Muslim conquest of Christian Egypt

In December 639 after conquering Syria, the Levant and Israel, Egypt was next for the Muslim Jihad.  The Christianised lands of North Africa, chafed under the sway of the rather Orientalist Christian Byzantine empire.  Heavy taxation, corruption, intrigues, a long list of civil wars, the Byzantine empire, in many ways mimicked its Western counterpart of the 4^th and 5^th centuries.  Egypt was home to some of Christendom’s most important Church leaders including Clement of Alexandria (b 150 AD); Origen the Great (b 184), Anthony the Great (b 251 and the father of monasticism), and Athanasius (b 297) the main proponent and defender of the Nicene creed.  The Christian library in Alexandria was the largest the ancient world ever saw – tens of thousands of volumes – which would go up in smoke and down in ruins in the early 640s thanks to the Muslim Jihad, and the Muslim demand that all non-Koranic books be laid to waste. 

The Muslims invaded Egypt in late 639, slaughtering all before them, capturing slaves and taking towns and cities.  The Byzantine defence was incredibly weak.  By 641 the Jihad reached Alexandria which was well defended and walled.  Heraclius the Byzantine emperor resolved to support and supply the city with men and food.  The Muslim siege lasted 6 months but Heraclius and the relief army never came dying with Heraclius in February 641.  A Roman-Byzantine traitor effected the handover of the city in September 641.  A bloodbath followed the Muslim entry.  Churches were burnt down, women raped, slaves enchained, and mass murder committed.  The Muslims also burnt down the library of Alexandria.  But don’t expect a movie or book about the same – unless Christians are somehow blamed for this event.  The volumes lost, the learning, the pagan-ancient texts committed to fire, the extirpation of manuals and knowledge, the vast quantities of erudition sent to ash – the exactitude of the destruction will never be known but it was great enough to keep, according to Muslim sources, the bath houses of Alexandria lit continuously for Muslim usage for 6 months.  But it is an event that almost no one in the neutered ‘West’ today, even knows about.  This act was repeated by Muslims from Syria to France.  Nary a word from the ‘experts’ except to blame the lack of libraries and book learning and ancient textual knowledge on a ‘dark age’ in Christendom.

Christian ‘Copts’ were so named by the Arab Muslims who called the Egyptians, ‘gypt’, from whence the English translation of Copt is derived.  Coptic chroniclers, supported by Muslim writers, witnessed the endless pillage and destruction of Egypt.  What was once a rich land, rich in agriculture and manufacturing, became under Muslim domination, poor and shattered.  Virgin Nuns were routinely targeted for rape and monks were an especial delight for Muslims to torture and main.  Whoever surrendered was summarily slaughtered by the Muslims.  John of Nikiu 650 AD an eyewitness laments the endless death, carnage and demolition of Christian churches, towns and villages in the Nile delta.  The list of outrage and diabolical annihilation is so long that he gives up providing a complete list and in despair writes ‘it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed.’ 

Egypt never recovered from the Muslim invasions.  It is still largely poor today.  As with all conquered land, the Muslims ‘milked’ the territory of its wealth.  They added nothing in return.  Industry, agriculture, the arts and sciences were all destroyed.  The Jizya or head-tax to be ‘left alone’ was a crushing burden on a land eviscerated by the Muslim Jihad.  Much wealth was siphoned off to Syria by the Muslims.  In order to survive and escape the endless rape and pillaging, millions of Copts said the ‘Shahada’ and converted to Muhammad’s cult.  The prolonged massacring of Christians, the endless taxation and Jizya and the burning and plundering of Christian towns and villages produced the desired effect of forced conversions.

One thousand years of Greek culture and over 600 years of Christian culture came to a crashing end in Egypt with the arrival of the Muslims.  The Byzantines failed to retake Alexandria in 645 and 654.  Worse still the great port of Alexandria provided a fleet and base for Muslim naval operations in the Eastern Mediterranean.  They invaded Cyprus and subjugated it amidst great slaughter and enslavement in the early 650s.  Sicily was soon conquered after Cyprus with local sources lamenting the rape, the murder, the looting of gold and silver and the endless desecration and destruction of churches and any building bearing a cross.  Thousands of Christian Sicilians like their Cypriot co-religionists were marched off into slavery.  This is another untold story in the ‘modern’ world.  The subjugation, slaughter and rapine of Christian lands and islands in the Mediterranean by the Muslim Jihad.  No apologies by Muslims to White Christians needed. No bending of knees