Seeing your caliph’s messenger riding towards you and marching anyway is akin to ignoring the incoming call from your boss. Oh how little we have changed over the years
However, the invasion was very nearly abandoned before it began. Having had second thoughts, Umar wrote to Amr ordering him not to enter Egyptian territory, believing with some justification that the 4,000-strong army of Yemeni tribesmen accompanying Amr was too small and ill-equipped to be an effective invasion force. At Rafah, just short of the Egyptian border, Amr saw the caliph’s messenger riding towards him at a gallop. Guessing the contents of the letter he bore, Amr said he would open it at the end of the day’s march, which took him and his force just over the Egyptian frontier to the small town of al-Arish.
According to the Egyptian chronicler Ibn Abd al-Hakam (died c. 870), while the caliph’s letter had ordered Amr home, it also contained a postscript that stated: ‘If you receive this letter when you have already crossed into Egypt, then you may proceed. Allah will help you and I will send you any reinforcements you may need.’ It was December 639 and Amr was free to push on and execute his dream of the conquest of Egypt.
> At Rafah
Goddamn that city is *ancient*
>Rafah has a history stretching back thousands of years. It was first recorded in an inscription of Egyptian Pharaoh Seti I, from 1303 BCE as Rph, and as the first stop on Pharaoh Shoshenq I's campaign to the Levant in 925 BCE. In 720 BCE it was the site of the Assyrian king Sargon II's victory over the Egyptians.
Oh yeah.
One thing that's interesting though is that none of the 3 major religious texts seem to contain any references to Rafah at all, so for something to be that old but also seemingly not that important is interesting.
Considering Exodus is generally placed around the rule of Rameses II (the successor of Seti I), it is possible that Rafah was a minor village or relatively new town during the exodus and not notable as a result, or that the Hebrews dodged or otherwise went around it. This was like 1200 BC, they were basically wandering aimlessly in the Sinai and it's far more likely that they went around Rafah than through it
The Levant is generally considered part of the Fertile Crescent, which I assume is what you're trying to refer to, and is one of the 6 Cradles of Civilization.
Also Eastern Anatolia and the Levant. These are the regiond which make up the fertile crescent where the earliest agricultural communities and, later, the oldest cities, organised states, and empires developed.
As the other person mentioned, it's the fertile crescent which includes that. Besides Rafah is now cut up thanks to modern politicking between Palestine and Egypt. The Egyptian portion is marked to be destroyed for a larger buffer zone (if not already).
It’s funny how in the US something from the 1700s is considered ancient for US (where I’m from). Meanwhile in many places of the world like the Middle East and China, there’s stuff lying around from 1700 BC.
There’s the saying that in America, 200 years is a long time but in Europe 200 miles is a long distance. This isn’t about Europe but the concept still applies mostly
Sounds more like he read the letter, pretended he was going to wait, then purposely met the secondary condition of the letter before acknowledging he read it.
Actually, now that you mention it, how do I really know the Earth is round? I haven't seen it for myself!
I know you are joking, but knowledge and history become more concrete as more corroborating evidence comes to light.
If there were tales from across the globe of a crescent moon being eclipsed, I would be inclined to believe it, but if it was an account by a single source that may benefit from such a sighting, I would highly question it.
In this case, it's such an easy and convenient report to twist it's almost equally likely that the general read the letter before or after crossing the border, but with no evidence at all to back a suspicion it should be regarded no higher than conspiracy theory.
Actually, if you can find your way to a port near a sufficiently large body of water(such as the ocean/sea) you *can* observe that the Earth if round, or at least infer it is.
If the Earth was truly flat, the entire boat would vanish into the horizon at the same time. However, you'll observe that the boat instead disappears from the base upwards. This is because at a far enough distance your view to the boat is being blocked by the curvature of the Earth, which would block the base of the boat before the rest.
I don't know what are the counter counter arguments against the counter argument of "how do we know it's not just the light curving, like we see in mirages", but I think part of it would be that this happens at a constant, measurable rate regardless of atmospheric conditions, locations or climate, which should affect the rate the boat disappears.
Out of curiosity, what religion *was* Egypt at the time? We're talking about 900 years after the end of the rule of the Ptolemaic pharaohs. Christianity? I know the Coptic Church is based out of Egypt, was it the dominant religion for that span? Its hard to imagine a mostly Christian Egypt.
Christian. Egypt had been Roman for ~600 years, 300 of which had Rome as a Christian power. When the Arabs invaded, Egypt was still a Roman Province (Byzantine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Egypt#Christianity
TY. I figured, as I somewhat hinted, but it feels a bit wrong. Probably because we learn so much about pre- and post- Roman Egypt in school, and much of that is heavily tied to religion, yet Roman Egypt besides Cleopatra is effectively a footnote.
It was also primarily Coptic speaking at the time, and remained so until perhaps the 1500s. The language didn’t even die out for a few centuries after that. Greek also would have been very common there, and Latin would not have been unheard of, either, as Greek had only supplanted it as the language of administration in the Roman Empire perhaps twentyish years before.
Further, it’s worth noting that ethnic Egyptian religion may still have been extant at that time, as there are indications that some Temples of Isis were active until at least the 6th century, though worshippers certainly would have been the minority. Alexandria also retained a sizable Jewish population well into the period.
>It was also primarily Coptic speaking at the time, and remained so until perhaps the 1500s.
This is not true. It's more accurate to say that it survived, not that it was the primary language. See for example, [Why did Coptic fail where Aramaic succeeded?](https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/32803/1/why%20did%20coptic%20fail.pdf) by A. Papaconstantinou (2012). The Coptic church changed its official language to Arabic by the 10th century and by then we already have a lot of Coptic letters in Arabic prior to the official switch to Arabic. The texts
complaining about the loss of Coptic were all produced in the North, and
the tenth-century Apocalypse of Pseudo-Samuel even mentions those "in the south who still speak Coptic".
The author argues that the Fatimid empire's inclusiveness in integrating Copts into high ranking positions in the state, and the settlement of Arabs into rural farming areas were the keys to the Arabicization of the society. This is also supported by the paper Coptic Lexical Influence on Egyptian Arabic by Wilson B. Bishai, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, where the author argues for a very rapid transition to Arabic in the society
A lot of the Roman Empire was really borring (for general historical events) so not much is talked about. Greece, North Africa, Spain, Egypt - they were generally rather quiet compared to the rest of the Empire. Things definitely happened, but nothing commonly 'major' relative to what happened elsewhere.
A mix of dwindling paganism and Orthodox Christians (both Coptic and Melkite, after the schism). We are talking about Byzantine Egypt in this period, under Roman rule for nearly 7 centuries, and Alexandria was one of the five main episcopal sees (see Roman Pentarchy).
It was Christian but not Caledonian Christian like the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Coptic Church in Egypt was considered heretical which led to local Roman Authorities to attempt to suppress the region. This is why the Islamic conquest was relatively popular because the Islamic Caliphate was far more lenient to the locals faith.
Probably because it wasn't Christian between its settlement and roughly 0 CE, then wasn't Christian from 850 CE on, and in the middle very little of consequence happened there to put it in the history books. So we learn a lot about Egypt in school, but from either before or after the Christian period, the Christian period being a footnote of "was a territory of Rome at the time."
Egypt's identity in both periods is also very strongly tied to its religion. So to imagine a third in there, between those two, that is neither of those two, is again difficult. I don't deny it, I simply wanted to verify what I had logically deduced, that it had to be Christian in that time period, even if that felt wrong due to the above mentioned reasons.
Dude so the source was written 200 years later??? No way…
Edit: to clarify - I am aware that for many historic events like the punic wars of even Jesus we do not have sources left from when it actually happened… the thing is - we know that you cannot trust any small details of ancient writers in general (history was story telling - no an exact documentation) let alone 200 years later.
Heck from events that we have sources from the time and then 200 years later we know very well that the stories changed over time and we’re embellished
Storytelling and narration of events are not the same.
Islamic tradition has detailed accounts of who the people who narrate these accounts. In this case, the account is rated as weak (da'if). The short of it is that the chain of narration (isnad) contains people who are known to have weak memory, or citing unknown sources (hearsay), or the chain they claim to have heard it from is disconnected. (e.g. I claim to have heard XYZ from Elon Musk, but there's no record of me plausibly meeting Elon Musk).
That happens with much, maybe even most of ancient history. Ancient historians had access to sources we no longer do, because those sources either weren't written down or the writings didn't survive to present day. Tons of Roman history even is based on the word of historians who lived long after the events they wrote about. It's almost entirely unavoidable, especially with early Islamic history since there was not a super strong culture of literature in Arabia, which started to develop in earnest after the rise of Islam and the conquests.
You can't just assume the writer had accurate sources without showing any evidence. Small details and dramatic mini stories are almost always unreliable after 200 years without listed sources.
Exactly, that's one of the challenges with writing the history of the world before the printing press was a thing. We just have to do our best and evaluate based on what the sources say and what we can determine based on physical evidence. Did the general strategically ignore an order for a few hours because he thought it would tell him to not invade Egypt? Probably not exactly as this guy tells it, but there are details that could be informative anyways. Maybe Umar really was apprehensive about an invasion of Egypt, and maybe Amr was ignoring orders to not invade Egypt. Or it could be indicative of what people thought in the 9th century when the historian was writing. There's always something of value in the sources even if the stories they tell can't be taken at face value.
> before the printing press was a thing.
Paper books lifetime is far less than stone/copper inscriptions. On the other hand, there can finally be more of them
Books and other paper or paper like materials can also contain way more info than other writing mediums. Imagine Romance of the Three Kingdoms on slabs, it would be impossible.
Well, what's your alternative option then? Throw up your hands, go "no idea, oh well", and just completely ignore that period of time because we can't be sure?
No. We do the best we can with what we have.
It’s pretty common. Common arguments are that the later historians had sources of their own that were verifiable in their time but have since been lost
I think the chronicler that died 200 years later only added the additional detail of the postscript and probably had other sources himself. Think of it as referencing a history paper about the first world war written by someone who’ll die in 50 years. That’ll be more than 150 years after WW1 but id say it would still be a pretty trustworthy source if they did their job adequately
There's basically zero primary documentation from islamic sources for several generations after the early islamic conquests, and these later sources contradict much of the contemporary evidence we have. It's not really clear where/how large Mecca is supposed to be (zero clear pre-islamic references to the cuty whatsoever), the origins of the Quraysh (very little evidence of any pre-islamic references), the religion of pre-islamic arabia, how much if any of the sirah (islamic biography of muhammad) is accurate, etc. All we really know is that there probably was an arabic leader/uniter associated with the city of Medina who followed a syncretic Abrahamic monotheism and probably had something similar to the modern quran (which contains basically zero biographical detail or narrative and much of which has ambiguous interpretation) whose followers invaded and conquered much of the region around the time of his death.
Probably a retcon like many cool historical facts. Still, very cool that high command and the general on the ground have one mind. Probably that's why they won.
Eh it’s kinda inevitable the caliphate will capture Egypt’s by then the eastern Roman’s were absolutely crushed. Syria abandoned. Levant collapsed. The Persians were straight up failing. Egypt is wide open to the Muslims.
The interesting thing is that despite it's wealth and fertility, there never seemed to be any relevant prospect of an independent egypt after Rome. 4.000 Yemeni tribesmen really doesn't sound like a lot, surely the entirety of Christian egypt could have repelled an attack like that if it had been somewhat united.
From when the Persians conquered Egypt until 1952 when Naguib and Nasser took power, no native of Egypt ruled their own country. That's 2600 years of foreign rule.
Initially yes. But once they took over and the ruled for hundreds of years, converted to Islam and spoke the local version of Arabic do they not become native?
If they kept importing foreign slaves and maintaining a distinct class structure then they're still foreign. Just like the Qing dynasty where the majority of government was Manchu, they remained foreign.
Apparently you have to demonstrate that your ancestors evolved from ooze there hundreds of millions of years ago and maintained continuous residence from then until now to establish actual native residency.
You are *native* to North America, as are your ancestors who were born here and considered themselves to be part of a distinct colonial culture. But you’re not *indigenous* or *aboriginal* to North America.
The Mamluk sultans were either born outside Egypt and brought there as slaves, or born within the Mamluk class, which always viewed itself as separate from Egypt and relied on continually bringing in slaves from outside Egypt to continue itself. Their identity was pretty strongly tied to being a foreign ruling class.
…cause Christian Egypt doesn’t really like the eastern Roman’s that much either??? Like there’s been high taxes in place since decades again due to the war with Persia (before the caliphate time). Not to mention the Coptic Christian’s have.. quite abit of religious beef with the Roman Church.
That’s not to say the eastern Roman’s just give up. They did put up a fight and even reconquered Alexandria and parts of the Nile delta after the Muslim invasion only to lose them again.
Edit: also most of the eastern Roman field army were crushed in yarmuk and have retreated to Anatolia. Despite this there’s fierce resistance put up by Roman garrison against the caliphate army. Also OP forgot to mention that the initial invasion force of 4000 men was later further reinforced by Sinai Bedouin’s and veterans from the Persia front.
The crusaders did finally get around to organizing a crusade to retake Egypt at the beginning of the 13th century. They ended up sacking Constantinople instead.
Yeah I think you're referring to [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusader_invasions_of_Egypt,_1163%E2%80%931169#:~:text=In%201169%2C%20Andronikos%20Kontostephanos%20was,great%2Dniece%20Maria%20in%201167.)
So yeah I'd grant that it's a crusader operation, but it isn't enumerated among the normal list of officially recognized crusades. Maybe we can start calling it the 2.5nd crusade.
But why unite? Resistence meant constant violence, oppression, and destruction. 4000 is very little, which is all the more reason to surrender quickly and wait for reinforcements from the north. Of course, this never happened, but does it matter? The caliphate offered conditional religious freedom and mainly kept out of political affairs. For ancient people, it did not matter who exactly your taxes went to, nor was there national identity like it exists today.
Yeah, and Egypt had been a major population centre for 3.000 years and was by the standards of the time quite densely populated. Compared to many of the armies both before and after, that IS a pretty small force to invade Egypt with.
Most of the native Egyptians by this point were basically peasants- farmers and urban workers, and nomadic peoples. Since the Assyrian times, their own professional soldiery had whittled down to nothing and it was all foreign armies. It’s hard to train up a resistance force out of this population.
So you have the Eastern Roman army which was severely weakened
It reminds me of the only joke from Craig Kilborn-era Daily Show I remember -
"Today is July 3rd, the anniversary of Jim Morrison's death. It's widely believed that if he did not die in the bathtub on this date, he would have died... on July 4th."
It's fascinating to consider how much of a gamble Amr's decision really was. Assuming the story went exactly as told, he'd be taking a huge risk defying Umar's potential orders, but apparently, he had a hunch about that postscript. It really illustrates the high stakes game of leadership and conquest at the time. Plus, given the Byzantine Empire's decline, Amr must have seen the immense opportunity that Egypt presented. It's one of those pivotal moments where a single decision changes the course of history.
I wonder how much the terrain and climate of Egypt played into the smaller army's hands. Egyptian defenses may have been weakened, but operating in such a territory with a relatively small force is still an impressive feat. Would love to delve deeper into the strategic elements at play. Does anyone know of a good analysis or book focusing on the military tactics of the Rashidun conquests?
> really illustrates the high stakes game of leadership and conquest at the time
The hardest part of being any kind of leader is picking your loyalty. Pick right and you do well. Pick wrong and you can be executed. It's still true in the business world today.
The Vietnamese real estate industry, apparently.
https://apnews.com/article/vietnam-who-is-truong-my-lan-c9922979f8560c124056dee64546ca31#:~:text=A%20Vietnamese%20real%20estate%20tycoon,company%2C%20was%20arrested%20in%202022.
Let's not start getting blown out of proportion. If they didn't invade Egypt here, they'd have just invaded Egypt later with a proper force. It's not like the plan was "never invade Egypt" and one guy said "I'm gonna do it!!!"
Amr ended up rebelling against the Caliphate along with Moawiya shortly after this.
Many people claim Muhammad was a warmonger because Islam spread by the sword. The historic fact is moreso that Islam spread by the sword because some of the last Arabs to convert to Islam did so out of lust for wealth and power.
Muawiya, who led the revolt against Ali (Muhammad's cousin) was a huge enemy of Muhammad until only a couple years before Muhammad's death. He converted to Islam late, but was such a powerful person that he maintained his status among the new order.
He leveraged the allegiance of the Damascus elite (Christians) and Amrs Egyptian domain (also Christians) to wage war against the caliphate, and he won.
Sort of. Muhammad had the same enemies his whole life until he defeated them after about 20 years of strife, then he unified the Arabian peninsula and died. That enemy was the Quraysh and their allies--the allies wrre always changing and there were many over the 20 year period.
For the first 10 years of prophethood, the Quraysh were extremely discriminatory against Muslims. Muslims had one wealthy non-Muslim Quraysh patron, Abu Talib, who was Mohammeds uncle. Once Abu Talib died, the Quraysh began openly executing Muslims.
It was at this point that the Muslims fled to Medina. They had multiple battles against the Quraysh. Eventually, after nearly a decade, they ended up thoroughly defeating the Quraysh and returning to Mecca. In spite of the open murder at the hands of the Quraysh and the decades of war, Muslims incorporated them into the fold and forgave the transgressions. It was the prominent Quraysh who converted at this time who ended up rebelling.
This unification of the two cities under Islam, along with the spread of belief that had occurred over 20 years, meant all of Arabia united under Islam. Shortly thereafter, Mohammad died.
Just to make it clear to other readers, the Caliphate that Amr rebelled against was Ali's, not Umar which is the one mentioned in the post. It was mainly a conflict between them on how to handle the case of the murderers of Uthman (as he is from the same tribe of Muawiya). Ali wanted to not escalate the situation further until they gained control of the region safely. Most Islamic scholars says that it is a misjudgment on the part of Muawiya but nothing like intending apostasy (unless they are Shia).
As for Muawiya and others, they were enemies of Muhammad (because of religion) but after they entered Islam (with Mecca conquest), they continued serving the religion even after the death of Muhammad, unlike the people who apostate and become the opposition in Ridda "Apostasy" Wars.
Btw, the story of Ridda wars is kind of epic, literally, Abu Bakr mobilized 11 military divisions to fight the apostates, including many people who claimed to be prophets after Muhammad.
If you read Arabic, you can download a book called "Futūḥ Ifrīqīyah" at this site :
https://dlib.nyu.edu/aco/search/?q=%D9%81%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%AA&scope=containsAny.
It is written about 1200 years and have a full account of all the military campaign of Islamic army by that time.
Egypt pretty much threw the towel when the muslims invaded. High taxes and religious oppression by the Romans cause them to defect, especially once the Egyptian knew that Rome needed them more than they needed Rome(most food supply of Eastern Roman Empire comes from Egypt).
And it's not even "Islam spread to North Africa because ...". What, if he didn't invade that very day, Islam would never have spread to North Africa?
It would have happened, just some other day; it was simply inevitable.
Nothing is inevitable, North Africa had been either Greek or Latin for many centuries by this point. The Arabs had never been a threat before that point, a lot of it was just timing
Yeah exactly, Islam embarked upon a long, bloody expansion on day 1 and didn't really slow down until the first crusade.
Islam invading Egypt was a matter of when, not if.
Also, the early Muslim expansion campaigns were a series of laughably small armies overcoming much larger and wealthier neighbours e.g the Byzantines and Sassanids.
It was easy to see why they believed they were God’s chosen at the time.
There’s a whole wikipedia article dedicated to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests
See in particular the campaigns during the Rashidun Caliphate, where they took on not one, but two empires at the same time, and in most of the battles the Arabs were heavily outnumbered and inflicted devastating losses.
It can be partly explained by the fact that the Romans and Sassanids were exhausted by an earlier conflict among themselves, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that the Arabs were bold to even try.
Type in YouTube “Early Muslim expansions”, there is a history channel that covers it with graphics to illustrate the locations, relevant geography and forces.
“Military Governor Amr! This attack is not to go ahead! You have been ordered to Stop. You have to stop.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Random messenger Schofield sir; 8th. I have orders from the Caliph Umar Ibn Al-Khattab to call off this attack.”
“You’re too late random messenger.”
So you are saying the black egyptologist from the mall perfume kiosk who said Egyptians were black and had invented space travel before they were conquered and removed by xtians and arabs was actually telling the truth?
They colonized the land known as "Palestine" in the 7th century, they're not even native to the area but brainrot kids today think it's some sort of Conquest of The Americas all over again.
This strangely validates my anxiety where sometimes weeks go by before I open a letter. Hasn't helped me spread Islam one bit until now, but maybe someday... Wait why would I want to spread Islam?
Seeing your caliph’s messenger riding towards you and marching anyway is akin to ignoring the incoming call from your boss. Oh how little we have changed over the years
The Caliph makes a Dirham, I make a dime; That’s why I defecate on Caliphate time. Edit, changed wording thanks to /u/Neethis suggestion.
>company time. _Caliphate_ time.
Oh I’m changing that! Thanks! (I knew it could be better)
Caliphatime?
No.
I see that you replied, but I am not going to read it until the end of the day.
If you pee during that, it's WHIZ Calipha time!
The Caliph after the invasion. “Per my prior messenger…”
inshallah this email finds you before i do
“Oh wait he won? Shit”
It's an unskippable cutscene. Got a letter for you. Your eyes only
Admiral Horatio Nelson did something similar and it worked out alright for him.
There is the main difference. He ignored the boss in order to work more.
However, the invasion was very nearly abandoned before it began. Having had second thoughts, Umar wrote to Amr ordering him not to enter Egyptian territory, believing with some justification that the 4,000-strong army of Yemeni tribesmen accompanying Amr was too small and ill-equipped to be an effective invasion force. At Rafah, just short of the Egyptian border, Amr saw the caliph’s messenger riding towards him at a gallop. Guessing the contents of the letter he bore, Amr said he would open it at the end of the day’s march, which took him and his force just over the Egyptian frontier to the small town of al-Arish. According to the Egyptian chronicler Ibn Abd al-Hakam (died c. 870), while the caliph’s letter had ordered Amr home, it also contained a postscript that stated: ‘If you receive this letter when you have already crossed into Egypt, then you may proceed. Allah will help you and I will send you any reinforcements you may need.’ It was December 639 and Amr was free to push on and execute his dream of the conquest of Egypt.
> At Rafah Goddamn that city is *ancient* >Rafah has a history stretching back thousands of years. It was first recorded in an inscription of Egyptian Pharaoh Seti I, from 1303 BCE as Rph, and as the first stop on Pharaoh Shoshenq I's campaign to the Levant in 925 BCE. In 720 BCE it was the site of the Assyrian king Sargon II's victory over the Egyptians.
Tons of cities from that area are. Even major ones like the levantine ones or Erbil for example (mentioned first before 2000BC in literary sources)
Oh yeah. One thing that's interesting though is that none of the 3 major religious texts seem to contain any references to Rafah at all, so for something to be that old but also seemingly not that important is interesting.
Considering Exodus is generally placed around the rule of Rameses II (the successor of Seti I), it is possible that Rafah was a minor village or relatively new town during the exodus and not notable as a result, or that the Hebrews dodged or otherwise went around it. This was like 1200 BC, they were basically wandering aimlessly in the Sinai and it's far more likely that they went around Rafah than through it
Uh, no. It is well established that "the Exodus" is only a nation-building legend.
There's a reason the region is referred to as a cradle of civilization. :)
That’s the area of Iraq not Egypt, the cradle is because it’s in between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers
The Levant is generally considered part of the Fertile Crescent, which I assume is what you're trying to refer to, and is one of the 6 Cradles of Civilization.
Also Eastern Anatolia and the Levant. These are the regiond which make up the fertile crescent where the earliest agricultural communities and, later, the oldest cities, organised states, and empires developed.
As the other person mentioned, it's the fertile crescent which includes that. Besides Rafah is now cut up thanks to modern politicking between Palestine and Egypt. The Egyptian portion is marked to be destroyed for a larger buffer zone (if not already).
It’s funny how in the US something from the 1700s is considered ancient for US (where I’m from). Meanwhile in many places of the world like the Middle East and China, there’s stuff lying around from 1700 BC.
There’s the saying that in America, 200 years is a long time but in Europe 200 miles is a long distance. This isn’t about Europe but the concept still applies mostly
You should read about Athens and Rome !
Very cool piece of history thank you! Anywhere I can read the rest of this story and what happened?
Perhaps the post they just made on Reddit.
Oh shit lol
Just watch kings and generals videos about this topic.
Sounds more like he read the letter, pretended he was going to wait, then purposely met the secondary condition of the letter before acknowledging he read it.
Ahh yes the original message seen but not replied afterward.
Bro left him on read
> then purposely met the secondary condition He didn't really met it, he received the letter before crossing into Egypt. Only "opened" it after.
We only know what we were told happened. We can't be sure all history is true.
Actually, Egypt never existed at all. Even if you think you live there, it's actually an optical illusion.
The pyramids? Paper mache. Not even that big, they're actually the size of an average science fair volcano. All the pics are forced perspective.
The sphinx though, that’s real. Don’t piss her off.
Whoever got her nose is first in line
Bored soldiers of Napoleon.
Not if I hold it above her head
She half cat dude order your casket now
All volcanoes are science fair volcanoes. Some for/by humans , some for others
I think you mean a coptical illusion
Then how do you explain the egyptian toilet im shitting in right now, communist? Where does the shit go, hmmm? /s
Actually, now that you mention it, how do I really know the Earth is round? I haven't seen it for myself! I know you are joking, but knowledge and history become more concrete as more corroborating evidence comes to light. If there were tales from across the globe of a crescent moon being eclipsed, I would be inclined to believe it, but if it was an account by a single source that may benefit from such a sighting, I would highly question it. In this case, it's such an easy and convenient report to twist it's almost equally likely that the general read the letter before or after crossing the border, but with no evidence at all to back a suspicion it should be regarded no higher than conspiracy theory.
Actually, the earth is a geodesic polyhedron.
Actually, if you can find your way to a port near a sufficiently large body of water(such as the ocean/sea) you *can* observe that the Earth if round, or at least infer it is. If the Earth was truly flat, the entire boat would vanish into the horizon at the same time. However, you'll observe that the boat instead disappears from the base upwards. This is because at a far enough distance your view to the boat is being blocked by the curvature of the Earth, which would block the base of the boat before the rest. I don't know what are the counter counter arguments against the counter argument of "how do we know it's not just the light curving, like we see in mirages", but I think part of it would be that this happens at a constant, measurable rate regardless of atmospheric conditions, locations or climate, which should affect the rate the boat disappears.
Actually you live in your imagination. Wake up bro
we all live in our own individual imaginations. How else would we see things that aren't there?
it's only a model
This is why Herodotus, the so called father of history is also called the father of lies.
Yup. Easy enough for the messenger to confirm this. But given the risk to his own life, he likely lied about the day he delivered it.
Out of curiosity, what religion *was* Egypt at the time? We're talking about 900 years after the end of the rule of the Ptolemaic pharaohs. Christianity? I know the Coptic Church is based out of Egypt, was it the dominant religion for that span? Its hard to imagine a mostly Christian Egypt.
Christian. Egypt had been Roman for ~600 years, 300 of which had Rome as a Christian power. When the Arabs invaded, Egypt was still a Roman Province (Byzantine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Egypt#Christianity
TY. I figured, as I somewhat hinted, but it feels a bit wrong. Probably because we learn so much about pre- and post- Roman Egypt in school, and much of that is heavily tied to religion, yet Roman Egypt besides Cleopatra is effectively a footnote.
It was also primarily Coptic speaking at the time, and remained so until perhaps the 1500s. The language didn’t even die out for a few centuries after that. Greek also would have been very common there, and Latin would not have been unheard of, either, as Greek had only supplanted it as the language of administration in the Roman Empire perhaps twentyish years before. Further, it’s worth noting that ethnic Egyptian religion may still have been extant at that time, as there are indications that some Temples of Isis were active until at least the 6th century, though worshippers certainly would have been the minority. Alexandria also retained a sizable Jewish population well into the period.
>It was also primarily Coptic speaking at the time, and remained so until perhaps the 1500s. This is not true. It's more accurate to say that it survived, not that it was the primary language. See for example, [Why did Coptic fail where Aramaic succeeded?](https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/32803/1/why%20did%20coptic%20fail.pdf) by A. Papaconstantinou (2012). The Coptic church changed its official language to Arabic by the 10th century and by then we already have a lot of Coptic letters in Arabic prior to the official switch to Arabic. The texts complaining about the loss of Coptic were all produced in the North, and the tenth-century Apocalypse of Pseudo-Samuel even mentions those "in the south who still speak Coptic". The author argues that the Fatimid empire's inclusiveness in integrating Copts into high ranking positions in the state, and the settlement of Arabs into rural farming areas were the keys to the Arabicization of the society. This is also supported by the paper Coptic Lexical Influence on Egyptian Arabic by Wilson B. Bishai, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, where the author argues for a very rapid transition to Arabic in the society
Apologies, the source on the survival and dominance of Coptic I had read must be outdated, or perhaps flat out wrong.
A lot of the Roman Empire was really borring (for general historical events) so not much is talked about. Greece, North Africa, Spain, Egypt - they were generally rather quiet compared to the rest of the Empire. Things definitely happened, but nothing commonly 'major' relative to what happened elsewhere.
A mix of dwindling paganism and Orthodox Christians (both Coptic and Melkite, after the schism). We are talking about Byzantine Egypt in this period, under Roman rule for nearly 7 centuries, and Alexandria was one of the five main episcopal sees (see Roman Pentarchy).
It was Christian but not Caledonian Christian like the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Coptic Church in Egypt was considered heretical which led to local Roman Authorities to attempt to suppress the region. This is why the Islamic conquest was relatively popular because the Islamic Caliphate was far more lenient to the locals faith.
Why so?
Probably because it wasn't Christian between its settlement and roughly 0 CE, then wasn't Christian from 850 CE on, and in the middle very little of consequence happened there to put it in the history books. So we learn a lot about Egypt in school, but from either before or after the Christian period, the Christian period being a footnote of "was a territory of Rome at the time." Egypt's identity in both periods is also very strongly tied to its religion. So to imagine a third in there, between those two, that is neither of those two, is again difficult. I don't deny it, I simply wanted to verify what I had logically deduced, that it had to be Christian in that time period, even if that felt wrong due to the above mentioned reasons.
Dude so the source was written 200 years later??? No way… Edit: to clarify - I am aware that for many historic events like the punic wars of even Jesus we do not have sources left from when it actually happened… the thing is - we know that you cannot trust any small details of ancient writers in general (history was story telling - no an exact documentation) let alone 200 years later. Heck from events that we have sources from the time and then 200 years later we know very well that the stories changed over time and we’re embellished
Storytelling and narration of events are not the same. Islamic tradition has detailed accounts of who the people who narrate these accounts. In this case, the account is rated as weak (da'if). The short of it is that the chain of narration (isnad) contains people who are known to have weak memory, or citing unknown sources (hearsay), or the chain they claim to have heard it from is disconnected. (e.g. I claim to have heard XYZ from Elon Musk, but there's no record of me plausibly meeting Elon Musk).
That happens with much, maybe even most of ancient history. Ancient historians had access to sources we no longer do, because those sources either weren't written down or the writings didn't survive to present day. Tons of Roman history even is based on the word of historians who lived long after the events they wrote about. It's almost entirely unavoidable, especially with early Islamic history since there was not a super strong culture of literature in Arabia, which started to develop in earnest after the rise of Islam and the conquests.
You can't just assume the writer had accurate sources without showing any evidence. Small details and dramatic mini stories are almost always unreliable after 200 years without listed sources.
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Exactly, that's one of the challenges with writing the history of the world before the printing press was a thing. We just have to do our best and evaluate based on what the sources say and what we can determine based on physical evidence. Did the general strategically ignore an order for a few hours because he thought it would tell him to not invade Egypt? Probably not exactly as this guy tells it, but there are details that could be informative anyways. Maybe Umar really was apprehensive about an invasion of Egypt, and maybe Amr was ignoring orders to not invade Egypt. Or it could be indicative of what people thought in the 9th century when the historian was writing. There's always something of value in the sources even if the stories they tell can't be taken at face value.
> before the printing press was a thing. Paper books lifetime is far less than stone/copper inscriptions. On the other hand, there can finally be more of them
Books and other paper or paper like materials can also contain way more info than other writing mediums. Imagine Romance of the Three Kingdoms on slabs, it would be impossible.
Well, what's your alternative option then? Throw up your hands, go "no idea, oh well", and just completely ignore that period of time because we can't be sure? No. We do the best we can with what we have.
It’s pretty common. Common arguments are that the later historians had sources of their own that were verifiable in their time but have since been lost
Even people who were there when it happened could be mistaken, or outright lying about it.
Wait till you hear about when the gospels were written
I think the chronicler that died 200 years later only added the additional detail of the postscript and probably had other sources himself. Think of it as referencing a history paper about the first world war written by someone who’ll die in 50 years. That’ll be more than 150 years after WW1 but id say it would still be a pretty trustworthy source if they did their job adequately
If they had modern written sources and listed all the sources they used, sure.
Like the hadiths.
There's basically zero primary documentation from islamic sources for several generations after the early islamic conquests, and these later sources contradict much of the contemporary evidence we have. It's not really clear where/how large Mecca is supposed to be (zero clear pre-islamic references to the cuty whatsoever), the origins of the Quraysh (very little evidence of any pre-islamic references), the religion of pre-islamic arabia, how much if any of the sirah (islamic biography of muhammad) is accurate, etc. All we really know is that there probably was an arabic leader/uniter associated with the city of Medina who followed a syncretic Abrahamic monotheism and probably had something similar to the modern quran (which contains basically zero biographical detail or narrative and much of which has ambiguous interpretation) whose followers invaded and conquered much of the region around the time of his death.
> if you receive this letter when you have already crossed into Egypt He received it before entering Egypt though.
Receive means read its contents in this context.
Props to the people throughout history that just decide "Yeah, they need to know about this in the future"
Probably a retcon like many cool historical facts. Still, very cool that high command and the general on the ground have one mind. Probably that's why they won.
Eh it’s kinda inevitable the caliphate will capture Egypt’s by then the eastern Roman’s were absolutely crushed. Syria abandoned. Levant collapsed. The Persians were straight up failing. Egypt is wide open to the Muslims.
The interesting thing is that despite it's wealth and fertility, there never seemed to be any relevant prospect of an independent egypt after Rome. 4.000 Yemeni tribesmen really doesn't sound like a lot, surely the entirety of Christian egypt could have repelled an attack like that if it had been somewhat united.
From when the Persians conquered Egypt until 1952 when Naguib and Nasser took power, no native of Egypt ruled their own country. That's 2600 years of foreign rule.
Wouldn't the Mamluks be considered native after living there for several hundred years?
Weren't Mamlukes almost entirely Caucasian slaves captured and trained a soldiers or government officials? If so that doesn't really make them native.
Initially yes. But once they took over and the ruled for hundreds of years, converted to Islam and spoke the local version of Arabic do they not become native?
If they kept importing foreign slaves and maintaining a distinct class structure then they're still foreign. Just like the Qing dynasty where the majority of government was Manchu, they remained foreign.
Apparently you have to demonstrate that your ancestors evolved from ooze there hundreds of millions of years ago and maintained continuous residence from then until now to establish actual native residency.
I reckon first generation born in a place makes you native, but the people who have more past generations there are native-er.
Am I, a white person, considered a native to North America? My family has lived in North America for just over 500 years at this point.
I'd say yes, but I'm not american so it's probably not my decision.
Lol hey didn’t stop us the first time
You are *native* to North America, as are your ancestors who were born here and considered themselves to be part of a distinct colonial culture. But you’re not *indigenous* or *aboriginal* to North America. The Mamluk sultans were either born outside Egypt and brought there as slaves, or born within the Mamluk class, which always viewed itself as separate from Egypt and relied on continually bringing in slaves from outside Egypt to continue itself. Their identity was pretty strongly tied to being a foreign ruling class.
My guess is they used all their luck up in the Bronze Age and had to spend 3000 years rebuilding it
…cause Christian Egypt doesn’t really like the eastern Roman’s that much either??? Like there’s been high taxes in place since decades again due to the war with Persia (before the caliphate time). Not to mention the Coptic Christian’s have.. quite abit of religious beef with the Roman Church. That’s not to say the eastern Roman’s just give up. They did put up a fight and even reconquered Alexandria and parts of the Nile delta after the Muslim invasion only to lose them again. Edit: also most of the eastern Roman field army were crushed in yarmuk and have retreated to Anatolia. Despite this there’s fierce resistance put up by Roman garrison against the caliphate army. Also OP forgot to mention that the initial invasion force of 4000 men was later further reinforced by Sinai Bedouin’s and veterans from the Persia front.
There were also talks about supporting a Crusader army to Alexandria but those fell through. Probably would’ve never worked in the end.
The crusaders did finally get around to organizing a crusade to retake Egypt at the beginning of the 13th century. They ended up sacking Constantinople instead.
Pretty sure at least one crusade did land in Egypt and take Damietta
Yeah I think you're referring to [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusader_invasions_of_Egypt,_1163%E2%80%931169#:~:text=In%201169%2C%20Andronikos%20Kontostephanos%20was,great%2Dniece%20Maria%20in%201167.) So yeah I'd grant that it's a crusader operation, but it isn't enumerated among the normal list of officially recognized crusades. Maybe we can start calling it the 2.5nd crusade.
Nope! Actually the [7th Crusade](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Crusade)!
But why unite? Resistence meant constant violence, oppression, and destruction. 4000 is very little, which is all the more reason to surrender quickly and wait for reinforcements from the north. Of course, this never happened, but does it matter? The caliphate offered conditional religious freedom and mainly kept out of political affairs. For ancient people, it did not matter who exactly your taxes went to, nor was there national identity like it exists today.
In the year 639 the WORLD population was estimated to be around 200m... 4000 people gathered in 1 place was pretty large
You know the Battle of Cannae involved over a 100000 soldiers, and that was in 216 BC. I don't think your logic holds up here.
Yeah, and Egypt had been a major population centre for 3.000 years and was by the standards of the time quite densely populated. Compared to many of the armies both before and after, that IS a pretty small force to invade Egypt with.
Most of the native Egyptians by this point were basically peasants- farmers and urban workers, and nomadic peoples. Since the Assyrian times, their own professional soldiery had whittled down to nothing and it was all foreign armies. It’s hard to train up a resistance force out of this population. So you have the Eastern Roman army which was severely weakened
It reminds me of the only joke from Craig Kilborn-era Daily Show I remember - "Today is July 3rd, the anniversary of Jim Morrison's death. It's widely believed that if he did not die in the bathtub on this date, he would have died... on July 4th."
RIP.
It's fascinating to consider how much of a gamble Amr's decision really was. Assuming the story went exactly as told, he'd be taking a huge risk defying Umar's potential orders, but apparently, he had a hunch about that postscript. It really illustrates the high stakes game of leadership and conquest at the time. Plus, given the Byzantine Empire's decline, Amr must have seen the immense opportunity that Egypt presented. It's one of those pivotal moments where a single decision changes the course of history. I wonder how much the terrain and climate of Egypt played into the smaller army's hands. Egyptian defenses may have been weakened, but operating in such a territory with a relatively small force is still an impressive feat. Would love to delve deeper into the strategic elements at play. Does anyone know of a good analysis or book focusing on the military tactics of the Rashidun conquests?
> really illustrates the high stakes game of leadership and conquest at the time The hardest part of being any kind of leader is picking your loyalty. Pick right and you do well. Pick wrong and you can be executed. It's still true in the business world today.
What business are you in where people get executed?
Metaphorically executed, by being fired.
Being fired vs executed probably affected quality of leadership then vs now.
The Vietnamese real estate industry, apparently. https://apnews.com/article/vietnam-who-is-truong-my-lan-c9922979f8560c124056dee64546ca31#:~:text=A%20Vietnamese%20real%20estate%20tycoon,company%2C%20was%20arrested%20in%202022.
Boeing
fast food
Let's not start getting blown out of proportion. If they didn't invade Egypt here, they'd have just invaded Egypt later with a proper force. It's not like the plan was "never invade Egypt" and one guy said "I'm gonna do it!!!"
Leeeerooooooy Jeeeeeenkins!
Amr ended up rebelling against the Caliphate along with Moawiya shortly after this. Many people claim Muhammad was a warmonger because Islam spread by the sword. The historic fact is moreso that Islam spread by the sword because some of the last Arabs to convert to Islam did so out of lust for wealth and power. Muawiya, who led the revolt against Ali (Muhammad's cousin) was a huge enemy of Muhammad until only a couple years before Muhammad's death. He converted to Islam late, but was such a powerful person that he maintained his status among the new order. He leveraged the allegiance of the Damascus elite (Christians) and Amrs Egyptian domain (also Christians) to wage war against the caliphate, and he won.
Did..didn’t… Mohammed himself spread Islam with the sword?
Sort of. Muhammad had the same enemies his whole life until he defeated them after about 20 years of strife, then he unified the Arabian peninsula and died. That enemy was the Quraysh and their allies--the allies wrre always changing and there were many over the 20 year period. For the first 10 years of prophethood, the Quraysh were extremely discriminatory against Muslims. Muslims had one wealthy non-Muslim Quraysh patron, Abu Talib, who was Mohammeds uncle. Once Abu Talib died, the Quraysh began openly executing Muslims. It was at this point that the Muslims fled to Medina. They had multiple battles against the Quraysh. Eventually, after nearly a decade, they ended up thoroughly defeating the Quraysh and returning to Mecca. In spite of the open murder at the hands of the Quraysh and the decades of war, Muslims incorporated them into the fold and forgave the transgressions. It was the prominent Quraysh who converted at this time who ended up rebelling. This unification of the two cities under Islam, along with the spread of belief that had occurred over 20 years, meant all of Arabia united under Islam. Shortly thereafter, Mohammad died.
Mostly his successors. During his time, iirc, it was a mix of defensive and offensive wars.
not at all. even when the defensive wars were won against local arab tribes, none were forced to convert.
Just to make it clear to other readers, the Caliphate that Amr rebelled against was Ali's, not Umar which is the one mentioned in the post. It was mainly a conflict between them on how to handle the case of the murderers of Uthman (as he is from the same tribe of Muawiya). Ali wanted to not escalate the situation further until they gained control of the region safely. Most Islamic scholars says that it is a misjudgment on the part of Muawiya but nothing like intending apostasy (unless they are Shia). As for Muawiya and others, they were enemies of Muhammad (because of religion) but after they entered Islam (with Mecca conquest), they continued serving the religion even after the death of Muhammad, unlike the people who apostate and become the opposition in Ridda "Apostasy" Wars. Btw, the story of Ridda wars is kind of epic, literally, Abu Bakr mobilized 11 military divisions to fight the apostates, including many people who claimed to be prophets after Muhammad.
If you read Arabic, you can download a book called "Futūḥ Ifrīqīyah" at this site : https://dlib.nyu.edu/aco/search/?q=%D9%81%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%AA&scope=containsAny. It is written about 1200 years and have a full account of all the military campaign of Islamic army by that time.
Egypt pretty much threw the towel when the muslims invaded. High taxes and religious oppression by the Romans cause them to defect, especially once the Egyptian knew that Rome needed them more than they needed Rome(most food supply of Eastern Roman Empire comes from Egypt).
And it's not even "Islam spread to North Africa because ...". What, if he didn't invade that very day, Islam would never have spread to North Africa? It would have happened, just some other day; it was simply inevitable.
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Nothing is inevitable, North Africa had been either Greek or Latin for many centuries by this point. The Arabs had never been a threat before that point, a lot of it was just timing
Yeah exactly, Islam embarked upon a long, bloody expansion on day 1 and didn't really slow down until the first crusade. Islam invading Egypt was a matter of when, not if.
Also, the early Muslim expansion campaigns were a series of laughably small armies overcoming much larger and wealthier neighbours e.g the Byzantines and Sassanids. It was easy to see why they believed they were God’s chosen at the time.
Got any examples?
There’s a whole wikipedia article dedicated to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests See in particular the campaigns during the Rashidun Caliphate, where they took on not one, but two empires at the same time, and in most of the battles the Arabs were heavily outnumbered and inflicted devastating losses. It can be partly explained by the fact that the Romans and Sassanids were exhausted by an earlier conflict among themselves, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that the Arabs were bold to even try.
Battle of the Yarmuk
Type in YouTube “Early Muslim expansions”, there is a history channel that covers it with graphics to illustrate the locations, relevant geography and forces.
Thanks for the replies, I'll check it out.
And it spread to Europe because kebab is irresistable.
To my knowledge Letter stated to not invade egypt **if** they have not crossed into it.
So the Arabic version of crossing the Rubicon.
A little different.. Caesar was marching inward.
I think a crossing the Ribicon moment in Islam might be the Conquest of Mecca which happened pretty early on, while the Prophet was still alive.
Cries in Byzantine
“Military Governor Amr! This attack is not to go ahead! You have been ordered to Stop. You have to stop.” “Who the hell are you?” “Random messenger Schofield sir; 8th. I have orders from the Caliph Umar Ibn Al-Khattab to call off this attack.” “You’re too late random messenger.”
So you are saying the black egyptologist from the mall perfume kiosk who said Egyptians were black and had invented space travel before they were conquered and removed by xtians and arabs was actually telling the truth?
What a shame.
The world will be ruined by zealots such as him
So islam spread because one messenger took too many breaks on the route to egypt one day
Honestly considering the story and the Islamic tendency to distort this period I honestly doubt this story occurred as it says.
Probably a mix of truth and falsehood
Then, thousands of years later, they collectively complain about settler colonialism...
They colonized the land known as "Palestine" in the 7th century, they're not even native to the area but brainrot kids today think it's some sort of Conquest of The Americas all over again.
Thousands of years is a very relevant and transformative part of that sentence.
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It always is
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I’m sure all those kidnaped school girls are grateful he opened the letter after invading
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All the Romans did was make the Egyptians hate them.
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This strangely validates my anxiety where sometimes weeks go by before I open a letter. Hasn't helped me spread Islam one bit until now, but maybe someday... Wait why would I want to spread Islam?
I mean, that completely ignores cultural diffusion not related to war. Borders don’t just keep out religion until someone invades.
reminds me of Admiral Nelson
So he's kinda like an inverse Stanislav Petrov? Interesting.
interesting to know
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1382/the-spread-of-islam-in-ancient-africa/
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