obair, but their leader was defeated in a
battle near Ain Shams (December 684) by Merwan b. Hakam (Merwan I.), who
had assumed the Caliphate, and the conqueror's son Abd al-'Aziz was
appointed governor. They also declared themselves against the usurper
Merwan II. in 745, whose lieutenant al-Hautharah had to enter Fostat at
the head of an army. In 750 Merwan II. himself came to Egypt as a
fugitive from the Abbasids, but found that the bulk of the Moslem
population had already joined with his enemies, and was defeated and
slain in the neighbourhood of Giza in July of the same year. The Abbasid
general, Salih b. Ali, who had won the victory, was then appointed
governor.

Coptic revolt.

During the period that elapsed between the Moslem conquest and the end
of the Omayyad dynasty the nature of the Arab occupation had changed
from what had originally been intended, the establishment of garrisons,
to systematic colonization. Conversions of Copts to Islam were at first
rare, and the old system of taxation was maintained for the greater part
of the first Islamic century. This was at the rate of a dinar per
_feddan_, of which the proceeds were used in the first place for the pay
of the troops and their families, with about half the amount in kind for
the rations of the army. The process by which the first of these
contributions was turned into coin is still obscure; it is clear that
the corn when threshed was taken over by certain public officials who
deducted the amount due to the state. In general the system is well
illustrated by the papyri forming the Schott-Reinhardt collection at
Heidelberg (edited by C.H. Becker, 1906), which contain a number of
letters on the subject from Qurrah b. Sharik, governor from A.H. 90 to
96. The old division of the country into districts (_nomoi_) is
maintained, and to the inhabitants of these districts demands are
directly addressed by the governor of Egypt, while the head of the
community, ordinarily a Copt, but in some cases a Moslem, is responsible
for compliance with the demand. An official called "receiver" (_qabbal_)
is chosen by the inhabitants of each district to take charge of the
produce till it is delivered into the public magazines, and receives 5%
for his trouble. Some further details are to be found in documents
preserved by the archaeologist Maqrizi, from which it appears that the
sum for which each district was responsible was distributed over the
unit in such a way that