The Muslim Conquest of Egypt Reconsidered (original) (raw)

‘Die Binnenwanderung’ in Byzantine Egypt

Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies, 2001

FIRST MET JOHN OATES in the fall semester 1966 at Yale. I was a second-year graduate student, he a junior faculty I member just back from a year in England during which his projects included what was to become his famous article "A Rhodian Auction Sale of a Slave Girl" (JEA 55 [1969] 191-210). From the ancient history seminar that he conducted that semester came the ideas that would later be developed in the dissertation I wrote under Bradford Welles' direction. Unless I am mistaken, and through no merit of my own, but sheer good fortune, I own the distinction of being one of John Oates' first students and one of Bradford Welles' last. I was much too green to contribute to the Festschrift in Welles' honor (Am.Stud.Pap. 1 [1966]), but time passing has made me seasoned enough to contribute to this special GRBS issue for John. It also happened that during his year in England, John had read and reviewed Horst Braunert's Die Binnenwanderung: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte Ägyptens in der Ptolemaër-und Kaiserzeit. 1 His enthusiasm for Braunert's book carried over into conversation and obviously made quite an impression on me. Braunert's concern was the internal migration of people in Egypt as evidenced mainly by the papyri. Massive as the book is, Die Binnenwanderung treats the Byzantine period only relatively briefly toward its conclusion (pp.293-338). So it was that some 1 Bonn.Hist.Forsch. 26 (Bonn 1964). The review, with apposite sympathetic comments on the difficulty of writing history from the papyri, will be found in

Reappraising the Arabic Accounts for the Conflict of 446/1054-5

Mirela Ivanova and Hugh Jeffery (eds.), Transmitting and Circulating the Late Antique and Byzantine Worlds, (Leiden: Brill 2019), pp. 170-198., 2019

From the moment that they had established their caliphate in 297/910, the Fatimids engaged in often peaceful exchange with the Byzantines.1 This exchange, however, came to an abrupt halt in the mid-11th century, when the Seljuks reached the Islamic world and began to exchange embassies with the Byzantines, undermining the Fatimids' privileged diplomatic position. It was also a volatile period at the Byzantine centre. The emperor Constantine ix Monomachos died in 446/1055, and was succeeded by Theodora, the last of the Macedonian dynasty. She was succeeded by Michael vi in 448/1056, who was then overthrown in Isaac Komnenos's 449/1057 coup. The present chapter will focus on the Arabic sources for diplomacy and conflict between the Fatimids and Byzantines in this period. At first glance, therefore, this chapter addresses the movement of people-diplomats and soldiers-across the frontier not ideas. In fact, the texts presented in this chapter will shed light on issues such as: how Byzantium maintained and managed its diplomatic relationships; and in what contexts people and goods crossed the frontier with Egypt and Syria. However, the historian must first understand the limitations of their source material. This chapter will, therefore, focus on the movement of ideas about Byzantium into Egypt, and how such ideas were reused and transmitted in the later Egyptian historiography. Primarily this will reveal just how well-informed Egyptian historiography was about the Byzantine-Fatimid relationship and the Byzantines. However, it also promises to provide unique insights into a turbulent period of Byzantine history. This is an essential study, as our source material for this period is particularly poor. Greek sources rarely refer to the diplomatic exchanges with Egypt. Moreover, the period between the death of Constantine ix Monomarchus and the coup of Isaac Comnenus remains poorly understood.