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631-640] development completely differing from the orthodox Islām. Even to-day Persia is the land of the Shī'a.

By reason of the great conquests in Syria and 'Irāḳ the capital, Medina, was no longer the centre of the new empire. Byzantine Egypt lay close by, and from Egypt a reconquest of Syria, even an attack on Medina itself, might be regarded as by no means impossible. Besides Alexandria the town of Klysma (Ḳulzum, Suez) appears to have been a strong naval port. Probably all Egypt was then an important base for the fleet of the Byzantines and one of their principal dockyards; for the Arabians of the earlier times it decidedly became such, and it appears not improbable that their conquest of Egypt was connected with the recognition that only the possession of a fleet would ensure the lasting retention of the new acquisitions, the Syrian coast towns, for instance. After the fruitless efforts to take Caesarea this recognition was a matter of course. Apart from this Egypt, a land rich in corn, must have been a more desirable land for the central government than the distant 'Irāḳ or Mesopotamia, for we find that soon after the conquest the growing needs of Medina were supplied by regular imports of corn from Egypt. It is therefore without doubt a non-historical conception, when an Arabian source represents Egypt as having been conquered against the wishes of the Caliph. The conquest of Egypt falls in a period during which the occupation of new territories was carried out systematically, instead of by the former more or less casual raids.

How much this undertaking was helped by the conditions in Egypt at the time was probably scarcely imagined in the Muslim camp. After the victories of Heraclius a strong Byzantine reaction had followed the Persian rule, which had lasted about ten years. Heraclius needed money, as we have already seen, and further, he hoped by means of a formula of union to put an end to the perpetual sectarian discord between the Monophysites and their opponents, and thereby to give to the reunited kingdom one sole church. But the parties were already too strongly embittered one against the other, and the religious division had already been connected so closely with the political that the Irenicon remained without effect. The Monophysite Egyptians probably never understood the proposed Monothelete compromise at all, and always thought that it was desired to force the hated Chalcedonian belief on them. It was certainly no apostle of peace who brought the Irenicon to the Egyptians, but a grand-inquisitor of the worst type. Soon after the re-occupation of Egypt Heraclius, in the autumn of 631, sent Cyrus, the former bishop of Phasis in the Caucasus, to Alexandria as Patriarch, and at the same time as head of the entire civil administration. In a struggle extending over ten years this man sought by the severest means to convert the Coptic Church to the Irenicon; the Coptic form of worship was forbidden, and its priests and organisations were cruelly persecuted. As if that were not sufficient the same man, as a support of the financial