c. 573–664 CE · Arab general · governor of Egypt
'Amr ibn al-'As
In Alexandria: 641–642 CE
Led the Arab conquest of Egypt from 639; Alexandria surrendered by treaty in November 641 and the Byzantine garrison left in September 642. The story that he burned the Library at the caliph's order first appears more than five centuries later.
Their life and work
He was a merchant of Mecca before Islam who had known Egypt, and he took the army into it from Palestine late in 639, against the wish, the Arabic historians say, of a hesitant caliph. Babylon, the fortress at the head of the Delta, fell in 641. The bishop John of Nikiu, writing within a lifetime, describes the surrender of Alexandria and the taxes it brought, and says nothing of books. He founded Fustat as the new capital, beside Babylon, and Alexandria ceased to be the seat of Egypt's government after nearly a thousand years.
Our device: Their emblem is a treaty. No portrait of any of these people survives. The emblems are our devices.
Moments
- 641–642 CE · The Arab conquest, and the later story of the caliph's order Known: attested
- c. 1200 CE · A story first told about 1200: the caliph's order Legend: told story
In the show
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Sources (3)
- John of Nikiu, Chronicle 120
- A. J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion (Oxford, 1902; 2nd ed. P. M. Fraser, 1978) (opens in a new tab)
- Ibn Abd al-Hakam, Conquest of Egypt ed. Torrey