nd to occupy the interior of Egypt. "Where shall
we pitch our new camp?" the soldiers asked each other, and the answer
came from all parts, "Round the general's tent." The army, in fact,
did camp on the banks of the Nile, in the vicinity of the modern Cairo,
where Amr had ordered his tent to be left; and round this tent, which
had become the centre of reunion, the soldiers built temporary huts
which were soon changed into solid, permanent habitations. Spacious
houses were built for the leaders, and palaces for the generals, and
this collection of buildings soon became an important military town,
with strongly marked Muhammedan characteristics. It was called Fostat
(tent) in memory of the event, otherwise unimportant, which was the
origin of its creation. Amr determined to make his new town the capital
of Egypt; whilst still preserving the name of Fostat, he added that of
Misr,--a title always borne by the capital of Egypt, and which Memphis
had hitherto preserved in spite of the rivalry of Alexandria.

Fostat was then surrounded by fortifications, and Amr took up his
residence there, forming various establishments and giving himself up
entirely to the organisation of the vast province whose government the
caliph had entrusted to him. The personal tax, which was the only one,
had been determined in a fixed manner by the treaty of submission he
had concluded with the Kopts; and an unimportant ground rent on landed
property was added in favour of the holy towns of Mecca and Medina, as
well as to defray some expenses of local administration.

[Illustration: 329.jpg OLD CAIRO (FOSTAT)]

Egypt was entirely divided into provincial districts, all of which
had their own governor and administrators taken from among the Kopts
themselves. The lands which had belonged to the imperial government of
Constantinople, and those of the Greeks who had abandoned Egypt or been
killed in the war against the Mussulmans, were either declared to be the
property of the new government or given out again as fiefs or rewards
to the chief officers of the army. All these lands were leased to the
Koptic farmers, and the respective rights of the new proprietors
or tenant farmers and of the peasant proprietors were determined by
decisive and invariable rules. Thus the agricultural population enjoyed
under the Mussulmans a security and ease which replaced the tyrannical
annoyances and arbitrary exactions of the Christian agents of the
treasury of Consta