Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/189

160 ten or twelve years, and whose rule, here as elsewhere, had, after the rigours of the conquest were over, been marked by a fair amount of toleration, than persecution recommenced with the return of its former masters. Cyrus, the instrument chosen by Heraclius to carry out in Egypt his scheme for the union of the Church on the basis of the Monothelite compromise, arrived at Alexandria about the year 630, in the double capacity of ecclesiastical and civil ruler of Egypt. The Coptic Patriarch Benjamin at once fled to Upper Egypt and concealed himself in a monastery there, and advised his clergy to follow his example. For ten years Cyrus strove by persecution to force the Copts to abandon the Jacobite creed for that of Chalcedon. Chronic disaffection pervaded the land, and the people courted deliverance from the overbearance of Byzantine rule. The Romans themselves were divided into the Blue and Green parties here as elsewhere, and the military chiefs were at feud with one another. There were, indeed, at the time in Egypt no Bedawi tribes with Arabian sympathies for Muslim conquest; but elements of even greater danger had long been here at work, which made the change of yoke at first sight not unwelcome.

It was at the close of the eighteenth year of the Hijra that ʿAmr, having obtained the hesitating consent of the Caliph, set out from Palestine for Egypt. His army, even with bands of Bedawīn, lured on the way by hope of plunder, did not exceed 4000. Soon after he had left, ʿOmar, who had meanwhile returned to Medina, concerned at the smallness of his force, would have recalled him; but finding that he was already gone too far, sent Az-Zubeir with heavy reinforcements after him, many of them veterans and warriors of renown.

ʿAmr entered Egypt by the Wādi al-ʿArīsh, where he was on the 12th December 639 (10, xii., 18 ). Pushing westwards he reached Al-Faramā (Pelusium), in the siege and capture of which a month was spent. Following up the eastern estuary of the Nile he occupied Bilbeis. Marching along the course of the river, now almost at its lowest,