Islam in Medieval Egypt

Islam in medieval Egypt was intensely expansionist. Favour for the new religion, as well as economic and social factors, fuelled this expansionism. Conquering armies and migrating tribes swept out of Arabia and spread Islam. By the end of Islam's first century, Islamic armies had reached far into North Africa and eastward and northward into Asia.

Among the first countries to come under their control was Egypt, invaded by Arab forces in 640. The following year, Amr ibn al Aas conquered Cairo (then known as Babylon) and renamed the city Al Fustat. By 647, after the surrender of Alexandria, the whole country was under Muslim rule.

Amr Ibn Al Aas

Amr, a Muslim and the first medieval Egypt Islam Ruler, was influenced by the Prophet's advice that Muslims should be kind to the Egyptians because of their kinship ties to Arabs. According to Islamic tradition, Ismail's mother, Hagar, was of Egyptian origin.

Amr allowed the Copts to choose between converting to Islam or retaining their beliefs as a protected people. Amr gave them this choice because the Prophet had recognized the special status of the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians), whose scriptures he considered perversions of God's true word but nevertheless contributory to Islam. Amr believed that Jews and Christians were people who had approached but not yet achieved the perfection of Islam, so he did not treat them like pagans who would be forced into choosing between Islam and death.

Jews and Christians in Muslim territories could live according to their own religious laws and in their own medieval Egypt Islam communities if they accepted the position of dhimmis, or tolerated subject peoples. Dhimmis were required to recognize Muslim authority, pay additional taxes, avoid proselytizing to Muslims, and give up certain political rights.

By the ninth century A.D., most Egyptians had converted to Islam.

Amr chose Al Fustat (modern day Islamic Cairo) as the capital of Islamic Egypt because a canal connected the city to the Red Sea, which provided easy access to the Muslim heartland in the Arabian Peninsula.

He initiated construction of Cairo's oldest extant mosque, the Amr ibn al Aas Mosque, which was completed in 711, several years after his death. Successive rulers also built mosques and other religious buildings as monuments to their faith and accomplishments.

Medieval Egypt's first Turkish ruler, Ahmad ibn Tulun, built one of Cairo's most renowned mosques, the Ibn Tulun Mosque, in 876.

The Fatimids

A Shia dynasty, the Fatimids, conquered medieval Egypt in 969 and ruled the country for 200 years. Although the Fatimids endowed numerous mosques, shrines, and theological schools, they did not firmly establish their faith (known today as Ismaili Shia Islam) in Egypt.

Numerous sectarian conflicts among Fatimid Ismailis after 1050 may have been a factor in Egyptian Muslim acceptance of Saladin's (Salah ad Din ibn Ayyub) reestablishment of Sunni Islam as the state religion in 1171.

Al Azhar theological school, endowed by the Fatimids, changed quickly from a center of Shia learning to a bastion of Sunni orthodoxy.