lta in
830-832, was ruthlessly trampled out by Turkish troops under Mamun, the
only Abbasid caliph who made a visit to Egypt. Many Copts now
apostatised, and from this time dates the predominance of the Moslem
population and the settling of Arabs in the villages and on the land,
instead of as heretofore only in the two or three large towns.

The coming of the Turkish troops with the caliph Mamun was an ominous
event for the country. Up to 846 all the successive governors had been
Arabs, and many of them were related to the caliphs themselves. With
some unfortunate exceptions, they seem to have been men of simple
habits--the Arabs were never luxurious--and usually of strict Mohammedan
principles. They made money, honestly if possible, during their brief
tenure; but they did not harass the people much by their personal
interference, and left the local officials to manage matters in their
own way, as had always been the custom. They lived at the new capital,
Fustat, which grew up on the site of the conqueror's camp, and very near
the modern Cairo; for Alexandria, the symbol of Roman domination, was
dismantled in 645 after the Emperor Manuel's attempt at reconquest. If
they did not do much active good, they did little harm, and Egypt
pursued her immemorial ways.

The last Arab governor, Anbasa, was a man of fine character, and his
term of office was distinguished by the building of the fort of
Damietta, as a protection against Roman raids, and by a defeat of the
tributary Sudanis near Dongola.

_II.--Turkish Governors_

The Arabs have neither the ferocity nor the luxuriousness, nor, it
should be added, the courage and the genius for administration of the
Turkish race. In the arrival of Turkish troops in 830 we see a symptom
of what was going on all over the eastern caliphate. Turks were taking
the place of Arabs in the army and the provincial governments, just as
the Persians were filling up the civil appointments. The caliph's
Turkish bodyguard was the beginning of the dismemberment of the
caliphate. It became the habit of the caliphs to grant the government of
Egypt, as a sort of fief, to a leading Turkish officer, who usually
appointed a deputy to do his work and to pay him the surplus revenue.
Such a deputy was Ahmad-ibn-Tulun (868-884), the first of the many
Turkish despots of Egypt. Ibn-Tulun was the first ruler to raise Egypt
from a mere tax-paying appendage of the caliphate to a kingdom,
independent save fo