ing the city Fostat (Fustat), near the modern Cairo, and called
after the camp (_Fossatum_) occupied by him while besieging Babylon; and
in reducing those coast towns that still offered resistance. The Thebaid
seems to have surrendered with scarcely any opposition.

The ease with which this valuable province was wrenched from the Roman
empire appears to have been due to the treachery of the governor of
Egypt, Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria, and the incompetence of the
generals of the Roman forces. The former, called by the Arabs Mukaukis
(Muqauqis) from his Coptic name Pkauchios, had for ten years before the
arrival of 'Amr maintained a fierce persecution of the Jacobite sect, to
which the bulk of the Copts belonged. During the siege of Babylon he had
been recalled and exiled, but after the death of Heraclius had been
reinstated as patriarch by Heraclonas, and been welcomed back to
Alexandria with general rejoicing in September 641. Since Alexandria
could neither have been stormed nor starved out by the Arabs, his
motives for surrendering it, and with it the whole of Egypt, have been
variously interpreted, some supposing him to have been secretly a
convert to Islam. The notion that the Arab invaders were welcomed and
assisted by the Copts, driven to desperation by the persecution of
Cyrus, appears to be refuted by the fact that the invaders treated both
Copts and Romans with the same ruthlessness; but the dissensions which
prevailed in the Christian communities, leading to riots and even civil
war in Alexandria and elsewhere, probably weakened resistance to the
common enemy. An attempt was made in the year 645 with a force under
Manuel, commander of the Imperial forces, to regain Alexandria for the
Byzantine empire; the city was surprised, and held till the summer of
646, when it was again stormed by 'Amr. In 654 a fleet was equipped by
Constans with a view to an invasion, but it was repulsed, and partly
destroyed by storm. From that time no serious effort was made by the
Eastern Empire to regain possession of the country. And it would appear
that at the time of the attempt by Manuel the Arabs were actually
assisted by the Copts, who at the first had found the Moslem lighter
than the Roman yoke.

Terms of capitulation.

A question often debated by Arabic authors is whether Egypt was taken by
storm or capitulation, but, so far as the transference of the country
was accomplished by the first taking of Alexandria, th