Arab conquest of Egypt and founding of Fustat
- Date
- 641–642 CE
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Egypt (Nile Valley)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
Between 639 and 642 CE the Arab general Amr ibn al-As led a swift campaign that wrested Egypt from the Byzantine Empire.
After victory at the Battle of Heliopolis in 640 and the siege of the fortress of Babylon, the great port city of Alexandria surrendered by treaty, with the city's final handover around 642. The conquest ended nearly a thousand years of Greco-Roman rule in Egypt that had begun with Alexander the Great and Rome, and deprived Byzantium of its richest grain-producing province and its naval and economic dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. Amr established a new garrison settlement, Fustat, beside the Babylon fortress on the Nile; it became the first Arab capital of Egypt and the nucleus of what would later grow into Cairo. The conquest brought Egypt's large Coptic Christian population under Muslim rule, subject to a poll tax (jizya) but largely left to its own worship, and began the long, gradual Arabisation and Islamisation of the Nile valley that made Egypt a central pillar of the Islamic world.
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Empires active in 641–642 CE
- Tang Dynasty618 CE – 907 CE
- Sassanid Empire224 CE – 651 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Rashidun Caliphate632 CE – 661 CE
- Classic Maya Civilization250 CE – 900 CE
- Tibetan Empire618 CE – 842 CE
Related military & conflict events
- Battle of the Yarmuk ends Byzantine rule in SyriaAugust 636 CE
- The An Lushan Rebellion devastates Tang China755–763 CE
- Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem and capture of the True Cross614 CE
- Umayyad conquest of Hispania begins at Guadalete711 CE
- The Lombards invade Italy568 CE
- Arab siege of Constantinople repelled by Leo III717–718 CE
Further reading
The wider story
The Ethiopians: A History
General history of Ethiopia that opens with the Aksumite empire.
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