Islam entered Egypt in 640 AD in the form of an invading Arab army commanded
by 'Amr b. al-'As. The Arab conquest was completed in 642, when the Romans
abandoned Alexandria and 'Amr's army occupied the city. 'Amr chose not to
reside at the old capital. Instead, he established his residence at Fustat,
the "camp-city" built by the Arab army just north of Babylon.
By 700 AD Fustat had become a flourishing urban center; by 800 AD it had
superseded Alexandria in size, becoming one of the most important cities
in the world.
From 642 to 868 AD Egypt was a province of a much wider Arab-Islamic empire the center of which lay first in Syria and later in Iraq. But in 868 the rulers of this empire, the Abbasid family, sent their general Ibn Tulun was to Egypt to put down a series of local revolts. Recruiting an army locally (and relying heavily on Sudanese troops), Ibn Tulun restored order but proceeded to rule the Nile Valley on his own. Within a few years he had established a personal empire based in Egypt but including Cyrenaica, Palestine, and Western Arabia. As a sign of his power and independence, ibn Tulun built a grand palace city further north of Fustat, and of at the heart of this city he constructed an enormous ceremonial mosque, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. The mosque still survives and is one of the masterpieces of Cairo's Islamic heritage. Ibn Tulun ruled sternly but effectively, but his dynasty was overthrown not long after his death in 882 AD. A series of governors thereafter ruled Egypt on behalf of the Abbasids until the advent of a new conquering dynasty a century later, the Fatimids.
The Fatimids initially rose to power in North Africa and then, in 969, AD invaded and seized the Nile Valley. The Fatimids now built a new palace city and named it "the Victorious City"Ual-Qaahira," or Cairo. In the years that followed, the Fatimid Caliphate attained a peak of power and prosperity. With Egypt as its new center and Cairo its new capital, the Fatimids extended their control over Palestine, much of Syria, and the Hijaz. The Fatimid period witnessed an extraordinary flourishing in the arts and sciences. The era also produced such splendid architectural works as the Mosque of al-Azhar (which in 1072 began its long history as the most important center in the Islamic world for the teaching and study of Islamic law), the Mosque of al-Hakim, and the surviving gates and wails of medieval Cairo. But in the eleventh century the Fatimid state entered a long, slow declineone that, among other things, facilitated the success of the First Crusade, which wrested Jerusalem from Fatimid control in 1099 AD and established a series of small European-ruled kingdoms in the coastal regions of Syria, Lebanon, and modern Isreal..
In 1172 AD, a new dynasty overthrew the Fatimids and seized control of Egyptthe Ayyubids. The founder of this dynasty was Salah ad-Din, the famous "Saladin" of the era of the Crusades. Salah ad-Din unified Egypt and Syria under his control and then turned his attention to the Crusading states that had been established seventy-five years earlier in the Levant. In 1186/87, he defeated the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and regained the Holy City for Islam. Salah ad-Din died in 1193, having won great renown throughout the Islamic world for his victories. He was succeeded as Sultaan ("ruler") by his brother, whose line continued on the throne of Egypt for nearly sixty years. The heart of the Ayyubid state was an elite military corps called the Mamluks. The Mamluks were organized into "households," each presided over by an "Amir." These "households" were cavalry battalions, each commanded by its "Amit." The Mamluk system was based on slavery ("Mamluk" means "slave"): young children living in lands beyond Muslim control (especially in Central Asia) were taken by slavers and brought to Egypt, where they were purchased by agents of the Mamluk households. They were converted to Islam, educated, and rigorously trained in the military arts. Upon reaching maturity, the young mennow superb cavalrymenwere freed, promising in return to devote themselves the Sultan's service. They then entered the lowest ranks of their respective households, thus joining Egypt's socio-political elite. As time passed they rose through the ranks, some of them reaching the rank of Amir.
The system was self-perpetuating: each household continued to purchase slaves with which to renew itself. The children of Mamluks could not become Mamluks, but they inherited some of their fathers' wealth and remained among the elite of Egyptian society.
The purpose of the Mamluk system was to create a military corps loyal to the sultan only (that is, to their pay-master) and possessing no local ties that might interfere with that loyalty. In this regard, the system worked well until 1249/50, when the leading Mamluk amirs began to contend for the sultanate themselves. In 1260, a Mongol invasion was defeated by the Mamluks at the Battle of 'Ayn Jaluut in Palestine. The victory not only spared Egypt from the Mongols; it won enormous prestige for the Mamiuks. One of their commanders, Baybars, then seized power, marking the beginning of two-and-a-half centuries of Mamluk rule in Egypt and Syria. Between 1260 and 1292 the Mamluks drove the Crusaders from their last outposts in the Levant and forced them to retreat to island bases on Cyprus, Crete, and Rhodes. The century that followed was generally one of considerable prosperity, as the rule of the Mamluks lasted until 1516 and produced an era of competent (if autocratic) government and extraordinary achievement in the arts, producing some of the finest examples of Cairo's Islamic architecture. But it was also a troubled era, one that witnessed the advent of the Black Death (which appeared in Egypt in the mid-fourteenth century and lingered in the Nile Valley for hundreds of years after) as well as a draining, debilitating warfare of incessant sea-borne raids and piracy that characterized the last two centuries of the Crusader enterprise.
Finally, in 1516-17, the Ottoman Empire invaded Egypt, defeated the Mamluks, and annexed the country. For the next three centuries much of Egypt's wealth flowed out of the Nile Valley and enriched the Ottoman state, while in Egypt, local Ottoman governors struggled with the Mamluks for political power and influence.
