Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/193

 164 Az-Zubeir urged ʿAmr to enforce the right of conquest, and divide the land among his followers. ʿAmr refused; and the Caliph confirmed the judgment. "Leave it,' was his wise reply, "in the people's hands, to nurse and fructify." ʿAmr himself was refused ground whereon to build a mansion for himself. He had a dwelling-place, the Caliph reminded him, at Medīna, and that should suffice. So the land of Egypt, left in the hands of its ancestral occupants, became a rich granary for Arabia, just as in bygone times it had been the granary of the Roman empire.

A memorable work, set on foot by ʿAmr after his return to Fusṭāṭ, facilitated the transport of corn from Egypt to the Ḥijāz. It was nothing less than the reopening of the ancient communication between the waters of the Nile in Upper Egypt and those of the Red Sea at Suez. The channel left the eastern branch of the river at Bilbeis, then turned to the right, and, striking the salt lakes near Timsāḥ, reached the Red Sea by what is now the lower portion of the Suez Canal. Long disused, the bed was choked with silt; but the obstructions could not have been very formidable, for within a year navigation was restored, and the Caliph, at Yenboʿ (the port of Medīna), witnessed vessels discharge their burdens which had been freighted under the very shadow of the Pyramids. The canal remained navigable for some eighty years, when, choked with sand, it was again abandoned.

Nothing could show how well disposed ʿAmr was towards the native Egyptians better than the fact that, as soon as the Greek dominions had been overthrown, he caused search