moslem population had already joined with his enemies, and was defeated and slain in the neighbourhood of Giza in July of the same year. The Abbasid general, Ṣāliḥ b. Ali, who had won the victory, was then appointed governor.
During the period that elapsed between the Moslem conquest and the end of the Omayyad dynasty the nature of the Arab occupation had changed from what had originally been intended, the establishment of garrisons, to systematic colonization. Conversions of Copts to Islam were at first rare, and the old system of taxation was maintained for the greater part of the first Islamic century. This was at the rate of a dinar per feddan, of which the proceeds were used in the first place for the pay of the troops and their families, with about half the amount in kind for the rations of the army. The process by which the first of these contributions was turned into coin is still obscure; it is clear that the corn when threshed was taken over by certain public officials who deducted the amount due to the state. In general the system is well illustrated by the papyri forming the Schott-Reinhardt collection at Heidelberg (edited by C.H. Becker, 1906), which contain a number of letters on the subject from Qurrah b. Sharīk, governor from A.H. 90 to 96. The old division of the country into districts (nomoi) is maintained, and to the inhabitants of these districts demands are directly addressed by the governor of Egypt, while the head of the community, ordinarily a Copt, but in some cases a Moslem, is responsible for compliance with the demand. An official called “receiver” (qabbāl) is chosen by the inhabitants of each district to take charge of the produce till it is delivered into the public magazines, and receives 5% for his trouble. Some further details are to be found in documents preserved by the archaeologist Maqrīzī, from which it appears that the sum for which each district was responsible was distributed over the unit in such a way that artisans and tradesmen paid at a rate similar to that which was enforced on those employed in agriculture. It is not known at what time the practice of having the amount due settled by the community was altered into that according to which it was settled by the governor, or at what time the practice of deducting from the total certain expenses necessary for the maintenance of the community was abandoned. The researches of Wellhausen and Becker have made it clear that the difference which is marked in later Islam between a poll-tax (jizyah) and a land-tax (kharāj) did not at first exist: the papyri of the 1st century know only of the jizyah, which, however, is not a poll-tax but a land-tax (in the main). The development of the poll-tax imposed on members of tolerated cults seems to be due to various causes, chief of them the acquisition of land by Moslems, who were not at first allowed to possess any, the conversion of Coptic landowners to Islam, and the enforcement (towards the end of the 1st century of Islam) of the poll-tax on monks. The treasury could not afford to lose the land-tax, which it would naturally forfeit by the first two of the above occurrences, and we read of various expedients being tried to prevent this loss. Such were making the Christian community to which the proselyte had belonged pay as much as it had paid when his lands belonged to it, making proselytes pay as before their conversion, or compelling them to abandon their lands on conversion. Eventually the theory spread that all land paid land-tax, whereas members of tolerated sects paid a personal tax also; but during the evolution of this doctrine the relations between conquerors and conquered became more and more strained, and from the time when the control of the finance was separated from the administration of the country (A.D. 715) complaints of extortion became serious; under the predecessor of Qurrah, ʽAbdallāh b. ʽAbd al-Malik, the country suffered from famine, and under this ruler it was unable to recover. Under the finance minister Obaidallah b. Ḥabḥāb (720–734) the first government survey by Moslems was made, followed by a census; but before this time the higher administrative posts had been largely taken out of the hands of Copts and filled with Arabs. The resentment of the Copts finally Coptic revolt. expressed itself in a revolt, which broke out in the year 725, and was suppressed with difficulty. Two years after, in order that the Arab element in Egypt might be strengthened, a colony of North Arabians (Qaisites) was sent for and planted near Bilbeis, reaching the number of 3000 persons; this immigration also restored the balance between the two branches of the Arab race, as the first immigrants had belonged almost exclusively to the South Arabian stock. Meanwhile the employment of the Arabic language had been steadily gaining ground, and in 706 it was made the official language of the bureaux, though the occasional use of Greek for this purpose is attested by documents as late as the year 780. Other revolts of the Copts are recorded for the year 739 and 750, the last year of Omayyad domination. The outbreaks in all cases are attributed to increased taxation.
The Abbasid period was marked at its commencement by the erection of a new capital to the north of Fostat, bearing the name ʽAskar or “camp.” Apparently at this time the practice of farming the taxes began, which naturally led to even greater extortion than before; and a fresh rising of the Copts is recorded for the fourth year of Abbasid rule. Governors, as will be seen from the list, were frequently changed. The three officials of importance whose nomination is mentioned by the historians in addition to that of the governor were the commander of the bodyguard, the minister of finance and the judge. Towards the beginning of the 3rd Islamic century the practice of giving Egypt in fief to a governor was resumed by the caliph Mamūn, who bestowed this privilege on ʽAbdallāh b. Ṭāhir, who in 827 was sent to recover Alexandria, which for some ten years had been held by exiles from Spain. ʽAbdallāh b. Ṭāhir decided to reside at Bagdad, sending a deputy to Egypt to govern for him; and this example was afterwards followed. In 828, when Mamūn’s brother Motaṣim was feudal lord, a violent insurrection broke out in the Ḥauf, occasioned, as usual, by excessive taxation; it was partly quelled in the next year by Motaṣim, who marched against the rebels with an army of 4000 Turks. The rebellion broke out repeatedly in the following years, and in 831 the Copts joined with the Arabs against the government; the state of affairs became so serious that the caliph Mamūn himself visited Egypt, arriving at Fostat in February 832; his general Afshīn fought a decisive battle with the rebels at Bāsharūd in the Ḥauf region, at which the Copts were compelled to surrender; the males were massacred and the women and children sold as slaves.
This event finally crushed the Coptic nation, which never again made head against the Moslems. In the following year the caliph Motaṣim, who surrounded himself with a foreign bodyguard, withdrew the stipends of the Arab soldiers in Egypt; this measure caused some of the Arab tribes who had been long settled in Egypt to revolt, but their resistance was crushed, and the domination of the Arab element in the country from this time gave way to that of foreign mercenaries, who, belonging to one nation or another, held it for most of its subsequent history. Egypt was given in fief to a Turkish general Ashnās
